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Assembling information from a variety of sources. That's what this blog is all about. At least that's what I like to think. Today we've a good example of the insights that can bring.

Do you remember this table I posted a couple of days ago?


Whitbread bottled beers in 1872


Specific gravity
Original gravity of wort
Amount of alcohol
Amount of extract
Acetic acid
App. Atten-uation
Strong Ale
1013
1081.3
7.19
6.1
0.15
83.46%
Pale Ale
1010
1059.9
5.32
4.9
-
83.41%
Family Ale
1011
1057
4.82
5
0.14
79.94%
Extra Stout
1027
1076.7
5.26
8.9
0.13
65.04%
London Stout
1021
1067
4.88
7.2
0.15
68.92%
London Cooper
1016
1058.8
4.52
5.9
0.18
72.74%
Source:
The British Medical Journal, March 9th, 1872, page 27.
Note:
Apparent attenuation my calculation.

It's Whitbread's bottled beer range, analysed in 1872. I've also a Whitbread price list from just a couple of years later, 1874. Which confirms that Strong Ale, Pale Ale, Family Ale, Extra Stout, London Stout and Cooper made up that range:

Now it just so happens that I have photos of their brewing records for the same period. I couldn't resuist seeing how the beers matched up. It's thrown up more points of interest than I had expected. Here they are:

Whitbread beers in the 1870's
Date
Year
Beer
Style
OG
FG
ABV
App. Atten-uation
lbs hops/ qtr
hops lb/brl
boil time (hours)
boil time (hours)
boil time (hours)
Pitch temp
pale malt
brown malt
black malt
sugar
15th Mar
1871
PA
Pale Ale
1062.6
1020.5
5.57
67.26%
17.47
5.67
2.5




58º
82.23%




17.77%
17th Mar
1871
KKK
Stock Ale
1082.0
1028.3
7.11
65.54%
14.23
6.05
1.5
2


58º
84.51%




15.49%
6th Sep
1875
FA
Pale Ale
1052.1
1011.4
5.39
78.19%
12.37
2.93
2




58º
85.08%




14.92%
13th Jul
1871
SS
Stout
1077.6
1027.7
6.60
64.29%
15.26
5.04
1.5
2
2.5
63º
80.00%
15.00%
5.00%


13th Jul
1871
SSS
Stout
1092.0
1038.8
7.04
57.83%
15.26
5.98
1.5
2
2.5
62º
80.00%
15.00%
5.00%


16th Jul
1873
P
Porter
1059.3
1022.7
4.84
61.68%
11.64
2.65
1.5
2


64º
92.75%
0.00%
7.25%


Sources:
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives.


One thing immediately stands out: the differences in attenuation. The FG’s of the bottles analysed are much lower than those in the brewing records. Which makes a lot of sense. The final gravities given in the logs are the gravities when “started”. In old brewing terminology, than means the start of secondary conditioning. Whitbread’s bottled beers were, at the time, all naturally conditioned. They would have undergone a secondary fermentation in casks or tanks before being bottled. Hence the difference in gravities.


The OG’s all pretty much tally with those from the brewing records. Except for London Stout. Whitbread didn’t brew a Stout with a gravity of 1067. But you know what? A 50-50 mix of Porter and SS would have given a gravity of 1068.45. Which is funny, because Cooper is supposed to be a mix of Porter and Stout. Whereas here it’s clearly just the standard Porter bottled.


I think we’ve all learnt something today. Maybe nothing useful, but still something.


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