Wednesday 19 September 2007

Back from the archive

What a succesful harvest at the archive, yesterday. This time I concentrated on Whitbread, specifically Porter logs for the years 1914-1915, 1917-1919, 1928, 1932-34. and 1952-54.

I only glanced at the material, but a couple of things stood out. Whitbread brewed Porter right through WW I, using large amounts of brown malt and chocolate malt, to a very reasonable gravity of 1036-38º. But by the 1930's it was down to 1029º - I wonder what happened? Most styles had their nadir - strengthwise - in 1918.

Also under my scrutiny were Whitbread's Ale logs for 1880-1911 and 1922-1940. There's lots of stuff to digest. I took 350 photos in 3 hours - that's a shot every 30 seconds.

Not forgetting the Whitbread gravity book, which lists the OG, FG and colour for their competitors beers in the period 1939-1968. Fascinating stuff. You'll be hearing more, oh so much more, on this topic,

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