Friday, January 7, 2011

August 29, 1808 Whitbread Porter


A recipe courtesy of Ron Pattinson at Shut Up About Barclay Perkins. Whitbread Porter from 1808, about the year that "stout" surpassed "porter" according to the Google Ngram. The most relevant posts are here and here. The ingredients are simple, mostly pale malt, some brown malt and a heap of hops. The mash is mindboggling complicated with 3 gyles making for a long brew day. I tried to stay as true to the details that Ron emailed me. Exact ingredients and process are below. The original stats were OG 1.052.9, FG 1.010.2, ABV 5.64%.

Malt:
6.75 lbs Maris Otter
3.44 lbs Thomas Fawcett Brown Malt

Hops:
1 oz 5% Kent Goldings (whole leaf)
3 oz 5% Kent Goldings (pellet)

Mash:
1st gyle: ~2.25 gallons of 160 F. Mashed 2 hours at 145 F. Ran off 3 gallons and boiled for 1 hour.
2nd gyle: Added ~3 gal 170F water. Mash at 162 for 1.5 hours. Ran of 3 gallons and boiled 1.5 hours.
3rd gyle: Added water at 165. Temp had fallen. Stood 0.5 hours at 158 F. Ran off 4 gallons and boiled for 3 hours.

Hops additions:
1st gyle: 1.5 oz EKG 5% (1 leaf, .5 pellet) at 60 min. 0.5 EKG pellets at 30 min.
2nd gyle: Returned hops from 1st boil plus 1 oz EKG pellets.
3rd gyle: Returned hops plus 1 oz EKG pellets.

Yeast: Wyeast 1099 Whitbread. Pitched at 66 F.

Measured OG: 1.069
Efficiency: 94% (!!!!)

Below there are pictures of a sample of each gyle and all 3 blended together. The samples were taken directly out of the boil kettle so they have a bit of trub floating about. I figured the color would drop off more between gyles. Although this porter is not black like modern porter it still ended up darker than I expected. The mash was a real pain in the ass. Nearly twelve hours to get a regular strength wort. Despite the amazing efficiency, I won't go to all that trouble again.

7 comments:

Kristen England said...

As I said, great efficiency, tons of work. However, its a great way to learn how to parti-gyle properly.

Seanywonton said...

Wow, that's dedication!

Martyn Cornell said...

A word or eight of warning on your Google n-gram - a lot of the hits on "porter" will be for the job (which was still in existence to a considerable degree in the early C19, and fell off rapidly from about 1850 or so). And "stout" will also cover the adhjectival use for well-built men and women, of course …

Tim said...

Martyn, thank you, I am fully aware of the pitfalls of Google Ngram. Perhaps I was too subtle trying to convey that with "according to..." And never mind a word or eight on it, how about a few thousand?

Andrew Elliott said...

I'm planning on going for this batch as well, but will do 10gal to make it worth my time. I just some quick questions:

For your 1st gyle, you show adding 2.25gal, but running off 3 gal. I'm assuming this is a typo since the grains will absorb, and you can't really extract more than you put in :) ... maybe 4.25gal?

Finally, I'm guessing you added 4 gallons for the 3rd gyle?

Thanks!!

Tim said...

Andrew, good catch. The notes I kept say 2.25 gal, which is obviously wrong. Some calculations show that 4 to 4.25 gallons is indeed the correct volume. The 3rd gyle I think was about 2 gallons with a sparge addition of 160 F.

Good Luck!

Andrew Elliott said...

Thanks for the feedback! I'll be giving this a shot next weekend (fingers crossed).