Tuesday 6 December 2022

Late 19th century London Stout grists

This is what you were really waiting for. Not boring old OGs and rates of attenuation, but meaty chunks of grist.

I've just realised that my talk is the bones of a ittle history of London Stout. As if I didn't have enough projects already. But I could knock it out pretty quickly. Would anyone be interested? 250 years of London Stout. With a few dozen recipes, obviously. And lots and lots of tables.

Getting back to the topic, can you spot the difference with 1850? A lot more black malt. More than twice as much, on average. While the amount of brown malt is down by a third.

Though sugar had been legal ingredient since 1847, none of the London brewers used it in their Stouts in 1850. What a change by the 1890s. Every brewer used sugar of some sort, on average making up 12.5% of the grist. Quite a few different sorts, as you'll see in the table. Most of it probably invert sugar of some type. The adoption of sugar is probably responsible for the reduction in the percentage of base malt. 

Late 19th century London Stout grists
Year Brewer Beer pale malt white malt brown malt black malt amber malt crystal malt total malt
1899 Barclay Perkins SDP Ex   58.64% 11.17% 5.98% 7.18%   82.98%
1899 Barclay Perkins RDP   49.26% 8.82% 5.51% 11.03% 7.72% 82.35%
1899 Barclay Perkins BS Ex   54.24% 11.38% 6.03% 14.06%   85.71%
1899 Whitbread CS 75.73%   12.62% 8.74%     97.09%
1900 Whitbread S 51.25%   13.75% 5.00% 20.00%   90.00%
1899 Whitbread SS 50.00%   16.07% 4.17% 17.86%   88.10%
1899 Whitbread SSS 50.00%   16.07% 4.17% 17.86%   88.10%
1895 Truman Single Stout 65.95%   13.39% 7.44%     86.78%
1895 Truman Double Stout 65.95%   13.39% 7.44%     86.78%
1895 Truman Imperial Stout 65.95%   13.39% 7.44%     86.78%
  Average   42.48% 16.21% 13.01% 6.19% 8.80% 0.77% 87.46%


Late 19th century London Stout sugars
Year Brewer Beer no. 2 sugar no. 3 sugar Garton black other sugar total sugar
1899 Barclay Perkins SDP Ex 17.02%         17.02%
1899 Barclay Perkins RDP   17.65%       17.65%
1899 Barclay Perkins BS Ex 14.29%         14.29%
1899 Whitbread CS         2.91% 2.91%
1900 Whitbread S       3.00% 7.00% 10.00%
1899 Whitbread SS       3.57% 8.33% 11.90%
1899 Whitbread SSS       3.57% 8.33% 11.90%
1895 Truman Single Stout     13.22%     13.22%
1895 Truman Double Stout     13.22%     13.22%
1895 Truman Imperial Stout     13.22%     13.22%
  Average   3.13% 1.76% 3.97% 1.01% 2.66% 12.53%


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds good to me! I'd be interested in seeing comparative production figures for stout and porter, if you have them: I did a rough-and-ready analysis of advertising 1850-1910, and it was clear that, as you would expect, advertising for porter dropped away while advertising for stout climbed: while in the early part of the period many brewers did not advertise a stout, by the end almost all did.

A Brew Rat said...

What the heck is white malt?

Ron Pattinson said...

A Brew Rat,

the palest type of malt.

Ron Pattinson said...

Unknown,

in 1900 Whitbread brewed 120,000 barrels of Porter and 94,000 barrels of Stout.

Ron Pattinson said...

Unknown,

to put that into context, Whitbread brewed a total of 672,000 barrels, of which 321,000 were X Ale.