Shut up about Barclay Perkins - Let's Brew Wednesday – 1947 Whitbread Stout
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Stout, you may recall, originally meant strong. But, let’s be honest, it’s the last thing you could accuse this austerity-era Whitbread Stout.
Though compared to Whitbread’s Ales of the same period, it has an incredibly complex grist, with five different types of malt. Note the lack of black malt. Whitbread stopped using it in 1926 and went over to chocolate malt instead. So I guess that means for a style Nazi that it’s neither a Porter nor Stout. The handful of malted oats was so they could package some as Oatmeal Stout. The percentage is typical of London versions.
A word on the sugar. There was also something called Duttson in the original. No real idea what that was so I’ve just upped the amount of No. 3 invert. As brewed the colour is way to low and it must have been colour corrected by the addition of caramel.
Just after WW II, when there were enough English hops to go around, foreign hops were a bit of a rarity. About the only ones you ever see are Czech. Presumably the Czech were exporting them to get hold of hard currency. And there would have been some pull, too, as British brewers liked Czech hops. I’ve just been writing some William Younger recipes from the 1860’s and they’re full of Saaz.
WS – Whitbread Stout – was only introduced after WW II. Or rather LS (London Stout) was rebranded as Whitbread Stout after the war. LS itself was only introduced in 1910, a new low-gravity (1055º) Stout to supplement their existing SS (1080º) and SSS (1092º). It was a bit of a con as a Stout, the gravity being only 2 degrees higher than their Porter. When SS and SSS were discontinued, LS became Whitbread’s main Stout, by 1920 with a gravity reduced to 1046º.
Unusually, its gravity was raised back to just about the pre-WW I level, 1054º, in 1922. It remained in the mid-1050’s until the Snowden budget of 1931, when it dropped to 1046º. Inevitably, WW II whittled away at its gravity and it ended the war at 1039º.
I’m pretty sure that at this time WS was available in both draught and bottled form. In London draught Stout remained a fairly common draught beer well into the 1950’s, long after it had disappeared everywhere else in the UK, other than Northern Ireland. After the draught version was dropped, it continued as a bottled beer. WS was eventually dropped sometime between 1967 and 1970.
It was fun trying to find a style in BeerSmith for this, as it doesn’t even vaguely match the specs of any Stout.
On that happy note, I’ll give you the recipe.
| 1947 Whitbread Stout |
| mild malt |
4.50 lb |
61.48% |
| pale malt |
0.75 lb |
10.25% |
| brown malt |
0.50 lb |
6.83% |
| chocolate malt |
0.50 lb |
6.83% |
| malted oats |
0.07 lb |
0.96% |
| no. 3 sugar |
1.00 lb |
13.66% |
| Fuggles 60 min |
0.90 oz |
|
| Saaz 30 min |
0.45 oz |
|
| OG |
1035.3 |
|
| FG |
1010.5 |
|
| ABV |
3.28 |
|
| Apparent attenuation |
70.25% |
|
| IBU |
18 |
|
| SRM |
65 |
|
| Mash at |
148º F |
|
| Sparge at |
170º F |
|
| Boil time |
60 minutes |
|
| pitching temp |
64º F |
|
| Yeast |
Wyeast 1099 Whitbread ale |
|
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