Opening times

No, not the local CAMRA magazine of the same name (edited my my old mate John Clarke). It's lierally opening times, as in when pubs open

Today, I tried to find somewhere to meet up at lunchtime in Utrecht. Using as a guide my, er, old guide to pubs in the city. Suitable candidated were pinging around like crazy. I was spoilt for choice. Then I checked the opening times on the internet. And watched all my choices evaporate.

Ledig Erf used to open at 11:00 every day.Now its 15:00 in the week and 12:00 on Saturday and Sunday. Florin, once a Firkin outlet, also used to open at 11:00. Now it's 16:30 in the week, 10:00 on Saturday, but with a two-hour break from 14:00-16:00. (They claim to be the most authentic British  on the Contimnent. What could be more British than afternoon closing?)

Thankfully, Kafé Belgie still opens at at midday. Just two hours later than before at 13:00.

I've noticed later opening times at some places in Amsterdam, too. What's the root cause? COVID? Lack of demand (hard to imagine the the centre of toursit-packed Amsterdam.) Or is it just shortage of staff.

That's certainly the same in lots of retail in Amsterdam. Either there are appeals for staff in the window, Or they randomly don't open, presumably because there's no-one to unlock the doors and man the till.

Whatever the cause, it's dead annoying for afternoon drinkers like me.

Boiling Stout between the wars

I expected to see boil times shortening in the later war years as brewers tried to reduce their coal usage. Which was something they had agreed with government.

No evidence of that at all at Fullers:

Fullers Brown Stout boiling 1910 - 1920
Date	Year	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)
10th Aug	1910	1.5	1.75
18th Nov	1914	1.5	1.75
17th Feb	1915	1.5	2.25
9th Jun	1916	1.5	1.75
17th Jan	1917	1.5	1.75
26th Aug	1919	1.5	1.5
10th Feb	1920	1.5
Source:
Fullers brewing records held at the brewery.

While Courage only reduced their boil times after all the nastiness was over.

Courage Double Stout/Stout boiling times 1914 - 1920
Date	Year	Beer	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)
21st Oct	1914	Double Stout	2	2	1
10th Mar	1915	Double Stout	1.5	2	1
22nd Sep	1915	Double Stout	2	2	1
1st Dec	1915	Double Stout	2	2	1
10th May	1916	Double Stout	2	2	1
3rd Jan	1917	Double Stout	2	2	1
24th Oct	1917	Double Stout	2	2	1
16th Jan	1918	Double Stout	2	2	1
2nd May	1918	Stout	2	2	1
2nd Jul	1919	Stout	1.5	1.5	1
1st Oct	1919	Stout	1.5	1.5	1
21st Jan	1920	Stout	1.5	1.5	1
Sources:
Courage brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers ACC/2305/08/247, ACC/2305/08/248, ACC/2305/08/249, ACC/2305/08/250 and ACC/2305/08/251.

That’s another theory kicked into touch. Hang on. Let’s take a look at Whitbread. 

Whitbread London Stout boiling times 1914 - 1920
Date	Year	Beer	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)
17th Mar	1914	London Stout	1.75	1.75
12th Jul	1915	London Stout	1.75	1.75
15th Nov	1916	London Stout	1.5	1.75
21st Oct	1918	London Stout	1.5	1.5
23rd May	1919	London Stout	1.5	1.5
9th Jan	1920	London Stout	1.5	1.75
Sources:
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers LMA/4453/D/09/108, LMA/4453/D/09/110, LMA/4453/D/09/111, LMA/4453/D/09/112 and LMA/4453/D/09/113.

Pretty clear that Whitbread reduced their boil times by 15 minutes in the middle of the war. And then bounced them back a bit after hostilities ended. At least one brewery cut down on their boiling, then. 

This is an excerpt my book "Stout!"

Get your copy now!

Letter writing

I honed my writing style when I lived in New York. Distant from friends and relatives, in a pre-internet time, letters were my method of contact.

Lots of letters. Alone in my Staten Island flat, I had time to bang out four or five letters a week. All hand-written. To a variety of correspondents, including Dolores. Doing my best to make them more than a mere relation of facts. Mostly by taking the piss out of everything. Including myself. Pretty much the way my pub guides were later, when the digital age intruded.

