Let's Brew - 1902 Fullers Single Stout

Sometime around 1900, Fullers introduced a new, weaker Stout. Which, in a moment of inspiration, they named Single Stout.

Even for a Single Stout, it’s pretty feeble. Whitbread’s, for example, was 1072º. And not that much stronger than Fullers Porter, at 1050º. I suppose there must have been a market for something of this strength. Or maybe not, as it doesn’t appear in the records from 1910.

The backbone of London Stout – pale, brown and black malt – are all present. Along with some other stuff. Like flaked maize and caramel. There’s some undefined type of sugar. No. 3 invert seems to leave it around the right colour. There’s a lot of it, too. Over 25% of the total.

Amongst the malts, there’s a modest quantity of brown malt and quite a lot of black malt. Enough to create a pretty dark beer in conjunction with the No. 3 and caramel.

Definitely an underlet. Not sure what the third step is. It’s described as “Sacc.”. I know from later logs that it’s “Saccharum liquor”, i.e., a sugar solution. It seems a bit odd to add that to the mash. I just have to assume that they knew what the hell they were doing.

Action	barrels	strike heat	mashed (mins)	stood (mins)	tap heat	gravity
mash 1	206	158º F	60	25	145º F	1086.2
underlet	16	175º F		80
sacc. liquor	63
sparge	197	170º F

Three types of hops. English from the 1900 and 1901 seasons and Worcester from 1901.

No ageing for this baby.  

1902 Fullers Single Stout
pale malt	5.75 lb	51.25%
brown malt	1.25 lb	11.14%
black malt	0.67 lb	5.97%
flaked maize	0.25 lb	2.23%
No. 3 invert sugar	3.00 lb	26.74%
caramel 500 SRM	0.30 lb	2.67%
Fuggles 90 min	1.75 oz
Fuggles 30 min	1.75 oz
Fuggles dry hops	0.25 oz
OG	1058
FG	1015.5
ABV	5.62
Apparent attenuation	73.28%
IBU	37
SRM	38
Mash at	147º F
Sparge at	175º F
Boil time	90 minutes
pitching temp	60º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1968 London ESB

 

This is one of the 277 recipes in my new book on London Stout. Get your copy now!