Porter grists suggested by Loftus

"The Brewer" by William Loftus is a dead handy little book. One which, for some reason, I'd lost my digital copy of. No problem, easy enough to pick up another one from the internet.

There was one particular table I was after. One showing  a variety of different Porter grists.I was reminded of it when looking at Lovibond's records. Because they used a very unusual Stout grist for a London brewer. In that it contained neither pale nor brown malt.

Instead it gores for an amber and black malt combination. It struck a chord the first time I saw it. Because it reminded me of one of my home brews. In fact, my first home brew in Amsterdam, almost 30 years ago now.

Because of a misunderstanding when I bought the malt, I used amber rather than pale as the base for a Mild recipe. Along with some black malt, that left me with a Porter rather than a Mild.

If you've been paying attention, you'll have noticed that in London, Porter and Stout recipes were variations on grist 1. Though, in the 1850s, it was more likely to have been 75% pale, 21% brown and 4% black malt.

Most brewers outside London, however, used something like grist 2, with just pale and black malt.

Porter grists suggested by Loftus
grist	pale	brown	amber	black	total
1	60%	35%	0%	5%	100%
2	90%	0%	0%	10%	100%
3	0%	0%	95%	5%	100%
4	45%	25%	25%	5%	100%
5	58%	30%	10%	3%	100%
Source:
"The Brewer" by William Loftus, London, 1856, page 62.