Education

Maybe it's my fault. I should have insisted on a full explanation on the label.

1914 Whitbread Porter and SSS Stout. That's where my recreation brewing career started. I pitched an idea to an importer and found a brewer. What was that idea? You need to understand my motivation  to get beers brewed first. 

Frustration. Frustration with stupid arguments with brainwashed geeks about beer history. In particular, the difference between Porter and Stout. How best to demonstrate that historically they were just different strength versions of the same thing?

Easy. Get someone to brew a Porter and Stout recipe from the same year from the same brewery. That's the core of my recreation idea. Release a brace of brews whose relationship taught something about beer history. Either two related styles from the same year or the same style from different years.

I thought it was a pretty groovy concept. At least two others agreed.

I hoped the beers would be drunk side by side and my point would be clear. Fat chance. Not necessarily the fault of the punter. No guarantee they could find or afford both.

Judging by these comments on ratings sites, my efforts were in vain.

"Billed as a stout on the chalkboard at the Shelton Bros event - you could/should bump this up into the 'imperial porter' category."

"Lists as an imperial stout but does feel more porter like."

"Really a flavorful malty porter."

"The mouthfeel leaned more towards a Porter than a stout"

"The label describes this beer as a porter, but it definitely isn't. It is somewhere between a light, chocolatey quad, a Belgian stout, a Belgian Dark Strong Ale."

"Think brown porter."

"The result is an old fashioned porter/stout which has a lot in common with current (imperial) brown ale style, so I think they definitely got the point with this recipe."

"it feels lighter in body than a porter. More like a brown ale"

"I’m getting modern porter here."

"The bottle we had said porter, but we believe it to be the same. Nice rich RIS"

"Great stout that may actually may be an exceptional Porter."

"turns out i put the 1914 porter here by mistake.. opps"

"drinkable in quantity if i were into porters masked as thin imperial stouts"

"mouthfeel i find a little thin for my liking more like a porter"

Incidentally, if you want to learn more about Porter and Stout, the differences between them and even the recipes for the two 1914 beers, you should buy my book "Porter!" . There's a 20% discount on the hardback until the end of October.

Drinking the past

Mike's getting restless. He's very excited by the beers I brought back from the US. The recreations brewed by Kristen. "When can I come around?", he keeps asking.

I can't say I blame him. There's some very tempting ones. Lichtenhainer, Grätzer, almost the full range of Fuller's beers from 1910. It's been a struggle to keep my hands off them. I've been dying to try a Grätzer. Can you believe I have two different Lichtenhainers in my posession. That's something I never imagined happening. There's a WW I Barclay Perkins X, too. [I'm on a theme-maintenance roll: two Barclay Perkins mentions already this week.]

Interest in old beers is greater than I imagined. My Whitbread recreations have gone down very well. Let's hope the next two - hopefully being brewed very soon - are as well received. Other projects to delve into brewing's past have come to my attention. Exciting times indeed.

I'd like to go one step further. Not just recreate the odd individual beer, but the complete pub experience. An Edwardian pub with a full set of draught and bottled beers from the period. There would have to be an Edwardian interior, too. It could make for a unique brewpub concept. You could even have a chain, with each link a different period.

What do you think? Would there be enough consumer interest? Or would it only appeal to a few weirdoes like me?

Porter 1914-1919

Porter. When will I get tired of discussing Porter? Not in the near future, that's for sure. Probably never.
Today I've more numbers. Lots of them. All relating to Whitbread Porter. You'll have to bear with me. I post my research immediately. As I'm currently going through the logs I photographed in archives, that's what you get. Loads of very specific details about individual beers.

You don't get to see everything, though. That would be too confusing. I collect details other than the ones I publish here. Mashing stuff, that sort of thing. Not of great general interest. Unless you've got a Steel's masher and an underlet at home.

It's a time-consuming business. Copying stuff out of brewing logs. That's why my posts are becoming repetitive. No time to do anything else.

One thing I haven't bothered with when trawling through the Whitbread WW I logs this week. The costings. In the top righthand corner. To the right you can see this bit from the Porter brewed on August 1st 1914.

