Brown Stout London 1812 6.2% (330ml)

Another recipe from Barclay Perkins archives, this one quite a bit older than any we have made previously. 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. 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. This 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 esters bring warm citrus fruits, so aromatically it comes across like marmalade on toast. 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.