Imperial Stout

Imperial stout is a beer style with a long history, traced back to the late 1700s, brewed by the porter brewers of London for export to Russia and the Baltic countries. An extra-strong stout porter in style, imperial stout was rich, dark and powerful in both bitterness and roasted flavours, unaffordable for the average fellow, but much coveted by the rich and landed gentry of the day.  It apparently gained its ‘imperial’ title through being supplied to the Russian imperial court of Catherine the Great.  Barclay Perkins was the most famous brewer of Russian Imperial Stout (eventually merging with Courage) but there were others such as Thrale’s and Reids of Camden making large quantities and shipping the beer through the port of Saint Petersburg.

After the Russian revolution and the severe disruption of international trade due to the two world wars, as well as changing tastes in Britain, the imperial stout market was largely abandoned.  However, Courage continued to brew some for bottle every couple of years until the early 90s and Sam Smith’s of Tadcaster started to export some to the United States.  In particular, the Sam Smith’s version is known to have inspired American craft brewers in the late 80s and 90s, leading to imperial stout being one of the most popular styles in North America by the mid-2000s. 

It was this background which led to Thornbridge’s two young brewers, Martin Dickie and Stefano Cossi, brewing a Russian Imperial Stout in late 2005.  Named ‘Saint Petersburg’, after a custodian of Thornbridge Hall named John Morewood, who traded linens from Manchester to Saint Petersburg in the early 1900s, Martin thinks it was Brew 100, ‘so probably a big beer to recognise the centenary brew!’.

Traditional recipes for imperial stouts would have been a simple pale, brown and black malt grist and English Fuggles and Goldings hops.  However, after a bit of research, Martin and Stefano decided to mix things up, using pale, lager, dark crystal and chocolate malts along with some roast barley, topped up with ‘as much dark muscovado cane sugar as we could buy from the supermarket’.  The original hops were Galena and Bramling Cross, which would have brought a berry/cherry character.  Stefano remembers introducing some Sorachi Ace hop into the recipe early on, adding a touch of coconut and ‘almost a mushroomy note’, as well as a touch of peated malt to add a whiff of iodine.  Martin’s recollection is of building a recipe to give a dark and complex beer that wasn’t too heavy or roasty but had a nice balance of malt sweetness and hop bitterness along with an estery fruitiness.

Weighing in at 7.7% ABV, whilst on the slightly light side for an imperial stout, this was a pretty strong beer for the UK’s pubs at the time.  Simon Webster, our CEO, recalls that it was named as the most expensive beer in Sheffield in a newspaper article, served at the Cricket Inn in Totley.  The first brew went into bottle and cask; the second brew went into three different barrels for ageing, one of the earliest and best-known barrel ageing projects in the UK.  

Saint Petersburg became a regular brew here and a much-loved member of the Thornbridge stable.  The beer has won a lot of awards over the years, with the bottle conditioned version winning the Champion Bottled Beer of Britain in 2019.   However, after ‘unfortunate world events’, having a beer in our portfolio called ‘Saint Petersburg’ wasn’t something we had on our agenda.

Nevertheless, we’ve had countless requests to brew this beer again and the chance to do so on our Union set was too good to miss. We thus decided to brew two batches destined for cask and another to go into can.  We’ve decided to rename the beer as simply ‘Imperial Stout’, in keeping with the majority of our Union brews taking the name of the style, but more importantly, we’ve also raised the ABV back up to its original strength of 7.7%.

The recipe has evolved slightly over the years and now includes some smoked malt to match the peated addition, as well as our beloved Brewers Invert No.2 sugar instead of the supermarket Muscovado, but, as a brewing team, we believe the beer remains true to Stefano and Martin’s original intentions.  We’re hoping the Union fermentation will accentuate that ‘estery fruitiness’ and give us a beer that has a bold roasted malt character.  This will be the first proper stout we’ve made on the Union and our second ever can conditioned Union beer, after the much-loved strong dark mild we brewed with our good friend Garrett Oliver.  We hope you enjoy drinking this Thornbridge classic as much as we’ve enjoyed making it over the years.

Written By Dominic Driscoll, Production Manager.