It says that it cost 16.73 shillings per barrel in materials and that it sold for just 28 shillings a barrel. That seems very cheap. Oh, and that the tax was 6.92 shillings per barrel. About 25% of the selling price. That's before the war budgets.

Now I think about it, I should have a closer look at this. Brewers were acccused of profiteering during the war. I wonder if they really did make excessive profits?




Porter
Like other cheap, standard-strength beers such as Mild, Porter was badly hit by wartime restrictions. By 1919, gravities were below 1040º. Whitbread's Porter, still a respectable 1052º in 1914, was down to 1039 by April 1918. When the dust settled, Porter gravities in the 1920's were 1036-1039º.

It's been claimed that Porter died out during WW I due to restrictions on making dark malts. Let's see what the records tell us. Whitbread brewed their Porter all through the war. Though they discontinued all of their pre-war Stouts and even X Ale, they continued to brew Porter. Porter was, along with PA and IPA, one of only three beers Whitbread made throughout the whole of the war.

In August 1914, just before the outbreak of war, Whitbread's Porter had a grist of 79% pale malt, 7% brown malt, 5% black malt and 8% sugar. Did a shortage of dark malts make them use less as the war progressed? Not at all. In 1917, their Porter had 10% brown and 9% black malt. In 1918, it was up to 14% brown and 9% black malt. Doesn't look to me like Porter was being driven to extinction by a lack of dark malt.

Here are the details of Whitbread Porter at different stages of the war:



The biggest change in Whitbread Porter grists was an increase in the percentage of sugar, which rose from 8% in 1914 to 16% in 1918.

The hopping rate of Whitbread Porter rose during the war. In 1914 it had 5.59 pounds of hops per quarter of malt. By the end of 1917 that had risen to 7.27 pounds per quarter and in 1918 it hit 8.65 pounds per quarter. Though in the latter case 50% of the hops were from the 1910 crop, and their bittering properties would have considerably reduced.

Porter gradually faded away between the wars, finally expiring in the 1950's. Except in Ireland, where Guinness Porter hung on until the 1970's.

Guinness Porter. Now there's a fascinating topic.

My beers (part 3)

From reports trickling in, it appears that my beers are finally hitting the shelves in the US. Great news.

If you've been one of the lucky ones to get hold of some, let me know what you think.

Of course, for the intended educational experience, you need to try both beers. Preferably Porter followed by SSS. Did I mention this before?

My choice of beers wasn't random. They are meant to answer the question: "What was the difference between London Porter and London Stout?" I should know the answer. I've drunk a couple of dozen bottles of each. But it's better if you discover it for yourself.

Whitbread Porter and Stout 1805 - 1937

As promised, far more details than you could possibly want, courtesy of the Whitbread and Truman Gravity Books and the Whitbread brewing logs. I'm sure you wanted to know how strong SS was in 1844.

Below are the gravities of the Whitbread Porter and the main Whitbread Stouts. Like all the big London Porter breweries, they produced several Stouts. Pre-WW I, it was fairly simple - S (Single Stout), SS (Double Stout) and SSS (Triple Stout). During the war, only Porter and a new strong Stout, Imp (Imperial, I guess) were brewed. Postwar, there were Porter, draught LS (London Stout), bottled LS and bottled ES (Extra Stout).


In case you're wondering, none of these were Sweet Stouts. All had 65-70% apparent attenuation. Not as attenuated as Guinness (that was 70-75% at this time), but by no means sickly sweet. No Sweet Stout was produced at Whitbread's Chiswell Street brewery in London until after Mackeson was taken over. Mackeson Milk Stout seems to have been brewed at most Whitbread breweries during the 1950's.

See how handy my Mega-Gravity Book is? How much more useful it would be with a few more recent decades included.

I keep including vaguely-hidden plugs for my two beers, SSS and Porter. Here's another. (I'm not quite sure why I bother, given the tiny amounts of each. I could drink the lot, if need be. That would be pretty cool, drinking most of it myself. Mmmm. 100 more boxes of SSS. Nearly 6 months supply.) You can see them in the table. Now you can see how they fit into Whitbread's range in terms of strength and time. It was the end of the road for SSS after nearly 100 years.

