Pre-WW II London Stout

Yet more on Stout in WW II. I'd been dreading writing this section of my new book, "Blitzkrieg!".

Not because I haven't collected enough material. Quite the opposite. I've too much. Pruning it down is taking a lot of work. Plus there are all the nice tables I have to assemble.

Let’s compare the Stouts of four major London brewers. Where we have three 8d per pint beers and two 7d per pint ones.

There’s quite a bit of difference in the hopping rate across the different breweries. Ranging for 6 lbs per quarter (336 lbs) of malt at Courage to 7.5 lbs at Truman. Enough, I’m sure, to have made Truman’s beers noticeably more hoppy.

A relatively poor rate of attenuation is a feature of all the Stouts for which I have the FG. Though, as these beers were cask-conditioned, the FG when served would have been a little lower.

If you're wondering why there's no Fuller's Stout, it's because they discontinued it in 1931.

Pre-WW II London Stout
Year	Brewer	Beer	OG	OG after primings	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl
1937	Courage	Stout	1047.6	1052	1015.8	4.21	66.86%	5.92	1.15
1936	Barclay Perkins	BS	1051.1		1017.0	4.51	66.72%	6.37	1.48
1937	Whitbread	LS	1044.6		1013.0	4.18	70.85%	6.94	1.26
1931	Truman	BS	1055.7	1060.5				7.5	1.53
1931	Truman	St	1046.8	1050.4				7.5	1.29
Sources:
Courage brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number ACC/2305/08/263.
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number ACC/2305/01/621.
Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/09/125.
Truman gyle book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number B/THB/C/114.