Bottled Stout in the 1950’s

I’ve finally pulled my finger out and ordered my bottled Stout analyses. No, I didn’t shout at them to go and make some tea. I’ve divided them up into groups. Otherwise there are just too many to make sense of.

As with the Pale Ales, I sort of made up my own styles for this purpose. Or at least classes. They aren’t very complicated. I’ve used two criteria: gravity and attenuation. This what I’ve come up with:

Type	OG	Apparent attenuation
Strong Stout	>1050	>65%
Strong Stout	>1050	<50%
Standard Stout	1040 - 1050	>70%
Standard Stout	1040 - 1050	65 - 70%
Standard Stout	1040 - 1050	60 - 65%
Standard Stout	1040 - 1050	50 - 60%
Standard Stout	1040 - 1050	<50%
Weak Stout	1030 - 1040	>70%
Weak Stout	1030 - 1040	65 - 70%
Weak Stout	1030 - 1040	60 - 65%
Weak Stout	1030 - 1040	50 - 60%
Weak Stout	1030 - 1040	<50%

Why am I using attenuation as well as OG? Because there’s so much variation in the degree of attenuation. Way more than with other styles. The lowest is 33% the highest 95%. I think it’s pretty obvious that beers with such differing attenuation have little in common.

Obviously, my dividing lines are totally arbitrary. But I’ve a decent number of examples in each of my categories. Why did I split 60-70% into two categories? For no real reason. I feel justified by the fact that for both standard and weak Stout unsplit this level of attenuation would have been by a long way the largest group.

These are the numbers of each type:

Type	OG	Apparent attenuation	no. examples	% of total
Strong Stout	>1050	>65%	19	4.17%
Strong Stout	>1050	<50%	11	2.41%
Standard Stout	1040 - 1050	>70%	62	14.04%
Standard Stout	1040 - 1050	65 - 70%	47	10.31%
Standard Stout	1040 - 1050	60 - 65%	48	10.53%
Standard Stout	1040 - 1050	50 - 60%	64	14.04%
Standard Stout	1040 - 1050	<50%	13	2.85%
Weak Stout	1030 - 1040	>70%	43	9.43%
Weak Stout	1030 - 1040	65 - 70%	42	9.21%
Weak Stout	1030 - 1040	60 - 65%	36	7.89%
Weak Stout	1030 - 1040	50 - 60%	57	12.50%
Weak Stout	1030 - 1040	<50%	12	2.63%
total			456	100.00%

What’s the point of all this? To demonstrate again that not all English Stout was sweet. The fact that for both standard and weak Stout there are about as many examples with attenuation above 65% as there are below 65% vindicates my assertion.

But I’ll be making that point at much greater length in what follows.