AK Light Bitter

Due to public demand - well, one person requested it - here's a short discussion of AK. One of my many beery obsessions.

 

Canada here we come

I've just booked the summer trip with the kids. As you may have guessed from the title, we're headed to Canada. 

The main purpose is a family holiday for me and the lads. But I will be up for any money-making possibilities. Such as giving talks, brewing collaboration beers. Anything beer-related, really.

This may be your last chance to hear me talk in Canada. I'll be 70 later this year. Who knows how long my health will hold out. Intercontinental trips are becoming more tiring as I age. I won't continue with that shit forever. 

We'll be visiting four cities: 

Toronto         Wed 15th July to Sat 18th July
Ottawa           Sun 19th July to Mon 20th July
Montreal        Tue 21st July to Fri 24th July
Quebec City   Sat 25th July to Mon 27th July

Just get in touch if you'd like to stage an event with me. My rates are very reasonable, considering my age, experience and likelihood of dropping dead.

Youngs boiling and fermentation in 1960/1961

That’s ingredients dome. Processes next. The excitement!

Boiling is pretty easy.  Two hours. In just about every case. And on average. What else can I say? It’s all pretty boring. Let’s see if fermentation temperatures are any more exciting.

Most beers were pitched a bit under 60º F. Other than the Milds, which were started a bit warmer.

The length of fermentation is pretty dull, too. Eight days. In all but a couple of cases. Which does seem quite long, given the temperatures and gravities involved.

Dropping was mostly for lower gravity beers. Like X Ale and PA> It also happened pretty quickly. Around 24 hours into the fermentation.

You know what we can do now? Look at a full fermentation record. Always such a treat. When I can be arsed to transcribe them.

Luckily, I am in an arsing sort of mood.

From pitching to racking was 158 hours. Though the bulk of the attenuation was achieved in the first 48 hours. And for the last four days it basically just sat in the fermenter cooling down.

In this batch of X Ale, three fermenters were employed and only one of them was dropped. I’ve no idea why that was. This fermenter was dropped, after 24 hours. When approximately a third of the eventual attenuation had occurred.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t record when the attemperators were switched on. But, judging the temperature of the wort, it seems to have happened sometime after the 40-hour mark.

There wasn’t a huge rise in temperature during the fermentation. Just 7.75º F. With most of the fermentation occurring at around 67º F.

I assume that the skimming after 48 hours was to obtain healthy yeast for later pitching in another beer.
 

Youngs boiling and fermentation in 1960/1961
Year	Beer	Style	boil time (hours)		Pitch temp	max. fermen-tation temp	length of fermen-tation (days)	dropped?
1961	X	Mild	2	2	60.5º F	68.5º F	8	25 hours
1960	XS	Mild	1.75	1.75	60º F	67.5º F	8	no
1960	PAB	Pale Ale	2	2	59º F	71º F	8	no
1960	PA	Pale Ale	2	2	59º F	69.25º F	8	22 hours
1960	SPA	Pale Ale	2.25	2	58º F	71.5º F	9	no
1960	QSPA	Pale Ale	2	2	59º F	71º F	8	no
1961	Ex PA	Pale Ale	2	2	58.5º F	68.25º F	8	no
1961	MS	Stout	2	2	58.5º F	69.5º F	6	no
1961	XXX	Strong Ale	2	2	58.5º F	69.75º F	8	no
1960	XXXX	Strong Ale	2	1.75	58º F	70.75º F	8	no
1961	CA	Barley Wine	2	2	58.5º F	66.5º F	8	no
		Average	2.00	1.95	58.9º F	69.4º F	7.91
Source:
Young's brewing record held at Battersea Library, document number YO/RE/1/29.

Youngs X fermentation 4th July 1960
hours	FV	heat	gravity	action
0	4	60º F	1030.5	pitched
14		62.5º F	1026.6
19		62.75º F	1000.0
24		63.25º F	1022.7	dropped
38	7	66.5º F	1012.7
43		67º F	1009.4
46				RS
48		67.75º F	1006.6	Skim PY
62		67.75º F	1005.5	Skim PY
67		67.5º F	1005.5
158		58º F	1005.5	racked
Source:
Young's brewing record held at Battersea Library, document number YO/RE/1/29.

 

 

 

Let's Brew - 1939 Youngs PAB

I’m really glad that the gravity of PAB increased by 3º between 1932 and 1939. Because otherwise the two recipes would have been near identical.

