The Truth About English Stout

When it comes to beer history, many annoying stories are as entrenched in writers’ minds as the German army in 1915. Stories so far from reality, you wonder where they came from. One of the most annoying is that in the early 20th century, English Stout turned sweet, leaving Guinness the Dry Stout market in its entirety. Neither claim is true. Guinness wasn’t even particularly dry in the first half of the 20th century.

Luckily, I’ve a ton of evidence to the contrary. Far from all English Stout becoming sweet, there was a remarkable diversity in both strength and character. I’m about to batter you about the frontal lobes with some particularly hard facts. I hope it doesn’t hurt too much.

Let’s start by taking a look at English Stout in the 19th century. In London, the birthplace of Stout, brewers usually produced several examples of different strengths. In the 1890s, Whitbread had SS at 1086º and SSS at 1095º, both with about 65 percent apparent attenuation. Truman had three Stouts: Single at 1076º, Double at 1082º and Imperial at 1097º. Both breweries used the classic pale, brown and black malt combination favored by London brewers. Even the weakest Stouts were of a very respectable strength. WWI changed that.

The war was traumatic in many ways, but for beer it had an impact that would last for the rest of the century. At pubs, opening hours were slashed, afternoon closures were introduced and the strength of beer was reduced.

An often-told story contends that WWI also killed English Stout, except for the sweet kind epitomised by Mackeson. It’s claimed that a wartime ban on roasting malt caused the decline of British Porter and Stout, but the regulation didn’t apply to Ireland, handing Guinness the English Stout market on a plate. Except there never were such restrictions. And brewing records show extensive use of both brown and black malt during the war.

Rather than gifting it a business opportunity, the aftermath of WWI made life very difficult for Guinness. Irish independence meant that a large part of Guinness’ market was suddenly in a foreign country. Concern about its trade in Britain eventually led Guinness to build a brewery in London during the 1930s.

In 1914 Guinness sold 1,070,814 barrels of Extra Stout in Britain (England, Scotland and Wales). During the 1920s they sold a little more—around 1.25 million barrels on average—not enough for the company to be completely dominating the market.

Later figures show that Whitbread sold 24,703 barrels of bottled Guinness in 1943. Sounds impressive. But it sold 156,813 barrels of its own bottled Stout, of which 91,059 was normal Stout and 65,754 Milk Stout. And 25 years after Guinness had supposedly cornered the market, Whitbread was still selling more than six times as much of its own bottled Stout. Not to mention a considerable volume of draft Stout.

To continue the fact bludgeoning, I’ve analyzed 67 Stouts from 1921. They’re a very diverse bunch, with gravities ranging from 1030º to 1094º, and attenuation from 54 percent to 91 percent. A sure sign of a Sweet Stout is a low degree of attenuation. Ordering the analyses in descending order of attenuation, the two Guinness examples are both in the bottom half, at positions 40 and 56. Neither has a degree of attenuation equal to the average of 72.91 percent.

It’s clear that Guinness, although popular, was far from dominant in the British Stout market. And there were many Stouts not just as dry as Guinness, but far drier. ■