Reid beers 1837 - 1839

Now I've mentioned Reid's beers we may as well have a look at some of them.

In the late 1830's Reid brewed a wide range of both Porter and Ale. Nothing really odd about that. Three other big Porter brewers: Whitbread, Truman and Barclay Perkins all started brewing Ale in the 1830's having previously been exclusively beer brewers. It was all to do with the 1830 Beer Act.

In the new Beer Houses Ale was very popular and the Porter brewers wanted to get their share of this new market. But where Reid differed from the other three brewers was that later in the 19th century they went back to being exclusively a Porter brewery. No idea why.

What's dead handy is that not only did they brew Mild and Stock Ales, but also Pale Ales. In particular, IPA. The other London brewers I've records from didn't introduce Pale Ales until the 1860's.

Talking of the IPA, it's insanely heavily hopped for what is a beer of quite modest gravity. Which gives me a great chance to bang on about how IPA wasn't a strong beer. Note that its gravity is considerably lower than X Ale, the weakest Mild Ale. And even has a lower gravity than standard Porter, the everyman drink of the day.

Note that the corresponding X and K Ales have identical gravities. And also that, if you look at the hopping rate per quarter, there's a clear difference between the Ales and Beers (Porter and Stout). The Ales are hopped at 7-11 lbs per barrel, the Beers 10-17 lbs. The simple Running Porter was hopped at the same rate as the strongest Stock Ale.

Obviously I'm not including the Pale Aless in this comparison, because that's a totally different class of beer.

Reid beers 1837 - 1839
Date	Year	Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Attenuation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl
4th Feb	1839	IPA	IPA	1056.8	1007.0	6.59	87.67%	26.6	5.88
16th Feb	1839	BPA	Pale Ale	1056.0	1007.0	6.48	87.49%	22.7	5.61
30th May	1839	IPA	IPA	1056.2	1007.0	6.51	87.55%	28.6	6.53
22nd Dec	1837	P	Porter	1061.2	1018	5.72	70.60%	10.2	2.09
23rd Dec	1837	BS	Stout	1074.0	1023	6.74	68.90%	14.0	4.61
15th Dec	1838	EBSt	Stout	1071.2	1020.0	6.77	71.91%	17.2	5.32
20th Mar	1838	KBSt	Stout	1072.0	1020.0	6.88	72.23%	16.2	5.15
29th Dec	1837	DBSt	Stout	1084.2	1026.0	7.70	69.12%	11.2	4.86
18th Mar	1839	XXX	Mild	1105.3				8.0	3.75
27th Dec	1838	XX	Mild	1088.6				8.8	3.12
31st Dec	1838	X	Mild	1073.4				6.8	2.06
13th Jan	1839	KKK	Stock Ale	1105.3	1033.2	9.53	68.42%	10.7	5.12
11th Jan	1839	KK	Stock Ale	1088.6	1028.3	7.99	68.13%	10.0	3.13
Source:
Reid brewing record held a the Westminster City Archives.