Cairnes Single Stout grists 1914 – 1923

A Cairnes Special Export Irish Stout label

Back to work, eh? Looking at all the the nutty bolty stuff.

I always try to have a purpose behind all my posts. Usually, that's a book. Either it's part of my research for a book, an excerpt or a recipe that's going into a book. Which is where the Irish material I'm going through throw up a problem. What book is it going in?

The most obvious - and simple - solution would be to start a book called "Ireland!". That would make a lot of sense. But I'm not going to do it. No, not just to be awkward or contrary. I don't feel that I know enough to start on it. My mind is full of unanswered questions about Irish brewing. Far too early to be confident about writing a book about it.

Perhaps I'll feel differently when I've finished going through all the brewing records I photographed earlier this year. Or maybe not. I only got about halfway through the Murphy's records. And I wouldn't mind looking at the ones of Beamish & Crawford, too.

Before I started writing my series of books on UK brewing, I'd already completed a huge amount of the research. All that was left, was filling in a few holes. Nothing that affected the overall picture. I'm far away from that situation when it comes to Ireland.

If you can remember my earlier question, stuff like this is being stored as a future update. In this case, to "Armistice!". Not totally sure where I'd put it. I'm sure I'll be able to find some way of hammering it in. Ireland probably deserves its own chapter, at least. With the restrictions being different there.

Now let’s look at what went into Cairnes Single Stout.  It’s not particularly complicated. Especially when we compare it with Fullers Porter.

Only three elements graced the mash tun: pale malt, roast barley and flaked maize. Which is pretty minimal. And the last of those three wasn’t omnipresent, disappearing for a while in 1918 and 1919. The quantity used having already been drastically reduced.

Interestingly, the percentage of malt increased quite a lot in 1917, coinciding with the reduction and then elimination of flaked maize. This was presumably a reaction to supply difficulties with maize as the German U-boat campaign hotted up.

The proportion of roast barley remained very constant at around 7%, other than for a bit of a wobble in the early 1920s, when it dropped as low as 4% and then shot up to 10%. Not sure why that was.

Looking at Fullers grists, there are some similar patterns. Though their recipes were way more complicated.

There were three malts, the classic London combination of pale, brown and black malt. Though the total amount is similar to at Cairnes, starting at around 70%, rising to a peak of over 90% in 1917.  This was presumably in response to restrictions in supply of maize and sugar.

Which brings us to flaked maize. It kicks off the war at a much lower level than at Cairnes, just a little under 3%. And, just as at Cairnes, it disappears in the later war years.

The other adjunct, oats, appears in tiny quantities, purely for legal purposes so that some of the Stout it was parti-gyled with could be sold as Oatmeal Stout. The larger quantities which appear in 1918 were in the form of oat husks. Not sure if they would get any extract out of those. But why else would they be used?

Cairnes Single Stout grists 1914 - 1923
Date	Year	pale malt	roast barley	flaked maize	glucose	caramel
1st Jan	1914	74.45%	6.50%	9.93%	8.82%	0.30%
1st Sep	1914	70.03%	7.74%	13.34%	8.89%
7th Jan	1915	71.37%	7.22%	12.69%	8.72%
2nd Oct	1916	79.62%	7.11%	13.27%
3rd May	1917	79.62%	7.11%	13.27%
7th Jun	1917	87.83%	6.84%	5.32%
1st Nov	1917	87.83%	6.84%	5.32%
3rd Jan	1918	86.70%	6.88%	6.42%
2nd May	1918	91.17%	6.74%	2.10%
3rd Oct	1918	93.33%	6.67%
3rd Feb	1919	93.33%	6.67%
2nd Oct	1919	85.42%	7.46%	7.12%
1st Jan	1920	89.05%	7.66%	3.30%
15th Apr	1920	87.33%	7.37%	5.29%
4th Oct	1920	81.76%	8.54%	9.28%		0.41%
3rd Oct	1921	95.33%	3.91%			0.76%
2nd Feb	1922	76.04%	10.18%	12.64%		1.13%
1st Jan	1923	89.36%	8.51%			2.13%
Sources:
Cairnes brewing records held at the Guinness archives, document numbers GDB/SUB/0022 and GDB/BR17/1257.

Fullers Porter grists 1914 - 1925
Date	Year	pale malt	brown malt	black malt	total malt	flaked maize	oats	total adjuncts
18th Nov	1914	53.88%	11.34%	3.78%	69.00%	2.84%	0.91%	3.75%
17th Feb	1915	60.25%	12.91%	6.46%	79.62%	3.59%	0.49%	4.08%
2nd Jun	1916	52.53%	12.51%	8.76%	73.80%	3.75%	0.46%	4.21%
4th Aug	1916	60.06%	14.71%	11.03%	85.80%	4.90%	0.55%	5.45%
12th Apr	1917	58.54%	13.77%	8.61%	80.92%	5.16%		5.16%
9th Aug	1917	67.38%	14.97%	11.23%	93.58%			0.00%
5th Jan	1918	61.66%	14.09%	10.57%	86.33%		5.29%	5.29%
19th Apr	1918	45.10%	11.28%	8.05%	64.44%		9.67%	9.67%
14th Jan	1919	59.73%	12.80%	8.53%	81.06%			0.00%
10th Feb	1920	59.66%	12.97%	9.08%	81.70%	6.48%		6.48%
16th Jun	1925	64.15%		8.44%	72.59%	8.44%	0.66%	9.10%
Source:
Fullers brewing records held at the brewery.