Tuesday’s ad is for Mackeson’s Stout, originally brewed by the Hythe Brewery in Kent, which was founded in 1699. The Mackeson family acquired the brewery in 1801 and introduced their most enduring beer, the milk stout, in 1907, before being taken over by Whitbread in the late 1920s. I love the notion that the milk stout is the product of illicit love between beer and milk, though of course there’s no actual milk in the beer.
What a coincidence. I’ve just been looking at a brewing record for Mackeson from 1943, brewed by Whitbread in London.
They weren’t the most imaginative, Whitbread, when it came to recipes. All their Stouts were exactly the same, apart from the amount of water. So their version of Mackeson was much the same as their London Stout, just a little stronger. Then primed with lactose at the end of fermentation.
Oh, and the recipe included oats. Because they used the same recipe fro their Oatmeal Stout.