Digital didn't kill the analogue me. Adopting a computer made my letters far more legible. My handwriting has always been crap. And word processing let me refine my letters more. Copying bits between different letters, too. In the 1990s, I still wrote dozens of letters a year. Long, personal communications.

How long are emails?

Mine, sometimes pretty long. And composed like a letter. Maybe not always with quite as much care as in physical ones. But sometimes. Me being a writey sort of person.

I miss exchanging long letters. With a week - at least - between posting and reply. Longer with Dolores in East Germany and me in the USA. The need to condense everything into a burst of description and feelings. Like communicating by radio with a distant spacecraft.

I miss having to explain so much in a couple of pages of text. Without any immediate back and forth to concentrate my thoughts.

I miss physical letters. Just for the delay involved. Making me more expansive in my written conversations.

I miss letters.

(And numbers, sometimes.)  

I just finished my one "proper letter" of the year. My Christmas missive to a few select friends and family. Written the way I used to write letters. In the old days. And printed out on paper, the way our grandfathers used to.

Sometimes I was sipping on Ballantine's XXX Ale while writing. Without realising it was a Mild.

Let's Brew - 1902 Fullers Single Stout

Even though it's almost certainly too late, another beer from my book "Stout!" that I'll be trying to push tomorrow at Poesiat & Kater. I've published a few hours earlier to give you a fighting chance.

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 recipe is one of more than 250 in my book "Stout!" Come and her me talk about the history of Stout At Poesiat & Kater on Saturday 18th November , 13:00-14:00.

This is the event page:

https://facebook.com/events/s/the-story-of-london-stout-by-r/304408102440443/

This is the book based on the talk (and much expanded). Get your copy now!

Loss

Christopher Hutt's "The Death of the English Pub" starts with a story of a suburban London pub. The public bar was home to a group of old blokes who enjoyed the odd pint while playing dominoes and cribbage. When the pub reopened after renovation, the public bar had been knocked through to the lounge and they were told their custom was no longer wanted. Some moved on to other pubs, but the group was broken up. A community had been destroyed.

A good, or even a halfway decent, pub is more than just a building retailing alcoholic drinks. It's a community of people. With varying ties of varying strength between its members. But it's a fragile thing. Once destroyed, it's almost impossible to recreate. The loss of a local is far more than the simple demolition of a building.

I've been thinking about this quite a bit. Because my own local, the Butcher's Tears taproom, isn't just under threat, it's on death row. The whole area is to be demolished and replaced by posh flats. If the original plans had gone through, it would have been knocked down a couple of years ago. The end of the year was a recent plan. But, due to legal challenges that has now been pushed out to March.

For more years than I care to remember, me and a few of my mates have been meeting up there once a week. Joined more recently by my son Andrew. It isn't exactly the same group every week. Often someone is travelling or otherwise engaged.

We've been wondering where will be our new local. It's not an easy decision. Lots of factors are involved.

While our group will be able to find somewhere new to meet. the community feeling will be gone. Overt the years, we've come to know the other regulars. If only enough to give each other a nod of greeting. Though with others we indulge in a little music criticism. All these little interactions are important, however trivial they may individually be. And will inevitably be lost as everyone finds a new drinking home. Almost certainly not the same one.

Butcher's Tears closure will be a heavy blow. But we've only been drinking there for under a decade. What must have been the sense of loss for those who had frequented a pub forty years? It must have been like the death of a close relative.

Me? I'm just going to enjoy the last couple of months. I'll worry about the future later.

Old beer

I went round to Mikey's for a meal a while back. As usual, I took my own beer. Which beer, you ask? St. Bernardus Abt, obviously. But not just any old Abt.

"That's interesting," I told an uninterested Dolores after buying a new batch of Abt, "It looks like they've gone back to the old crown cork."

That's cool. I much preferred the old design. But I noticed something when I cracked the first bottle. It tasted rather different. Almost as if it had been aged,

Closer inspection revealed that wasn't  a coincidence. According to the sell-by date, it was, indeed, two years old.

 I took a mixed batch, old and new, over to Mikey's. And very6 nicely they went down, too. Both sorts.

Looking through the bag of empties the next day, I noticed a bottle of Rochefort 10. I hadn't taken that, had I? Sure enough, there was still a full bottle of the old Abt. Damn. I'd been saving that.

The Rochefort 10's with a sell-by date was in 2012. So, assuming their usual 5-year best by date, I make it 16 years old. 

