Adnams beers in 1878 – 1879

I told you there would be lots more Adnams stuff. Barely scratched the surface so far.

I realise that I’m doing this rather illogically. Chronologically would have been a better idea. Must remember to do that from here on in.

Adnams have only two logs from the 19th century, 1878-9 and 1890. The earlier one, which we’ll be looking at today, seems to have been the personal brewing book of E.U. Adnams, the company founder. At least he’s written his name at the start of the book. See:

E.U., or Ernest Adnams was one of the two brothers who bought the Sole Bay Brewery in 1872. Meaning this is from the very early days of the business. Clearly Ernest was involved on the brewing side.

At the time, is was a pretty tiny operation. The longest brew length in this book is just 11.25 barrels. My guess is that they were brewing 2,000 – 3,000 barrels per year. Not much bigger than a large brewpub. They couldn’t have been supplying more than a dozen or so pubs.

That’s a little background. Now on with the beers themselves:

Adnams beers 1878 - 1879
Date	Year	Beer	Style	OG	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	Pitch temp	pale malt	black malt	saccharine
2nd Jul	1878	AK	Pale Ale	1044.3	11.67	2.82	65º	67.74%		32.26%
6th May	1879	PA	Pale Ale	1060.9	24.29	7.56	63º	66.67%		33.33%
23rd Oct	1878	SS	Stout	1066.5	13.33	4.86	62º	67.79%	9.61%	22.60%
10th Jul	1878	SS	Stout	1074.8	9.14	3.72	65º	66.08%	7.49%	26.43%
5th Mar	1879	X	Mild Ale	1030.5	14.67	2.00	º	65.22%		34.78%
7th May	1879	X	Mild Ale	1037.4	14.67	2.58	65º	67.74%		32.26%
16th Jul	1878	IA	Mild Ale	1044.3	11.67	2.67	º	67.74%		32.26%
21st Aug	1878	IA	Mild Ale	1052.6	12.50	3.12	º	67.74%		32.26%
17th Jul	1878	XX	Mild Ale	1048.5	8.57	2.79	65º	69.23%		30.77%
29th Feb	1879	XX	Mild Ale	1054.0	16.00	3.64	65º	69.23%		30.77%
2nd Jul	1878	XXXK	Stock Ale	1063.7	11.67	4.06	64º	67.74%		32.26%
21st Aug	1878	XXXK	Stock Ale	1072.0	12.50	4.27	64º	67.74%		32.26%
29th Oct	1878	XXXX	Mild Ale	1065.1	11.25	4.09	63º	71.43%		28.57%
23rd Apr	1879	XXXX	Mild Ale	1072.0	12.67	4.44	63º	67.74%		32.26%
11th Feb	1879	Tally Ho	Old Ale	1090.0	12.67	5.80	65º	75.00%		25.00%
Source:
Adnams brewing records held at the brewery.

First some general observations. Adnams were brewing to a wider range of gravities: 1030º to 1090º. Wider than you would see in London, where the odd Table Beer excepted, nothing below 1050º was brewed. At least in the large breweries whose records I’ve looked at.

The next thing to strike me is the hopping. Pretty much everything is hopped at more than 10 lbs per quarter. Not so unusual for Stock Ales or Pale Ales, but a lot for Mild Ales. The weakest beer, an X Ale of just 1030º, has 2 lbs of hops per barrel. A shit load for such a weak beer. Their Pale Ale, with 24 lbs per quarter and 7.5 lbs per barrel is hopped like a Burton IPA.

Then there’s the sugar content. It averages about a third of the grist, which is very high. A maximum of 15% is more usual. I can’t help thinking that some of the weaker Milds must have been quite thin with all that sugar.

Now compare and contrast time, as usual using Whitbread as the benchmark. Why do I mostly use Whitbread, you may ask? Because I’ve brewing records of theirs for every year from 1805 to 1973.