British beer has been particularly affected by history. The Napoleonic Wars spurred technoligical advances. The two World Wars decimated gravities. Little proper beer was brewed in Germany in the 1940's. But in the 1950's, as soon as they were able, they went back to pretty much the pre-war gravities. Why is that?

Escaped.

Last week, I took bottles of 1914 Whitbread SSS to Cracked Kettle and Bierkoning for them to try. I was surpised to find that both had already had a few bottles of the Porter. Neither beer has been released in the Netherlands. Escaped, is a better description. A few bottles of Porter have escaped.

Count yourself very lucky if you caught one.

Oh, I'd be grateful of your opinion on the beer, if that's not too much trouble. Not had that much feedback yet.

Mike just told me that Porter is on the shelf at Bierkoning. If you hurry, you might just catch it.

A picture of happiness

Menno came around with the rest of my beer yesterday. Here's a picture of my happiness:


I'm afraid that is pretty much all the bottles that are left in Europe. I think Menno only has three left.

Art project

I noticed my pages have become almost text only. Time for some more pictures.

Lexie is always drawing and painting. He asked me to join in yesterday. Obsessive that I am, I was only ever going to pick one theme. As you can probably tell, it took me several minutes to complete. But I think it was worth the effort.

I would suggest that Menno use it for advertising, except for one thing. (No, not because it's crap, you cynical git.) SSS won't need any promotion. There's so little of it, many will be disappointed.

Not me, though. I'll be acquiring another 54 bottles tomorrow. Should last me until the end of April. Unless I decide to share. That might sound mean, but I did primarily have the beers brewed for my own personal drinking pleasure. There's nothing stopping you from asking your friendly local brewer to knock up a couple of hundred litres for you. I've plenty of recipes if you lack inspiration.

Should you make a T-shirt from this design, I expect a cut. I need to earn 20,000 euros for the next 10 years to break even on this beer thing. And that's assuming I buy no more books. I would tell you how much I've spent on books, but I worry Dolores might occasionally read this blog. The flat in the Algarve - maybe it had been possible. Or that loft conversion. A kitchen we dare let visitors see. All those things we couldn't afford. At 2 euros royalty per T-shirt, sell 10,000 and I'll be done for 2008.

Happiness fulfilled

Just a short post. I dropped by De Molen yesterday to pick up a few bottles of my beer. I'll be handing some out to the lucky few at ZBF on Saturday.

This is what it looks like:

Whitbread and the ZBF

Just over a week to go to the Zythos Bier Festival. It's always good fun. So many people to talk to, so many beers to drink, so little time. This year will be especially exciting for me.

Why? I should have a few bottles of my Whitbread 1914 Porter and Whitbread 1914 Stout with me. I'm going to collect them next Monday from de Molen. "How can I get to try these wonderful beers?" you ask. Well you could try coming up to me and saying "You're Ron Pattinson and I claim my bottle of 1914 Whitbread." Waving a 10 euro note (or the equivalent in beer) in front of my nose at the same time might help.

A couple of caveats:

1. I will have a very limited number of bottles and some are already reserved
2. The Porter will be just about conditioned, the Stout will need another week or two

Could you be one of the lucky individuals leaving the ZBF with a 1914 Whitbread beer?

I'm so excited again

Excitable you could call me. Megalomaniac, peripatetic and Stalinist, too. Some of these words describe me correctly. But let's just stick with excitable.

There are so many things for me to be excited about. I've found another Grätzer. Another reference to Grätzer, I mean. In "Bierbrauerei" by M. Krandauer, 1914, page 301. "Grätzer Bier, a rough, bitter beer, brewed from 100% wheat malt with an intense smoke and hop flavour." Sounds great, doesn't it? Very modern.

I've been buying German brewing manuals on the internet again, if you hadn't noticed. Hopping rates in lager from the 1870's. Bohemian top-fermenting beer. Berliner Weisse. I think it's fascinating, even if you don't. All I have to do now is translate it.

And my Porter was bottled today. I feel so proud. Friday, it's the Stout's turn. Excitement overload.