Why didn't I notice? Because of those old Abts. I was expected some aged beer and that's what I got. Just a lot older than I realised.

 

Another Christmas gift suggestion

I have tacky merchandise, too:

https://www.zazzle.nl/store/kilderkin  

Like this classy coffee cup:

https://www.zazzle.nl/smack_biere_koffiemok-168907015548129606

Christmas gift suggestion

Or whichever end-of-year holiday you choose to celebrate. I go Nordic pagan myself. Full Jule.

A bespoke recipe for any of the year you imagine. All 367 of them.

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Let's Brew Wednesday - 1910 Barclay Perkins Oatmeal Stout

In the first decade of the 20th century, Oatmeal Stout became a big thing. The original Oat Stout came from Maclays of Alloa, who tried to patent their invention. Most brewers dodged this by simply using oat malt instead of malted oats.*

It’s a pretty complex grist. Even more complex than it appears from the recipe. As around a third of the base malt was SA malt. Obviously, there are also oats. I think in the form of flakes. But not a huge amount of them. Unlike the roasted malts, which make up more than a third of the total.

The mashing was still going the same way: mash, underlet, mash, sparge, sparge. Still very complex compared to, for example, a typical Scottish process, of a mash and maybe two sparges.

Mash number	barrels	strike heat	mins stood	tap heat
mash 1	48	155º F	105
underlet	8	172º F	30	147º F
mash 2	24	174º F	30	157.5º F
sparge 1	26	170º F		153.5º F
sparge 2	38	165º F		151.5º F

Three types of hop graced the copper: Kent from the 1907 and 1909 harvests and Sussex from 1908.

No ageing for this beer. 

1910 Barclay Perkins Oatmeal Stout
pale malt	5.00 lb	43.37%
brown malt	1.50 lb	13.01%
black malt	1.25 lb	10.84%
amber malt	1.25 lb	10.84%
flaked oats	0.33 lb	2.86%
No. 3 invert sugar	2.00 lb	17.35%
caramel 500 SRM	0.20 lb	1.73%
Fuggles 120 min	1.25 oz
Fuggles 60 min	1.25 oz
Goldings 30 min	1.25 oz
OG	1053
FG	1017
ABV	4.76
Apparent attenuation	67.92%
IBU	48
SRM	45
Mash at	151º F
Sparge at	170º F
Boil time	120 minutes
pitching temp	61º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale

 

* See Martyn's correction in the comments.

This recipe is one of more than 250 in my book "Stout!" Come and her me talk about the history of Stout At Poesiat & Kater on Saturday 18th November , 13:00-14:00.

This is the event page:

https://facebook.com/events/s/the-story-of-london-stout-by-r/304408102440443/

This is the book based on the talk (and much expanded). Get your copy now!

One day in Düsseldorf

There’s no real rush to get up. We’ve already got some bits and bobs for breakfast. Which we make ourselves in the room. No way we’re paying 16 euros the hotel is charging.

Dolores has the morning all planned out. Eat breakfast, go to Lidl and buy meat. And booze for the kids. I couldn’t bear to see their little faces if we come home empty handed. Then come back, finish packing and check out.

There’s a Lidl just the other side of the station. We won’t be straying much further than that today. Thankfully. As it’s a bit wet out.

German Lidl is packed with all sorts of tempting stuff. But we’re concentrating on meat. Lumps of meat I can roast on Sundays. No decent-sized bits of lamb or beef. So, we stick to pork and duck.

Meat picked, I suggest: “Let’s check out the booze.”

It doesn’t take me long to find the cheapest rum and vodka. “That’s the kids taken care of.” The prices are stupid. Only 7.99 for 70 cl.

“At these prices, I should buy more.”

“And how would we get them home/”

“We can work that out later.”

“Right. You’ll have to carry them, then.”

“I’ll just get myself a bottle of bourbon.” Don’t want to be too weighed down.

There’s quite a queue at the tills. Which gives me plenty of time to look around.

“I see they still have the traditional impulse schnapps next to the tills.”

“You would notice that.”

I struggle to suppress the impulse to grab a little bottle of Chantré. But I remain strong. I’m so proud of myself. And with Dolores. Might have been different, had I been alone.

Back in our room, we spend a while struggling to fit all our shopping into our luggage. We just about mange.