On the other hand, the hopping rate had declined from 10 lbs per quarter (336 lbs) of malt to 8 lbs. A fall which is reflected in the bitterness level of the finished beer.

The base malt is still divided into three types: pale malt, pale ale malt and enzymic malt. The quantity of the last being pretty small. Other than that, there’s just a little bit of malt extract and some No. 1 invert sugar.

There were two type of Worcester hops, both harvested in 1938, one of which had been cold stored.  

1939 Youngs PAB
pale malt	7.00 lb	84.85%
malt extract	0.25 lb	3.03%
No. 1 invert sugar	1.00 lb	12.12%
Fuggles 120 min	0.875 oz
Fuggles 60 min	0.875 oz
Goldings 30 min	0.875 oz
OG	1039
FG	1011
ABV	3.70
Apparent attenuation	71.79%
IBU	35
SRM	5
Mash at	153º F
Sparge at	174º F
Boil time	120 minutes
pitching temp	60º F
Yeast	WLP002 English Ale

 

Scottish Shilling Ales

Back from my hols, so time to make some more short videos. This time, I discuss Scottish Shilling Ales, the indigenous style of Scotland.

 

Youngs hops in 1960/1961

The last of the ingredients: hops. Lots of English hops. Nothing but English hops, in fact. Which makes things a little boring.

Sadly, the brewing record contains very few details regarding the hops. Nothing, other than the grower’s name and, now and then, the year they were harvested. Not brilliant.

I could start guessing where they might have come from. Saying that the proximity of Kent probably meant that was the main source. However, London was also where all the hops from all over the country were stored and traded. Leaving hops from anywhere in the UK easily accessible. Even ones from overseas, too.
Most beers contain two types of hops. Only Export PA and Celebration Ale have three. The two beers that used the largest quantities of hops.

All the beers seem to have used the same hops: Hulme (1958) and Duckett (1959). Though the harvest year isn’t always given. At least, that’s true for 1960. In 1961, the hops were from Cotton and Highwood. For all beers.

Youngs hops in 1960/1961
Year	Beer	Style	hop 1	hop 2	hop 3
1961	X	Mild	English	English
1960	XS	Mild	English 1958	English 1959
1960	PAB	Pale Ale	English 1958	English 1959
1960	PA	Pale Ale	English 1958	English 1959
1960	SPA	Pale Ale	English 1958	English 1959
1960	QSPA	Pale Ale	English 1958	English 1959
1961	Ex PA	Pale Ale	English	English	English
1961	MS	Stout	English	English
1961	XXX	Strong Ale	English	English
1960	XXXX	Strong Ale	English 1958	English 1959
1961	CA	Barley Wine	English	English	English
Source:
Young's brewing record held at Battersea Library, document number YO/RE/1/29.

 

Youngs sugars in 1960/1961

Sugar time. Always fun.

Including malt extract, there are five types of sugar.

Malt extract is the only one to appear in every beer. It’s also the only one which wasn’t added in the copper. Instead, it went into the mash tun. As it was diastatic malt extract, used to aid conversion of the mash.

Every beer contains an invert sugar. Just not necessarily the same one. With the Pale Ales going for No. 1 invert and all the other beers – the dark ones – opting for No. 3. Which makes a lot of sense.

Oddly, the only beers containing caramel are most of the Pale Ales. Admittedly, the quantities are tiny. Presumably just for colour correction.

That leaves just CDM. Or Caramelized-Dextro-Maltose, to give it its full name. It’s a type of caramelised, poorly-fermentable sugar used to add colour and body to a beer. It turns up in just two beers, XS and XXXX. Though, as both of these were parti-gyled with X, it must appear in some versions of that, too. 

Youngs sugars in 1960/1961
Year	Beer	Style	malt extract	no. 1 sugar	no. 3 sugar	CDM	caramel	total sugar
1961	X	Mild	3.03%		6.06%			9.09%
1960	XS	Mild	2.83%		4.71%	2.02%		9.56%
1960	PAB	Pale Ale	2.72%	5.44%			0.03%	8.19%
1960	PA	Pale Ale	2.72%	5.44%			0.03%	8.19%
1960	SPA	Pale Ale	2.35%	4.70%			0.02%	7.08%
1960	QSPA	Pale Ale	2.56%	5.13%			0.01%	7.70%
1961	Ex PA	Pale Ale	2.33%	9.30%				11.63%
1961	MS	Stout	3.03%		6.06%			9.09%
1961	XXX	Strong Ale	3.03%		6.06%			9.09%
1960	XXXX	Strong Ale	2.85%		4.75%	1.19%		8.79%
1961	CA	Barley Wine	3.49%		5.81%			9.30%
Source:
Young's brewing record held at Battersea Library, document number YO/RE/1/29.

