What I learned in London

I'm back from my exhausting London trip. Feeling a bit shell-shocked and in need of a holiday. The trip certainly wasn't one. A holiday, I mean.

As well as the beer hack's dinner, I manged to squeeze in three visits to the London Metropolitan Archives, one to the City of Westminster Archives and take a look at Fuller's records again. Not bad in just four days. The 2,400 photos I took will take a while to process. Several years, most likely. But there a couple of things I can tell you now.

I also attended the 10th anniversary tasting of the Fuller's Fine Ale Club. John Keeling gave an inspiring and entertaining talk on beer ageing. And rediscovering its secrets. Really top-class stuff. At no point was the furniture under any threat from my jaws.

Derek Prentice, former Truman's brewer now employed by Fuller's was there. I'd hoped he would be. I'd a stack of questions to ask him about Truman's beers. You know how much they confuse the hell out of me.

Beer codes. Deciphering them is one of my life's goals, however sad that might be. Derek gave me the solution to one: LK. It's short for London Keeper. Bitter to you and me. Now I think about it, it's pretty obvious. I really should have been able to work it out myself. Those two letters have pretty fixed meanings. L = London, K = Keeper or Keeping.

I had the meaning of more codes confirmed in the archives. In a fascinating document collecting all the circular letters sent out to Barclay Perkins publicans. Just look to your left.

KK = Burton
KKKK = Old Burton
XLK = Bitter

Intriguingly, it also indicates A as standing for "Ale".

Those three different types of draught Lager are a bit of a surprise. And the fact they come in metric-sized barrels. The Co2 is presuambly for serving them.

AK. Found out something about that, too. That Whitbread briefly brewed one between the wars.

Much, much, much, much more to follow. More details than anyone but a total obsessive like me could possibly want to know. The exact quantities of each different beer brewed by Whitbread 1900 to 1940. Details of every batch brewed by Barclay Perkins in WW I. That's just for starters.

Burton numbers

Remember when we discussed beer codes. Those cryptic letters so beloved of Victorian brewers. I'm sure I said something about Burton, where they did things differently. Bass used numbers.

How to get a look at some Burton brewing logs has been occupying my mind for a while. With the former Bass Museum closed, it seems problematic. So imagine my surprise when, at the Scottish Brewing Archive I discovered records from Evershed's brewery. Of Marston, Thompson & Evershed fame. What a piece of luck.

At least that's what I thought until I opened them up. Aaaagh. It was the personal notebook of one of the Younger's, who must have been there getting work experience, or whatever they called it in the 19th century. It was in the horrible Younger's format. Nothing like as useful as I'd hoped.

But it wasn't a total loss. I managed to scrape a few beer details out of it. And they used a numbering system similar to Bass. Take a look:


I've not had time to look at it properly yet. Wonder what it will tell me?

Beer code update

Here are more details of the Fullers beer code beers.

Look at the different water treatments. What does that tell us? Why are some beers dry-hopped and others not? (This is getting to sound like a BHCP exam paper.) You brewers can probably explain it better than me.

The X grists caught my eye. Amber and crystal.

Tell me if you can spot any patterns.


IPA 13th April 1887
all gypsum liquor
39 pale malt
12 sugar
Kent hops
GK hops
Hopped down on Tuesday April 26th with Marton's E. Kent
1886 hops, att 6.5, Heat of store 52, bright and of good colour & flavour


X 15th April 1887
22 PA malt
can't see any water treatment
12 amber
5 crystal
13 sugar
Kent hops
GK hops
1/2 Pumped over Thursday 21st April Att 4.9
& remainder Friday evening Broke in 10 barrels Vat beer
4 barrels Porter & 2 barrels T.B.


XXK for vatting 19th April 1887
all soft liquor run over gypsum
64 pale malt
2 crystal
22 sugar
Worcester hops
GK hops
Poperinge hops
Pumped over into bottling batch Tuesday Morning 26th April
and run into No. 13 vat next day



AK 21st April 1887
all soft liquor run over gypsum
32 pale malt
10 sugar
Worcester hops
GK hops
Hopped down on Tuesday May 3rd with Atkinson's Worcester 1886
hops, att. 5.1, Heat of store 51, bright and of good colour and flavour


X and XX 23rd April 1887
22 PA malt
all soft liquor
30 amber
13 sugar
Worcester hops
GK hops
XX
Hopped down on Wednesday May 4th with Atkinson's Worcester 1886
hops, att. 8.4, Heat of store 49.5, bright and of good colour and flavour


XKK 4th May 1887
all gypsum liquor
28 pale malt Chilean
9 sugar
Worcester hops
GK hops
Hopped down on Tuesday May 17th with Marton's EK 1886
hops, att. 5.5, Heat of store 55, bright and of good colour and flavour


XK and AK 8th August 1887
all gypsum liquor
28 pale malt Chilean
6 sugar
Worcester hops
GK hops
XK
Hopped down on Saturday Aug 20th with Worcester 1886 hops,
att. 5.8, Heat of store 63, bright and of good colour and flavour
AK
Hopped down on Aug 20th with Worcester 1886 hops,
att. 5.3, bright and of good colour and flavour

Beer codes - a partial explanation

In all the excitement of going to Franconia I almost forgot about this. My life is just too full.

