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Shut up about Barclay Perkins - Porter's last hurrah
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I've been very busy. Doing primary research. Scouring brewing records, transcribing Whitbread Gravity Book entries. That sort of exciting stuff.
I tried to persuade Andrew to help: "It'll be good practice for when you study history at university."
"Do your own work, dad. Anyway, I've decided to study film editing."
It was the first I'd heard of his change in plans. Damn. I'd hoped to get him as a free research assistant. And he doesn't need money, so bribery is out of the question. No alternative but to do it myself.
If I weren't such an obsessive, it would be a daunting task. I reckon it'll take another two or three weeks to finish off the Whitbread Gravity Book. And two to three months to finish extracting details from brewing records. Finished for the time being. I'll photograph a load more in May.
But enough of my complaining. Time for numbers. Lovely old, dusty numbers, fresh from the number mine.
Porter in the 1920's
Year
Brewer
Beer
size
package
attenuation
1921
Charrington
Porter
pint
draught
1922
Barclay Perkins
Porter
pint
draught
1922
Barclay Perkins
Porter
pint
draught
1922
Cannon Brewery
Porter
pint
draught
1922
City of London
Porter
pint
draught
1922
Courage
Porter
pint
draught
1922
Hoare
Porter
pint
draught
1922
Lion Brewery
Porter
pint
draught
1922
Mann Crossman
Porter
pint
draught
1922
Mann Crossman
Porter
pint
draught
1922
Taylor Walker
Porter
pint
draught
1922
Truman
Porter
pint
draught
1922
Watney
Porter
pint
draught
1923
Barclay Perkins
Porter
pint
draught
1923
Cannon Brewery
Porter
pint
draught
1923
City of London
Porter
pint
draught
1923
Courage
Porter
pint
draught
1923
Courage
Porter
pint
draught
1923
Hoare
Porter
pint
draught
1923
Lion Brewery
Porter
pint
draught
1923
Mann
Porter
pint
draught
1923
Mann
Porter
pint
draught
1923
Truman
Porter
pint
draught
1923
Watney
Porter
pint
draught
1923
Wenlock
Porter
pint
draught
1923
Whitbread
Porter
pint
draught
1926
Barclay Perkins
Porter
pint
draught
1926
Cannon
Porter
pint
draught
1926
Charrington
Porter
pint
draught
1926
City of London
Porter
pint
draught
1926
Hoare & Co
Porter
pint
draught
1926
Huggins
Porter
pint
draught
1926
Mann Crossman
Porter
pint
draught
1926
Meux
Porter
pint
draught
1926
Smith Garrett
Porter
pint
draught
1926
Taylor Walker
Porter
pint
draught
1926
Truman
Porter
pint
draught
1926
Whitbread
Porter
pint
draught
1927
Cannon
Porter
pint
draught
1927
Charrington
Porter
pint
draught
1927
Courage
Porter
pint
draught
1927
Truman
Porter
pint
draught
1927
Whitbread
Porter
pint
draught
1928
Courage
Porter
pint
draught
1928
Hoare
Porter
pint
draught
1929
Courage
Porter
pint
draught
1929
Hoare
Porter
pint
draught
1929
Wenlock
Porter
pint
draught
Average OG
Sources:
Whitbread Gravity Book
Truman Gravity Book
Before some smartarse points out the average doesn't tally with the rest of the table, I'll point out that it's for all 283 examples in the full table. It was a bit much for a blog post, so I slimmed it down.
The 1920's were the last time when Porter was a mainstream beer. And only then in London. It had already disappeared from the public bars of the rest of Britain. Cheap, weak and probably only drunk by old blokes, it was in terminal decline.
Cheap. Could that have hastened its end? Before WW I Porter had been about average gravity, between 1050 and 1055. In the 1920's it was well below. Average gravity was around 1043. As you can see from above, Porter was typically about 1036.
Something similar happened to Mild a few decades later. When it became barely alcoholic as a result of WW II. I wonder if a down-market image always hastens a style to oblivion?
One other small point: all the breweries represented in the table were in London.It's hard to imagine now that Londonm ever had so many breweries.
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