An Exploration of a Bygone Era
Brown Stout - London 1812
Like many of our dark beers, we called upon the Barclay Perkins archives for inspiration for the Brown Stout - London 1812, and found this recipie. What makes this one special however, is that the recipie for this beer is quite a bit older than any we have made previously.
One of the reasons for digging out a recipe from this era was that our malt suppliers, Simpson’s, released their ‘Pale Export Brown Malt’ which feels close, we think, to how most all malt would have looked and tasted in the 18th century. Perhaps malt then would have been more smokey.
In the 18th century there were brown stouts and pale stouts. Pale was likely pale brown, and brown likely darker brown. So stouts were brown. This was a time of brown beer. The patents for roasting malted barley to get black malt (which enabled beers to become really dark) were only filed after the time of this recipe.
The Malt
The Pale Export Brown Malt made up 40% of the grist, the remainder being our regular Maris Otter Pale Base malt. The main characteristic that the Pale Export Brown Malt brings is toast.
The Hops and Yeast
The hops we used were Goldings, a quintessintialy British Hop, which came to us from Hukins Hops. Goldings is a brilliant example of the subtle, gentle aromas that British hops are well known for.
The esters from the English Yeast Strain that we used, bring a wonderfully warm citrus fruits flavour, which is so aromatic it comes across like marmalade on toast.
Tasting Notes
Initially the beer feels and tastes big, round, a little sweet, then slowly and inexorably the toast takes over, gently drying things out, with the tingle of hops around the edges stopping things from becoming austere. It is assuredly old fashioned in flavour, situated in a brown beer world we don’t inhabit anymore. But no less delicious for that. There is a good reason that our forebears enjoyed drinking beer, and especially stout.