We chill for a while, while I reduce the weight of my bag by getting stuck into my whiskey.

“This will lighten my bag.” I say as, I pour out a big glug.

“That’s your excuse for drinking in the morning.”

“Reason, not excuse.”

“Yeah, right.” And then makes that noise again. The one she often makes at my cleverest remarks. I think it means she’s dead impressed.

We spend the remaining time until noon chilling out. I drink a little whiskey while looking at the trains below. It’s very soothing.

Checked out, bags dumped, we wander off for lunch. We had the heavy German stuff yesterday. Time for something lighter.

Germany has really changed since I first visited in the early 1980s. Back then, you were lucky to find food any more exotic than a currywurst or kebab. Now Düsseldorf has a Japantown.

You may have noticed that I like Japanese things. (“You’re such a weeb, Dad.” Andrew keeps telling me.) Including the food. Dolores didn’t have to ask twice if I fancied a Japanese lunch.

After looking at a few menus, we settle on somewhere seemingly specialising in ramen. It’s not that busy. But it is just after noon.

Unlike everyone else, we don’t order ramen. That would be way too filling. Instead, we stick to a few starter-type things. Gyozas, fried squid, teriyaki. And beer, of course. Draught Kirin for Dolores, a bottle of Schlösser Alt for me. It’s OK. Not great, not awful, wet and slightly alcoholic.

Soon, lunching office workers surround us. All getting stuck into ramen. Umm. Maybe we made the wrong choice. But I remember last time I had ramen with Alexei in Tokyo. I felt like I was pregnant for 12 hours. Pregnant with triplets.

We’re in no rush. Our train isn’t until 15:30. Time to nip back into Lidl to get Mikey a bottle of cheap vodka. It’s the least I can do for him.

After retrieving our bags, we hang around in the hotel lobby for a while. It’s all very low-key. As I am myself, nowadays.

Have you noticed? What I haven’t done? Go to the Altstadt. First time ever on a trip to Düsseldorf. And the first time I’ve not dropped by Zum Uerige. Heresy, I hear you say. Like going to Bamberg and not bothering with Schlenkerla.

I did just that last year. Why? It’s all about being a well-travelled old git.

If I’d never been to Bamberg before, no way I would have missed Schlenkerla. But I’ve been to Bamberg – and Schlenkerla – loads of times. I don’t need to go there every time I’m in town. Last time, it was Saturday afternoon and I knew it would be packed. I just couldn’t be arsed.

Much the same here in Düsseldorf. Much as I love Zum Uerige, I no longer feel obliged to drop by every single time I’m in town. I was there twice last year. And I’m sure I’ll be there soon again. Unless I drop dead. Which isn’t, currently, in my immediate plans.

Inevitably, our train is delayed. But at least it’s running. Twenty minutes late isn’t that bad, really. We’ve still some stuff left over from breakfast and I make myself a ham roll. Along with a little whiskey. The roll would be too dry without it.

“It’s dead handy having this plastic beaker along.” I say enthusiastically.

“We wouldn’t want you having to drink straight from the bottle like a tramp, would we?”

“Precisely.”

“I was joking.”

“Well, it wasn’t very funny.” I don’t say out loud. I’ve learnt when to keep shtum.

The train isn’t too stupidly packed. At least where we are, in the very first carriage. Announcements saying that there are seats at the front of the train tells me that we made the right decision picking this carriage.

We get a tram straight away and are soon opening tour front door.

“It doesn’t look like they’ve burnt the house down.” I opine optimistically.

Ever the realist, Dolores replies: “That’s something.”



Ramen Kitchen Takumi
Immermannstr. 28
40210 | Düsseldorf
https://www.takumi-duesseldorf.de/

London Stout after WW II

A reminder of some of the fun that awaits you if you make it to Poesiat & Kater on Saturday 18th November, 14:00 - 16:00. When I'll be talking about the history of Stout.

Even after WW II, there were still multiple categories of Stout in London. The weaker ones were in the low 1030ºs and cost 22d per pint. The stronger ones were in the mid-1040º and cost around 30d per pint.

The rate of attenuation of the weaker ones was mostly pretty crap, with the majority of examples well under 60%. Not quite as bad as Scottish Sweet Stout, but poor enough to leave them under 2.5% ABV. The Isleworth Stout looks pretty pathetic, with an OG of barely 1020º and less than 1.5% ABV. How on earth can watery beer be a Stout?

