Epochal Barrel Fermented Ales from Glasgow, Scotland

 

Epochal Angle Trisector...$9.99 / 375ml

Scottish table beer with Scotch Common Balrey but hopped with Ernest grown by Hukins Hops in Kent, fermented in oak
4.5% ABV

"Scottish brewers had quite a reputation for producing top-class Table Beer. This is reflected in the fact that it was often exported to England. While what Table Beer there was brewed in England was usually for quick, local consumption.....The “beer” part of the name wasn’t random. The weakest malt liquors in the 18th century were almost always beers because, with low levels of alcohol, they needed the extra protection of more hops. And you can clearly see evidence of that in William Younger’s Table Beer, which was hopped at 11 to 12 pounds per quarter of malt. That’s a similar hopping rate to a Stock Ale. Younger continued to brew a similar Table Beer in the succeeding decades, though the gravity fell over time, as did the hopping rate after 1868. There’s not a huge deal to say about the grists. For the whole period they were 100% pale malt. Other than right at the start, when sometimes it was 100% pale malted bigg." -  SHUT UP ABOUT BARCLAY PERKINS - read more

Rare Glasgow Porter

Epochal The Primum Mobile...$12.99 / 375ml

Glasgow stout porter fermented in oak

8.8% ABV

Epochal was founded in early 2021 by Gareth Young
Glasgow, Scotland

What is Glasgow Porter?
Porter Brewing in Glasgowby Gareth Young November 17, 2021
If you like a bit of porter, you probably know at least a little about London porter brewing; some classic examples might even spring to mind, like Fuller’s London Porter, or something more modern like The Kernel’s 1890 London Export Stout. You certainly know about Dublin porter, given the ubiquity of Guinness. Glasgow porter is less well known. Nevertheless, porter was once one of the city’s biggest exports and we had notable brewers with their own approach to the style.  This bit of brewing history is one which influences Epochal’s beer. Our recent release, The Fixed Stars, is one of a series of beers directly inspired by the writings of one Glasgow porter brewer, James Steel. For the inaugural blog post, I thought I’d say some things about porter brewing in Glasgow to give you an idea of where Glasgow fits into the broader story of porter........

THE RISE OF PORTER BREWING IN GLASGOW
The success of porter brewing in London enticed brewers elsewhere to get in on the action. One of the early adopters was Glasgow’s Anderston brewery, one of the cities earliest major breweries, which started production of ales in 1762 and began producing porter some time shortly thereafter.  Anderston brewery was owned by Murdoch & Warroch, whose senior partner, George Murdoch was a provost of the city and was declared by King George III to be "the handsomest Scotchman" he had ever seen.

THE APPEARANCE OF BLACK MALT
So by the late 1700’s, Glasgow is well on its way to becoming a rather porterish place. The next major event to discuss, one which in my mind marks a sort of mid-point in the history of porter brewing, concerns a major change in how porter recipes were put together.  The change took place because the hydrometer, though invented some time earlier, had (along with the thermometer) become generally adopted as an essential piece of brewing equipment.

Previously, porter was made entirely of brown malt, of a sort which no longer exists, known as diastatic brown malt. Pale malt existed but was expensive and so was generally only used for pale beers. What brewers began to realise, with the help of their hydrometers, was that pale malt, though more expensive per bushel (the volumetric grain measurement used at the time) was actually cheaper in terms of bang for your buck because so much more malt sugar could be extracted.  So whereas previously, considerations of cost effectiveness had favoured brown malt porters, brewers now realised they were incentivised to make as much use of pale malt as possible, even in porter brewing.

The question which then arises is how to make a dark brown beer like a porter out of mostly pale malt. In the quest for a solution, an intense period of experimentation began which included consideration of some illegal options such as dark caramel syrups (which, since beer was taxed on the malted barley used in its production, was a form of tax evasion).

The answer was come upon by a man called Daniel Wheeler who, in 1817, filed a patent for black malt – a product created by roasting malted barley in a manner similar to coffee. This was found to very effectively give the colour and flavour wanted in good porter and was adopted by all major porter brewers very quickly for the time – a matter of a few decades. The technique was so effective that we still make our porters and stouts this way today – we use a base of pale malt with roasted grain for colour.

So, from 1817 onwards, a rapid shift takes place in porter recipe construction: there is a move away from a single malt grist of diastatic brown malt to a base of pale malt with an addition of black malt for colour.  The next question which suggests itself is how to combine these grains. After all, we still have brown malt as well as the milder amber malt available, which could still be added in smaller quantities if desired for flavour purposes. In the end, brewers took different views about this, which is a great thing because it’s what leads to geographical variations in porter recipes.

Previously, whilst differences in water supply, climate, variations in brewing process and so on would all have led to certain geographical differences, at the level of recipe, all porters were made of 100% diastatic brown malt. With the rise of black malt, we see different approaches to porter recipes appear in different places.

In London, for example, a combination of pale malt, brown malt and black malt was settled on as the paradigmatic porter grist. In Dublin, Guinness seem to have settled on the simpler combination of pale and black malt, omitting brown and amber. In Glasgow, as we’ll see, the top porter brewer argued for a combination of pale malt, amber malt and black malt.......

To give a sort of summary of Glasgow porter a-la-James-Steel as a style, or a collection of styles, it’s dark brown, brewed with pale, amber and black malt and allowed to mature in wood until well attenuated but not excessively, acidically old. It’s then blended with just enough fresh beer to (highly!) carbonate and matured again in final pack. Aging should vary from about 6 months for light porter to 18 months for strongest stouts.

you can read the full blog post by the head brewer here