In a moment of boredom, I browsed the oldest Fullers logs I have. From 1887. Plucking out the OG, FG and hopping rate for my mega-gravity table.

It's something I'd been meaning to do for a long while. But I'd been put off by all the handwriting. The early Fullers logs aren't on a preprinted form. Just a plain sheet of paper. With squiggly writing. Where half the ink has disappeared. I'll show you one sometime. but not today.

If I had bothered to give them more than a cursory glance, I'd have noticed something dead handy. I'd seen the AK. But I'd been looking for that. XK, AKK, XXK and XKK. Those I'd overlooked. A whole set of beers with funny codes. And because they're in brewing logs, even though I've no extra clues to the origins of the codes, I can at least see what the beers were like.


Let's take a look at the beers, shall we? In this table, I've sorted them by the amount of hops per barrel.



One thing is immediately apparent: the more K's the heavier the hopping. Except for the IPA, which has no K's.

Now let's look at them sorted by OG:


The progression of strength goes AK, AKK, X , XKK, XK, IPA, XX, XXK. So allowing for slight variations from batch to batch, The A's and X's definitely indicate gravity. With A below X and XX above X. Is it starting to make sense yet?

I'd love to hear your opinions.

C Ale

I took the boys to the swimming baths yesterday. We've been having muggy, overcast days for what seems like weeks. It was pleasant to set and read while the kids cavorted in the outdoor pool.

Naturally, it wasn't just the paper or the latest Jilly Cooper novel I was reading. I actually had two books with me. "Brewing" and "Manchester Breweries of Times Gone By, Vol 2". Nice light reading for a Sunday morning.

I realise that I read this stuff a little differently from most. My attention was immediately drawn by the image of a bill from some brewery in Ardwick. It had the beer names printed on it. Or rather beer codes. I', used to these things, so I could work out most of them:

X
XX
PA
P
ES
C
S
CBB

Let's see, that's Mild, Best Mild, Bitter, Porter, Extra Stout, C??? - what the hell is that, Stout, C Best Bitter?

Then there was a mention in the text of a thing called C Ale, which seems to have been peculiar to Manchester. At least half a dozen breweries made one. There was even a label image. The only clue as to what it could have stood for was a beer called City.

I thought I'd been making progress with these letter codes. I'm pretty confident what the X's and K's mean. T as well. Now here's another bloody cryptic letter. Anyone any idea what the hell it stood for? Or what type of beer it was?

Now I've found a label for C Ale, I see something intriguing. The words "naturally mature in bottle". I wonder if that has anything to do with the identity of C Ale?

More beer code fun

I've been having a trawl through old directories looking for price lists again. I know. I should get myself a life. But if I didn't do it, who would?

Sometimes it isn't the beers themselves that grabs my attention. The way a price list is organised can be just as revealing. This is a good example from the Eltham Brewery for the year 1874. The beers are split into two groups "October Brewed Stock Ales & Stout" and "Mild Ale, Stout & Porter". This is a new one for me. I've never seen Stouts split into two different groups before.

It's intriguing that PA and IPA are listed as Stock Ales while AK is in the Mild Ale column. "Bitter Dinner Ale" they describe AK as. So it's a Bitter and a Mild. I suppose I can forgive McMullen for calling their AK a Mild, then.

That's not all that's unusual about this particular price list. KIPA is another new one on me. judging by the price, this must be an early example of a Double IPA. I estimate it had a gravity of at least 1090º. I would guess that the IPA was about 1070º and PA around 1065º. I'm all confused. Eltham is on the outskirts of London. I though London IPA's were weak. Oh well, that's another theory gone up in smoke.

A collection of AK's

AK, as I've already explained, obsesses me for several reasons. That's why I collect them. It's a slow day here at Barclay Perkins so I thought that I'd share a few of them with you.


There are almost as many descriptions of what AK is as there are examples. The table above has fourteen: Mild Bitter Ale, Ale, Bitter, Bitter Ale, Bitter Dinner Ale, Family Ale, Light Amber Ale, Light Bitter, Light Bitter Ale, Light Dinner Ale, Light Pale Ale, Luncheon Ale, Pale Ale, Stock Bitter Ale. Light and Bitter are the two words that crop up the most. So I guess AK was both light and bitter. Light and Bitter? Isn't that what cockneys drank in the 1960's?

The price is much more consistent than the nomenclature. All but three were a shilling a gallon wholesale. A shilling a gallon was the price for standard-strength beer for most of Victoria's reign. It's hard to imagine nowadays, isn't it? Beer staying the same price for 50 years.

Random beer codes

I'm getting in a big silver bird tomorrow. That's what I told the kids. "What are you talking about, dad?" was their reply. "Aren't you flying to America?" They've no sense of poetry.

I intend posting while away. But I won't have chance today. I've a flight of eight and a half hours and then I'm getting pissed with Lew Bryson. Doesn't leave much time for blogging. So here are some more beer codes for your entertainment.