Wednesday 23 February 2022

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1890 Truman Porter

Towards the end of the 19th century, while the style had been dropped by many provincial breweries, those in London were still churning out Porter in large quantities.

It was clearly still a very popular type of beer in the capital. Truman was still calling it Runner, despite the Keeping version not having been brewed for a couple of decades. This particular batch was of 656 barrels. A decent amount of beer in anyone’s book. Enough for it to be brewed single-gyle.

Despite this, the grist is near-identical to that of the parti-gyled Stouts. There’s a little less base malt and a little more brown malt and No. 3 invert, but nothing of real significance. It remained a decent strength, with an OG of 1058º and over 5% ABV. In contrast to the feeble versions brewed after WW I.

There were four different copper hops: Kent from the 1889 harvest, Burgundy from 1889, Bavarian from 1889 and illegible from 1889.

1890 Truman Porter
pale malt 8.25 lb 67.35%
brown malt 1.25 lb 10.20%
black malt 0.75 lb 6.12%
No. 3 invert sugar 2.00 lb 16.33%
Fuggles 120 mins 2.00 oz
Fuggles 60 mins 1.50 oz
Hallertau 30 mins 2.00 oz
Goldings dry hops 0.50 oz
OG 1058
FG 1016
ABV 5.56
Apparent attenuation 72.41%
IBU 69
SRM 32
Mash at 157º F
Sparge at 170º F
Boil time 120 minutes
pitching temp 60º F
Yeast Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale

 


 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

When do the numbered invert sugars start to turn up in brewing records?

Ron Pattinson said...

Anonymous,

the earliest I found after a quick search was 1887. But 19th-century brewing records were often very vague about the type of sugar. The numbered inverts were almost certainly in use before 1887.