There may have been innumerable variations of Stout brewed in the 1850s. It doesn’t mean that they sold in anything like similar quantities. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the exact numbers for each of the different variations? Luckily for us, brewers noted all sorts of extra stuff in their records. Presumably for their own use, but dead handy for me.
An example was someone at Truman writing annual totals for each of their many Stouts at the bottom of a brewing record. These figures exclude the Ales brewed by Truman.
More than three-quarters of the Black Beer they produced was one form or other of Porter. Most of that, the standard Running version. Still fairly decent quantities of aged Porter being brewed, if insufficient to have been blended at the classic ratio of one-third aged to two-thirds fresh. Either less aged beer was used, or, more likely, much was being sold young.
Government of Crimea, in case you’re interested, means Porter brewed under contract for British troops fighting in Crimea.
A decent amount of Cooking Stout was being bashed out. Over 56,000 barrels, taking Running and Keeping combined. While the other five can only manage 14,000 between them. Stronger Stouts were clearly a minority interest. Bottled ones even more so.
| Truman Porter and Stout output 1855 - 1856 | ||||
| Beer | OG | barrels brewed | % of total | % of Stout |
| Runner | 1056.5 | 200,519 | 61.76% | |
| Govt. of Crimea | 1059.3 | 5,303 | 1.63% | |
| Keeper | 1051.2 | 36,293 | 11.18% | |
| Bottling Porter | 1057.1 | 7,413 | 2.28% | |
| Export Porter | 1057.1 | 4,190 | 1.29% | |
| Running Stout | 1072.3 | 46,648 | 14.37% | 65.76% |
| Keeping Stout | 1073.1 | 9,983 | 3.07% | 14.07% |
| Bottling Stout | 1069.8 | 850 | 0.26% | 1.20% |
| Export Stout X | 1070.9 | 900 | 0.28% | 1.27% |
| Export Stout XX | 1085.9 | 5,781 | 1.78% | 8.15% |
| Double Stout & Imperial Stout | 1082.5 & 1087.8 | 6,774 | 2.09% | 9.55% |
| Total Stout | 70,936 | 21.85% | ||
| Total | 324,654 | |||
| Source: | ||||
| Truman brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number B/THB/C/057. | ||||
Running Stout must have been like drinking soup. (Not necessarily in a bad way.)
ReplyDeleteInteresting when you think that contemporary impy stouts tend to be high in strength and dense in body; presumably stouts like these were either one thing or the other.
Hi Ron, any idea how long Running Stout would be stored before being sold? Would it be just two weeks like an X Ale or a bit longer? The longest maturation time for Mild Ale that I found on your blog was 7 weeks for Lovibonds XXXX in 1864. Any chance you could get some data for stout?
ReplyDeleteChristoph Riedel,
ReplyDeletethe honest answer is that I don't know. Some of the Running Stouts seem to have been aged for a while. I doubt more than a couple of months. A few weeks is all you'd expect later in the 19th century.