Attenuation was a smidgin better in the stronger Stouts, but still averaged below 60%. Most of the beers are pretty feeble in terms of ABV considering their gravity. This is a big change from the 1930s, when the majority of London Stouts were over 70% apparent attenuation.

It’s odd that the attenuation of London Stouts should have got poorer after WW II when the exact opposite took place with Guinness. With the rate increasing considerably in the early 1950s.

As you would expect, the stronger examples were a bit darker on average. That’s despite there being considerable variation across the different beers, the palest being just 150 and the darkest 425.

London Stout after WW II
Year	Brewer	Beer	Price per pint (d)	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	colour
1957	Isleworth	Stout	22	1021.8	1011.8	1.29	45.87%	300
1957	Fullers	Nourishing Stout	22	1033	1009	3.11	72.73%	240
1957	Taylor Walker	Nourishing Stout	22	1033.3	1012.9	2.63	61.26%	300
1957	Courage	London Stout	22	1033.7	1015.6	2.33	53.71%	300
1956	Truman	Eagle Stout	22	1034.8	1016.1	2.41	53.74%	225
1957	Courage & Barclay	London Stout	22	1034.9	1016.3	2.39	53.30%	340
1956	Truman	Eagle Stout	22	1034.8	1016.1	2.41	53.74%	225
	Average		22	1032.3	1014.0	2.37	56.33%	276
1957	Barclay Perkins	Stout	30	1042.5	1020	2.89	52.94%	300
1957	Courage	Hodgsons Stout	30	1043.3	1022.2	2.71	48.73%	325
1954	Truman	Best Stout	24	1044	1017.6	3.41	60.00%	150
1957	Watney	Reids Special Stout	35	1045.2	1011.8	4.33	73.89%	225
1959	Taylor Walker	Cannon Stout	29	1045.8	1018.1	3.57	60.48%	425
1957	Hammerton	Oatmeal Stout	30	1047.1	1021.6	3.28	54.14%	350
1957	Charrington	Punch Stout	30	1047.2	1017.4	3.85	63.14%	270
	Average		29.7	1045.0	1018.4	3.44	59.05%	292
Source:
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/002.

I'll be giving a talk on the history of London Stout at the taproom on Saturday, 18th November, 13:00 to 14:00.

Probably the only time I'll give a talk in Holland this year. Don't miss it.

Poesiat & Kater
Polderweg 648,
1093 KP Amsterdam 

Here is the link for the event:

https://facebook.com/events/s/the-story-of-london-stout-by-r/304408102440443/

This is the book based on the talk (and much expanded). Get your copy now!

One night in Düsseldorf

"Do you fancy a trip to Düsseldorf, Ronald"

Trying to keep my cool, I reply: "That could be an idea." While in mt head I'm shouting "Yes, yes, YES!"

It takes Dolores a while to find the dates. Not being burdened by employment, we're pretty much 100% flexible. She has to balance when the hotel is cheapest with the best value train tickets. Eventually she finds a combination which only costs 150 euros for both of us. Bargain.

There was one remaining worry: would the trains run as scheduled. Dolores has had a lot of bad experiences recently with DB. Lots of late or even cancelled trains. DB's service has really turned to shit. It's depressing as they used to be so reliable.

The day doesn't start too well. When we get to the end of our street we wee that there's a big pile of sand where the tram stop is supposed to be. I can't imagine we'll be able to get on there. Fortunately, the previous tram stop isn't too far away. We manage to scramble to it just before our tram rolls up.

We don't have reserved seats. Which is a bit of a risk. Luckily I have Dolores with me. Who, from years of travelling on overcrowded Deutsche Reichsbahn, is an expert in elbowing her way to grab seats. It's not too difficult as the train isn't totally packed.

Obviously, I've brought a little something for the journey: fours cans of Gulpener Gladiator, first choice of the discerning street drinker. I've also brought along a plastic beaker. I'm not going to drink straight from a can. Only philistines do that. I'm civilised, me.

True to form, the train won't complete its full route to Franfurt, instead terminating in Düsseldorf. Which is handy for us. Not so handy if you have a connection in Frankfurt.

It's not a long journey. Only two hours something. It could be a lot faster, as the ICE barely gets out of second gear. It doesn't hit 200 kph once, mostly idling along at 140 kph. Or less.

