The Session #150 Martyn Cornell's Porter and Stout: A Complete History

This book is a difficult read. No because the content is difficult or badly written, but because it's physically difficult to read. It weighs over a kilo!

1.224kg

There is no easy way to read it. I'm not reading it in the bath, it's hard work in bed, and did I take it to read on my long journey to Utrecht? Did I bollocks! No way am I lugging it around either. So reading it something that can only be done by setting aside time in the evening and reading with it in resting on one of my legs. I'm currently about a third of the way through the book and reaching the end is not expected any time soon. 

But, fortunately for the sake of this post I've already spotted something that really got me thinking. In fact dare I say it a Cornellesque deep dive. Page 18 tells how John Richardson's promotion of the saccharometer showed brewers what poor value brown malt was compared to pale malt. He was able to put figures on how much extract was lost making brown malt: good pale malt gave an extract of 82 pounds a quarter, but blown brown malt just 56. 

Yet it struck me on reading that that you don't need a saccharometer to see how much extract you're getting from your malt. Pounds per barrel was used for a long time in British breweries, and still is in some. This is based on how much heavier the wort of a fixed volume (in this case a 36 gallon barrel) is compared to a barrel of water. If the actual unit used is determined by measuring weight, then using a saccharometer to measure density gives a simpler and quicker measurement, but isn't actually doing anything new. 

So I'm suspicious that the usual history saying that the saccharometer changed everything is an exaggeration and likely only tells part of the story. Now I need someone with an eye for detail to investigate further...