London Burton Ale 1880 - 1899

We’re talking about standard London Burton Ale here. A beer which was usually called KK within the brewhouse.

It was one of the standard draught beers in a London pub. And, along with Stout, was usually the strongest beer on offer in cask form.

The sharper ones amongst you might have spotted that the Truman beers were brewed in Burton, not London. I’ve included them here as they were beers intended specifically for the London market. Truman did brew a KK and KKK earlier in the 19th century, but stopped after they acquired their Burton brewery in the 1870s.

You can see that the gravities were pretty consistent, varying only from 1074º to 1079º. This isn’t too much of a shock as they were all being brewed for the same market: London. While similar levels of attenuation leave them all 7% to 7.5%. Except for the Whitbread beer, which was noticeably more poorly attenuated than the others.

Hopping. Why is Truman C5 R an outlier, with a far lower hopping rate than the other examples? Because it’s a Runner. That is, an unaged beer. With S5 being the Keeper sibling. Were the two blended? Quite possibly. That definitely occurred with No. 1, the Barley Wine from Burton.

The hopping rate of the other beers is very high.  High enough to imply that they were aged before sale. That’s definitely true of Fullers XXK, which the brewing record says was vatted. My guess would be nine to twelve months of ageing. 

London Burton Ale 1880 - 1899
Year	Brewer	Beer	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl
1892	Barclay Perkins	KK	1074.0	1021.1	7.00	71.55%	14.22	4.61
1881	Whitbread	KK	1075.1	1024.9	6.63	66.79%	14.09	4.82
1897	Fullers	XXK	1076.5	1020.2	7.44	73.55%	12.33	4.33
1887	Truman (Burton)	C5 R	1075.9	1019.4	7.48	74.45%	8.68	2.84
1887	Truman (Burton)	S5	1078.7	1022.2	7.48	71.83%	10.19	3.57
	Average		1076.0	1021.6	7.21	71.64%	11.90	4.04
Sources:
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number ACC/2305/1/587.
Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/01/047.
Fullers brewing record held at the brewery.
Truman brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number B/THB/BUR/11.