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Thursday, 20 August 2020

Barclay Perkins Porter and Stout adjuncts before WW II

More excruciating detail about Barclay Perkins beers around the time of WW II. I'm still pondering whether to turn all of this into a standalone book or not.

In the first half of the 20th century, the use of adjuncts was very widespread. Usually in the form of flaked maize, though a few breweries, such as William Younger, used grits. So, it’s no shock to see that most of the Stouts contain some. 10-15% was typical, considerably less than the 5% here.

I think that it’s explained by the presence of another unmalted grain, roast barley. The two combined come to around 15%, about the typical adjunct percentage. Nowadays many associate roast barley with Stout but that wasn’t true in the UK. The vast majority of breweries used black malt instead. I can only recall two which used roast barley: Barclay Perkins and Guinness. The latter is doubtless the cause of the association.

Over 11% of the grist seems an awful lot of roast barley. Especially when there were another 15% of roasted grains in the grist. These beers must have been very roasty. Like drinking an ashtray.

I’m not sure if the oats were malted or flaked as the brewing records aren’t specific. The quantity is tiny, in any case so it doesn’t really matter. A token quantity so some could be sold as Oatmeal Stout. Oddly enough, it turns up in parti-gyles where I’m pretty sure none were going to be marketed as oatmeal. For example, IBS and RNS.

There’s a huge contrast with the two Export Stout, which contain no unmalted grains of any kind.

Barclay Perkins Porter and Stout adjuncts before WW II
Year Beer roast barley flaked maize oats total
1936 TT 11.07% 4.92% 0.61% 16.60%
1936 LS 9.25% 4.62% 0.29% 14.16%
1936 BS 11.07% 4.92% 0.61% 16.60%
1936 OMS 11.07% 4.92% 0.61% 16.60%
1936 RNS 11.63% 4.43% 0.28% 16.34%
1936 IBS 11.63% 4.43% 0.28% 16.34%
1936 BBS Export       0.00%
1937 IBS Export       0.00%
Source:
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number ACC/2305/01/621.




11 comments:

  1. As a home brewer I regularly brew Dry and Foreign Extra stouts and typically use up to 20% roast barley. Of course the modern variant might be different to what was used in the 1930s but I find that even up to a kilo in a 23 litre brew gives a lovely smoothness and richness but not over the top "roastiness". One such brew actually won me a comp and a trip to New Zealand.
    Other home brewers who are nervous about using anything anything over, say, 300g have been horrified at the idea, but on trying it out themselves they are always pleasantly surprised.

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  2. Was there a clear difference for Barclay Perkins at this time between their stouts and porters, or was it one of those points in time where the sense was pretty fuzzy?

    If there was a difference, whatwould that be?

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  3. Anonymous,

    as by this point Barclay Perkins Porter was always parti-gyled with one of the Stouts, there was no difference at all. Other than the Porter being weaker. Which was pretty much the case for all the records I've seen, right back to 1805.

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  4. Mike in NSW,

    that's interesting. 20% seems a crazy amount to me, but I bow to your personal experience.

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  5. Thanks for the reply about port vs. stout. Do you have a rough sense of when the terms still had a significant difference in meaning?

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  6. Cheers Ron
    I got onto it when I was at a brew day with a mate several years ago, and to my horror he put in his usual kilo of RB. I expected it to be undrinkable but it turned out brilliant.

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  7. Anonymous,

    that's easy: never. Stout was always just a stronger version of Porter. Any distinction between the two has been made up in the last 30 years.

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  8. Thanks for the second reply. I guess what I'm trying to puzzle through is Stout gravities cycled downwards through the first half of the 20th Century, getting down to around three-ish percent ABV if I remember some of your recipes right. So at what point during that spiralling down did they get low enough that brewers stopped using the Stout/Porter distinction and just called all of it Stout?

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  9. "Stout was always just a stronger version of Porter. " Indeed - and by the 1930s some commentators were explaining porter as "a weaker version of stout."

    Do your records indicate the last time BP brewed TT?

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  10. Martyn,

    I think TT was last brewed in 1941. The later versions were crazy: 1030º as brewed, 1028º after primings.

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