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I realise that I've never paid that much attention to one of the great London Porter breweries: the Red Lion Brewery. It operated under several different names, but ended its days as Hoare & Co.

I think I understand some of the reasons why. First and foremost is that, unlike its 18th-century rivals Barclay Perkins, Whitbread and Truman, none of its brewing records survive. Fortunately, the brewery did hang around until the 1930's, which means I have details of plenty of their beers, courtesy of the Whitbread and Truman Gravity Books. Enough for several posts like this.

I'm going to start with the beer that made the Red Lion Brewery famous: Porter. It seems logical enough.

I'm lucky to have one analysis from the 19th-century. It looks pretty standard for that era: a gravity of 1050-something and about 75% attenuation.

Moving on to the 20th-century, I'm a bit surprised at how up and down the gravity is, ranging from 1031.9º to 1039.8º. Most Porter of the time were about in the middle of that, at 1034-37º.

For most of its life, Porter had about 75% attenuation. In the 18th century that was a pretty high rate of attenuation, better than most types of beer. It remained around that level through the 19th century, when other styles caught it up or even overtook it. That's why I'm shocked to see how poorly attenuated some of these samples are. Under 65% is lower than I would expect. In a couple of cases it looks like it's an attempt to compensate for a low OG.

Given the lowish degree of attenuation and modest gravity, it's only logical that the ABV hovers around the just about intoxicating level.

Hoare Porter 1870 - 1930
Year Beer Style Price size package Acidity FG OG ABV App. Atten-uation
1870 Porter Porter 1.5d pint draught 0.18 1013 1052.42 5.23 75.22%
1922 Porter Porter pint draught 1039.8
1922 Porter Porter pint draught 1036
1922 Porter Porter 6d pint draught 1009.7 1033.7 3.11 71.22%
1922 Porter Porter 6d pint draught 1011 1037.3 3.41 70.51%
1922 Porter Porter 6d pint draught 1010.5 1035 3.17 70.00%
1922 Porter Porter 6d pint draught 1010.8 1033.8 2.98 68.05%
1923 Porter Porter 6d pint draught 1010.2 1034.2 3.11 70.18%
1923 Porter Porter 6d pint draught 1011.7 1033.2 2.78 64.76%
1923 Porter Porter 6d pint draught 1011.6 1032.6 2.71 64.42%
1923 Porter Porter 6d pint draught 1009.8 1034.5 3.20 71.59%
1923 Porter Porter 6d pint draught 1008.4 1031.9 3.05 73.67%
1926 Porter Porter 5d pint draught 1039.8
1928 Porter Porter 5d pint draught 1013.4 1037.9 3.17 64.64%
1929 Porter Porter pint draught 1038.3
1929 Porter Porter pint draught 1038.2
1929 Porter Porter 5d pint draught 0.06 1009.2 1038.3 3.78 75.98%
1929 Porter Porter 5d pint draught 0.08 1009.6 1038.2 3.71 74.87%
1930 Porter Porter 5d pint draught 1010.8 1035 3.13 69.14%
1930 Porter Porter 5d pint draught 1009 1037 3.63 75.68%
1930 Porter Porter 5d pint draught 0.07 1006.6 1034 3.56 80.59%
1930 Porter Porter 5d pint draught 1010.2 1037 3.47 72.43%
Sources:
British Medical Journal June 25th 1870, page 658.
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/001
Truman Gravity Book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number B/THB/C/252

What Next? Stout, perhaps.

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