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Shut up about Barclay Perkins - Tetley Pale Ales 1868
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You know the drill by now. I'll be drilling into these Tetley brewing records for a while yet, throwing in a little bit of compare and contrast for fun. In a week or two you'll be wishing I was drilling into your head to end the misery.
Here's a question. How do you identify what style each beer in the records is? Sometimes it's pretty obvious, like if the beer is called Porter or something Stout. But it isn't always that simple. Brewhouse names can be pretty cryptic. Like one in this Tetley set: K 1/. At least that's what I think it says. What style is that? Remembering that Lees used K to designate one of their Milds.
I have a couple of approaches. One is to look at the ingredients to see what style it matches best. Though this can be tricky in the 19th century when most beers were brewed from 100% pale malt and hopped like hell. Another is to search for price lists and try to match the beers with the brewing records. In the case of K 1/, I did a bit of both.
My first guess on seeing the records was Light Bitter. That's based on the OG and the hopping. You might think that odd, given how few hops it appears to contain. But if you include the 450 lbs of spent hops from a brew of PA the same day, things look quite different. The hopping rate then shoots up to over 4 lbs per barrel. Plus, it wasn't part-gyled with any of the Mild Ales. And one of the Milds, X, had the same gravity.
That was still just guesswork. Then I found a Tetley's advert. One that specifically mentioned K Light Bitter Ale. Case closed.
Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, Wednesday 4th December, 1907, page 1.
Now it's time for contextualisation. Where I compare Tetley's Pale Ales with my benchmark: London beers. You may notice that I haven't found a great number of London Pale Ales. There's a very good reason for that: it's right at the beginning of when London brewers started brewing them. Whitbread first brewed theirs in 1865. Truman had been a little earlier, 1845, but Barclay Perkins didn't brew one until after 1880. Tetley, with their Pale Ale and Light Bitter, were ahead of the London brewers. I find that slightly surprising.
Here's another point to ponder. Though it had the brewhouse name of PA, Tetley's Pale Ale was always advertised as East India Pale Ale. Like I've said many times before, the choice of the name Pale Ale or IPA was pretty random in the 19th century. Brewers were very inconsistent in their usage. Anyone who claims that there was a definable difference between the two back then is a liar.
As you can see from the tables, Tetley's PA had very similar specs to Whitbread's and Truman's. All were a touch over 1060º. And all had around 18 pounds of hops per quarter. I can't say much about attenuation, because I only have the figure for one London beer. Even the pitching temperatures are pretty much the same.
That's not really a surprise. Like I said, this was early days for Pale Ale and breweries tended to stick to a similar profile. As time progressed, Pale Ales in different parts of the country would diverge.
Tetley Pale Ales 1868 |
Date |
Year |
Beer |
Style |
OG |
FG |
ABV |
App. Atten-uation |
lbs hops/ qtr |
hops lb/brl |
boil time (hours) |
boil time (hours) |
Pitch temp |
max. Fermen-tation temp |
length of fermen-tation (days) |
comments |
19th Oct |
1868 |
K 1/ |
Pale Ale |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
some spent hops |
6th Oct |
1868 |
K 1/ |
Pale Ale |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
some spent hops |
1st Oct |
1868 |
K 1/ |
Pale Ale |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
some spent hops |
20th Oct |
1868 |
PA |
Pale Ale |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1st Oct |
1868 |
PA |
Pale Ale |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2nd Oct |
1868 |
PA |
Pale Ale |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Source: |
Tetley brewing record held at the West Yorkshire Archive Service Leeds, document number WYL756/16/ACC1903 |
London Pale Ales 1865 - 1868 |
Date |
Year |
Brewer |
Beer |
Style |
OG |
FG |
ABV |
App. Atten-uation |
lbs hops/ qtr |
hops lb/brl |
Pitch temp |
16th Oct |
1868 |
Whitbread |
PA |
Pale Ale |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
16th Nov |
1868 |
Whitbread |
PA |
Pale Ale |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
28th Nov |
1865 |
Truman |
Pale Ale |
Pale Ale |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Average |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sources: |
Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/01/034 |
Truman brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number B/THB/C/147 |
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