Tasting Stale Porter: 1808 Whitbread with B. Bruxellensis

I've realized that I have several porters and stouts that have been stashed away for some time. I reckon that all that stale (old) porter will make for a nice series of tastings. All but one are homebrew. That lone commercial beer is a special one, Pretty Things Once Upon A Time: December 6, 1855 East India Porter. For that one I've tried to simulate the voyage to India by leaving the bottle in my cabinet at ambient temperature throughout the summer and giving it a regular roll about a ships hold in the mid Atlantic.

First up is my own foray into historical brewing: August 29, 1808 Whitbread Porter. I added Brettanomyces Bruxellensis to some bottles to mimic the secondary fermentation that old style stouts underwent. Original tasting here. I won't bother with pictures, matter of fact it's all dark.

Large tan head even with a careful, slow pour. Over carbonated, no way around admitting that. First hit on the nose is oak and smoke, likely a product of the Brett B as this recipe had neither component. A deeper whiff finds super dark chocolate (like that 85% stuff) and dried figs, maybe yogurty acidity. Hey, there's the smarties and clove from le gout d'Orval! The taste has changed dramatically from the velvety espresso and cocoa from the fresh beer. The bitterness has faded a bit, joined by a soft lactic acidity. The body is thinner than originally, but not the thin, sharp feel that I expected from previous tastings. A little cocoa powder with clove. All around an interesting beer to taste, much better now than the early samples of the Brett B portion. I am, however, glad that I chose B Claussenii for subsequent batches.

Tasting: August 29, 1808 Whitbread Porter

Final Gravity: 1.020
Alcohol: 6.4 % ABV

Dark brown as expected with light mocha foam. The odd bit of the appearance is the turbity. The beer is very cloudy even though the Wyeast 1099 certainly flocculated. Smells and tastes like brown malt. Hmm, maybe I should include more detail than that. Aroma is coffee and dark chocolate. Some fruitiness... raisin, fig, and black licorice. The taste is more of the same with a long drying hop bitterness that accentuates the roast from the brown malt.

I added Brettanomyces Bruxellensis to some bottles (most Orval skittles to hopefully avoid bombs). That should be interesting in a few months.

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.

Tasting: Foreign Stout

Take a gallon of Double Stout, blend with a bit of funky-sour beer and age for nine months.

All the 90% dark chocolate, espresso and peaty smoke is still there. Time and funk has brought out faint cherries, port and leather notes. The rough edges have been smoothed out but the beer still finishes dry with a nice roasted bitterness. That dry finish makes it suitable for a hot summer evening. This will likely continue to improve until I can no longer resist those last few bottles.

The Difference Between Porter and Stout

With Ron wasting the summer writing about trivial subjects like lager and travel, little progress has been made recently in droning on about important matters. Those matters of course are porter and stout, and the difference between the two. So here is a quote from and industrial chemistry manual published in 1921.

"Stout, with a very dark color, malt flavor and sweet taste, brewed stronger than ale, and possessing a tart taste in the aged product, but less alcohol than ale; usually lively. From worts of about 16 to 18 per cent extract.

Porter, with a dark color, brewed like stout, but not so strong."

-"Industrial Chemistry: A Manual for the Student and Manufacturer.", page 921.

Lovibond Porter

Bottled after 7 days (4/7/09) with 2.5 ounces white sugar.

The pour produces a tan head that quickly recedes into a ring of foam around the edge of the glass. The color is black with brown-red higlights. There aroma is sweet and roasted malt with a bit of yeasty fruitiness and hops in the background. Just enough residual sugars and carbonation to give a full mouthfeel but remain suitable for quaffing, which the 3.7 % ABV suits as well. Still a bit green but has a nice sweet malt and roasty flavor balanced by just enough hops.

As a bonus, here are some numbers for several porters from just after the turn of the century. For comparison, mine has a 1.022 SG, 3.7 % ABV and absolutely NO adulterants.

Brewing Historic Porter

Over at Barclay Perkins, Ron has written a bunch times about mid 19th century porter grists. Recently he posted about a particular porter found in the Lovibond Brewery logs. According to W.L. Tizard, a porter consisting of only amber malt and black malt resulted in an exquisite beer. A fan of dark beer and historic beer I had to brew for myself.

This beer presented a couple challenges with regards to malt choice and mashing. Finding Amber malt proved to be harder than I had anticipated. I needed a lightly kilned pale malt that retained most of its Diastatic power. [source] While reading the Dingeman's malt descriptions I noticed that they alternatively call their Aromatic malt "Amber 50" and the description matched the historical description. As an added bonus, Dingeman's Aromatic malt is widely available. I declare it good enough. I hope Ron reads this so he can tell me why that is a stupid declaration.

Without a true base malt I tempered my expected efficiency down to 70% from my usual 75+%. Turned out not to be enough as I ended up at 60%, so I added a half pound of brown sugar to raise the OG to range I was shooting for, 1.05-1.06. For hops, .5 oz Nugget boiled for 60 minutes and another .5 oz Nugget boiled for 10 minutes. Kent Goldings would have been more likely but I like Nuggets, so much for historical accuracy. At least I used Whitbread yeast.

After 20 hours of fermentation, yeast was cropped. The gravity had fallen to 1.042 from 1.051. The taste already attained an excellent balance of big malty flavor and an obvious but not overpowering roastiness. After 6 days the measured gravity holds steady at 1.022 (1.027 real SG, a paltry 47% attenuation and 3.7% ABV) and is ready for bottling. Never mind the terrible attenuation, this tastes great!