Our hotel isn't far from the station. We're lucky and get a room at the back, which looks out over the end of the platforms. Trains constantly bustle back and forth along the myriad lines of track.

"Andrew would have loved it here as a kid. We could have just left him looking out of the window all day." Dolores isn't wrong. I'm tempted to do that myself.

But we can't dally. We have an appointment. A very important one. We've a table booked at Schumacher at 17:00. Why book a table? Dolores was here earlier in the year with her sister, and they couldn't get into Schumacher. So we're playing it safe.

On the way, we indulge in some light shopping, picking up a few bottles of beer. Though the Rewe Dolores wants to go to is being renovated. Leaving us with more walking than planned.

Once settled in Schumacher, we get stuck into some Alt straight away. It's very good. Light in the mouth, but sharply bitter on the way down. A couple of glasses soon disappear stomach-bound. 2.75 euros for a quarter litre. You'd be lucky to get an industrial Pils for that price in Amsterdam.

What to eat? I fancy Bratkartoffeln and a big chunk of pork. But the Schweinehaxe just comes with a roll and Sauerkraut. Dolores orders a dish with the spuds and I swap my roll and Kraut for them. Everyone's a winner.

My Haxe is full of meaty goodness. Really full of meaty goodness. Just as well I've an appetite. I haven't eaten since breakfast. Even so, there's a bout as much meat as I can manage in a sitting. Probably enough to last a Japanese family for a year.

We only have the table for two hours and can't hand around too long. The room fills up around us as we eat.

More shopping for the walk back. Though we have to walk in the opposite direction from our hotel to find an open Rewe. Where I get myself a bottle of hotel whiskey: Jim Beam.

I'm a bit knacked after more walking than I expected. Weighed down both by shopping and the kilo of pork in my belly. I sip on whiskey while Dolores flicks through the German channels. We only get five on the Amsterdam cable.

It's not that late a night. We have quite a lot to get through tomorrow. More shopping, Japanese food, train home. 

Brauerei Schumacher
Oststraße 123,
40210 Düsseldorf.
https://schumacher-alt.de

A chance to hear me speak in Amsterdam

I'll be giving a talk on the history of London Stout at the taproom on Saturday, 18th November, 13:00 to 14:00.

Probably the only time I'll give a talk in Holland this year. Don't miss it.

Poesiat & Kater
Polderweg 648,
1093 KP Amsterdam 

Here is the link for the event:

https://facebook.com/events/s/the-story-of-london-stout-by-r/304408102440443/

This is the book based on the talk (and much expanded). Get your copy now!

Let's Brew - 1855 Truman X Export Stout

As a preview of my talk next week on the history of London Stout at Poesiat & Kater (Saturday 18th November, 13:00 to 14:00, Polderweg 648), I've a recipe from the book I'll be pushing, "Stout!".

Truman’s second least popular Stout was X Export. Just 900 barrels were brewed in the 1855-56 season. Only Bottling, with just 850 barrels, was produced in smaller amounts.

It’s not a greatly dissimilar grist to Keeper’s. A tiny bit more brown malt and quite a bit more black. Not enough, mind, to make it very dark. It’s another Truman beer that’s rather on the pale side.

That total of 900 barrels all came from this brew. A decent-sized batch. Which might explain why there were four mashes. The last, as usual, just for a return wort.

No indication of where this might have been aged. I’m sure that it would have been aged for between six and twelve months.

One type of very fresh English hops, which would only have been harvested a month or two before.  

1855 Truman X Export Stout
pale malt	14.00 lb	83.53%
brown malt	2.25 lb	13.42%
black malt	0.51 lb	3.04%
Goldings 120 min	4.25 oz
Goldings 60 min	4.25 oz
Goldings 30 min	4.25 oz
Goldings dry hops	0.75 oz
OG	1071
FG	1018
ABV	7.01
Apparent attenuation	74.65%
IBU	147
SRM	26
Mash at	148º F
Sparge at	170º F
Boil time	120 minutes
pitching temp	64º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale

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

If the delivery comes on time, you'll be able to get a signed copy at my talk in Poesiat & Kater.

Poesiat & Kater
Polderweg 648,
1093 KP Amsterdam.
020-3331050
https://poesiatenkater.nl