Whitbread beers in 1878 - 1879
Date	Year	Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	Pitch temp
20th Sep	1879	FA	Pale Ale	1055.1	1009.1	6.08	83.42%	11.09	2.96	58º
18th Oct	1879	PA	Pale Ale	1060.1	1013.9	6.12	76.96%	14.41	4.16	58º
8th Aug	1879	P	Porter	1056.5	1017.2	5.20	69.61%	7.86	2.01	61º
6th Mar	1879	XPS	Stout	1071.1	1019.9	6.76	71.93%	14.13	5.01	56º
6th Aug	1879	SS	Stout	1077.8	1024.9	7.00	67.97%	10.98	4.37	59º
3rd Dec	1879	SSS	Stout	1095.3	1037.7	7.62	60.47%	8.60	4.33	59º
6th Jan	1879	X	Mild	1062.3	1017.5	5.94	72.00%	6.08	1.69	61º
18th Mar	1879	XL	Mild	1070.4	1015.8	7.22	77.56%	6.00	1.80	61º
17th Nov	1879	XX xpt	Mild	1075.3	1023.0	6.93	69.49%	26.65	6.03	58º
4th Dec	1879	KK	Stock Ale	1078.4	1027.7	6.71	64.66%	21.84	5.10	58º
28th Jan	1878	KKK	Stock Ale	1085.6	1031.3	7.18	63.43%	15.04	6.11	57º
Sources:
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers LMA/4453/D/01/043, LMA/4453/D/01/044, LMA/4453/D/01/045, LMA/4453/D/09/073 and LMA/4453/D/09/074.

Whitbread grists in 1878 - 1879
Date	Year	Beer	Style	OG	pale malt	brown malt	black malt	sugar
20th Sep	1879	FA	Pale Ale	1055.1	76.92%			23.08%
18th Oct	1879	PA	Pale Ale	1060.1	75.58%			24.42%
8th Aug	1879	P	Porter	1056.5	83.41%	10.62%	5.97%
6th Mar	1879	XPS	Stout	1071.1	63.51%	17.40%	4.87%	14.22%
6th Aug	1879	SS	Stout	1077.8	69.75%	18.83%	3.77%	7.65%
3rd Dec	1879	SSS	Stout	1095.3	68.94%	18.61%	3.72%	8.72%
6th Jan	1879	X	Mild	1062.3	99.24%	0.76%
18th Mar	1879	XL	Mild	1070.4	100.00%
17th Nov	1879	XX xpt	Mild	1075.3	75.05%			24.95%
4th Dec	1879	KK	Stock Ale	1078.4	73.73%			26.27%
28th Jan	1878	KKK	Stock Ale	1085.6	86.50%			13.50%
Sources:
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers LMA/4453/D/01/043, LMA/4453/D/01/044, LMA/4453/D/01/045, LMA/4453/D/09/073 and LMA/4453/D/09/074.

Let’s work our way through, starting with the Pale Ales. The two PAs are very similar in terms of gravity. But Adnams’ version has almost double the hops of Whitbread’s. Interestingly, Adnams’ running Pale Ale, AK, is hopped almost as heavily as Whitbread’s Family Ale (FA), despite being a good bit weaker. You’d expect a Pale Ale to have a fair amount of sugar in the grist to help keep the colour pale. Both have quite a lot, but Adnams’, at a third of the grist, is very high.

Note that even this early there was no Porter in Adnams’ lineup, just one Stout. Though that does closely resemble Whitbread’s SS in terms of gravity and hopping. The big difference is in the grist. Adnams got all their colour from black malt and there’s no brown malt in the grist. This what you tend to see, provincial brewers dropping brown malt and simplifying their Stout grists to just pale and brown malt. While London brewers remained faithful to brown malt until the bitter end. Whitbread still included it in their grists in 1973.

Adnams brewed a much larger variety of Mild Ales than Whitbread, especially in terms of gravity. I’m not so sure Whitbread XX Xpt is really a Mild Ale. The hopping looks way too high. Which leaves just X and XL, the L presumably standing for “London”. Adnams X, IA (I think it stands for Intermediate Ale) and XX are all considerably weaker than Whitbread X Ale. Even XXXX is only a little bit stronger and about the same as Whitbread XL.

The hopping shows a huge difference. Adnams’ Milds are hopped at about double the rate of Whitbread’s per quarter. This is reflected in the hops per barrel, which are higher than Whitbread’s despite some of the beers being considerably weaker.

Note that Whitbread’s Milds, along with Porter, are their only beers to contain no sugar. You may find that odd, these being their cheapest beers. But you have to remember that sugar wasn’t necessarily a cheap alternative to malt and that its use was often for flavouring or colouring purposes.

Finally the strong Ales. Tally Ho looks very similar to KKK, the strongest Ale in Whitbread’s portfolio. Though it does contain about double the proportion of sugar. For once it’s the Whitbread beer that’s more heavily hopped, even if it is by a fairly minimal amount.

That was tiring. Best I don’t think about how much more of this I’m going to put us through.