Let's Brew Wednesday - 1917 Kidd Porter

I’ve published dozens of Porter recipes from the big London brewers, but rarely ones from smaller provincial breweries.

Having said that, this Porter isn’t hugely different from London ones. Perhaps not so odd, given that Kidd’s Dartford location was just outside the capital. The gravity looks a bit low, but by February 1917, when this was brewed, strengths had begun to fall. Pre-war, London Porter was around 1050º.

The standard pale, brown and black malt combination is there. As well as crystal malt and oats. Which leads me to believe that this was also sold as Oatmeal Stout. The No. 4 invert is a guess. In the original it’s something called “Budgett”. With that, all the dark malts and some caramel for good measure, it’s unsurprisingly a pretty damn black beer.

The hops were Sussex and Farnham, which I’ve interpreted as Fuggles and Goldings, respectively.  That should get you somewhere in the zone, though other English hop combinations are available. It’s fairly heavily hopped, giving calculated IBUs of over 30.

The recipe also contained 2lbs of “Spanish juice”, which I suppose is a type of liquorice. That was for 145 barrels and works out to 0.03 oz for a brew of this size (5 Imperial, 5 6 US gallons, 23 litres).

1917 Kidd Porter
pale malt	5.75 lb	58.97%
brown malt	0.50 lb	5.13%
black malt	0.50 lb	5.13%
crystal malt	0.50 lb	5.13%
oats	0.50 lb	5.13%
No. 4 invert sugar	1.50 lb	15.38%
caramel 1000 L	0.50 lb	5.13%
Fuggles 135 mins	0.75 oz
Fuggles 60 mins	0.75 oz
Goldings 30 mins	1.00 oz
OG	1042
FG	1010
ABV	4.23
Apparent attenuation	76.19%
IBU	32
SRM	53
Mash at	152º F
Sparge at	165º F
Boil time	135 minutes
pitching temp	59º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale