London Stout 1800 - 1840 hops

The Stout book is coming along nicely: 17,000 words and 85 pages.Not bad for just a couple of  weeks. Especially as it has entailed some research, which is a pretty time-consuming activity. It's worth it, though. There's nothing more satisfying than seeing a book take form.

Unlike later in the century, when UK brewers imported hops from all over the world, at this point they were all sourced domestically. Given its close proximity to the capital, it’s no surprise that London brewers mostly used Kent hops. In the examples in the table, in the form of East Kent and Mid-Kent hops.

Note that a couple of Barclay Perkins beers contained hops that were three and four years old. Using old hops wasn’t at all unusual. There was a simple reason: the price of hops varied so much from year to year. At this point they were sourcing most of their hops from Mid-Kent, the rest from East Kent.

London Stout 1805 - 1811 hops
Year	Brewer	Beer	hop 1	hop 2	hop 3
1811	Barclay Perkins	BSt	MK 1808	MK 1810	MK 1811
1805	Barclay Perkins	FSt	MK 1801
1805	Barclay Perkins	P Stout	EK 1803
1807	Whitbread	Sea DS	English
1807	Whitbread	Sea S	English
Sources:
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number ACC/2305/1/525.
Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/09/002.

Not much had changed by the 1820s. Still all English hops, but generally more different types. And nothing more than 3 years old. I’m guessing that most of those where the origin wasn’t specified came from Kent.

Barclay Perkins were still very keen on Mid-Kent hops. That just happening to be a region which produced some of the best hops. Only surpassed by perhaps East Kent and Farnham. 

You can see the practice developing of using several different vintages of hops in each brew. This was typical of brewing later in the century, when it was rare to see fewer than two or three types of hops employed.

London Stout hops 1820 - 1821
Year	Brewer	Beer	hop 1	hop 2	hop 3	hop 4
1820	Barclay Perkins	FSt	MK 1818
1821	Barclay Perkins	BSt	MK 1818	MK 1820	MK 1818	MK 1819
1820	Whitbread	Stout	English 1819
1821	Truman	K Stout	English 1819	English 1819	English 1820
1821	Reid	S	English 1819	English 1819	English 1820
1820	Reid	SS	English 1820
1820	Reid	SSS	English 1818	English 1819	English 1820
Sources:
Barclay Perkins brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers ACC/2305/1/547 and ACC/2305/1/531.
Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/09/014.
Truman brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number B/THB/C/021.
Reid brewing record in private ownership.