 

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1939 Youngs X Ale

Youngs strongest Mild, X Ale, was fairly weak, by London standards. Just 1035º and 3.7% ABV. Where some brewers had versions over 4% ABV. Barclay Perkins, for example.

I’m being lazy again, taking the X Ale that was parti-gyled with the Ale above. Saves time writing the recipe. While also given you a realistic view of the relationships between the beers in a parti-gyle. At least, that’s my excuse.

It’s not all that dark. Though Mild did come in a variety of shades in London in the 1930s. All of Barclay Perkins Milds came in semi-dark and dark versions. As brewed, they were semi-dark. The dark versions were created by adding caramel at racking time.

Youngs brewed bucketloads of this beer. Mild was still very popular in London. 

1939 Youngs X Ale
pale malt	1.50 lb	19.82%
mild malt	4.75 lb	62.75%
crystal malt 120 L	0.50 lb	6.61%
malt extract	0.25 lb	3.30%
No. 3 invert sugar	0.50 lb	6.61%
caramel 1000 SRM	0.07 lb	0.92%
Fuggles 105 min	1.00 oz
Fuggles 30 min	1.00 oz
OG	1035
FG	1007
ABV	3.70
Apparent attenuation	80.00%
IBU	25
SRM	14.5
Mash at	152º F
Sparge at	170º F
Boil time	105 minutes
pitching temp	59º F
Yeast	WLP002 English Ale

 

Youngs grists in 1960/1961

Time to move on to the ingredients. Starting with what went into the mash tun: malts and adjuncts.

Quite a few malts again. Five in total, mostly base malts. So let’s begin with those.

All of the Pale Ales use PA malt as their base. Which makes sense. PA malt being the highest quality pale malt, specifically designed for use in Pale Ales.

On the other hand, the Mild Ales and all the strong beers have mostly mild malt as their base. Though sometimes this was in conjunction with standard pale malt. Mild malt was generally of a slightly lower quality than standard pale malt and killed a little darker. It was also a little cheaper.

The same set of beers – minus Celebration Ale – are also the ones containing crystal malt. Around 9% of the total. Which is a reasonably large amount.

Only one malt appears in every beer: enzymic malt. Which, rather than containing lots of enzymes, was acidified and was used to lower the pH of the mash. It was extremely popular in the 1950s and 1960s, used by dozens of breweries.

All the beers contain between 75% and 80% malt. That’s slightly below the national average, which was 80%. With adjuncts at 5% and sugar at 15%. 

Moving onto the last column, you can see that the proportion of adjuncts is much higher than the national average, in most cases, running at around 14%. That’s almost treble the average. A shitlaod. And in every single beer. 

Youngs grists in 1960/1961
Year	Beer	Style	pale malt	PA malt	mild malt	crystal malt	enzymic malt	total malt	flaked maize
1961	X	Mild	20.45%		43.18%	9.09%	4.55%	77.27%	13.64%
1960	XS	Mild			63.59%	8.48%	4.24%	76.31%	14.13%
1960	PAB	Pale Ale		72.43%			5.10%	77.53%	14.28%
1960	PA	Pale Ale		72.43%			5.10%	77.53%	14.28%
1960	SPA	Pale Ale		76.74%			4.41%	81.15%	11.77%
1960	QSPA	Pale Ale		74.35%			5.13%	79.48%	12.82%
1961	Ex PA	Pale Ale		74.42%			4.65%	79.07%	9.30%
1961	MS	Stout	20.45%		43.18%	9.09%	4.55%	77.27%	13.64%
1961	XXX	Strong Ale	20.45%		43.18%	9.09%	4.55%	77.27%	13.64%
1960	XXXX	Strong Ale			64.13%	8.55%	4.28%	76.96%	14.25%
1961	CA	Barley Wine	22.67%		45.35%		5.23%	73.26%	17.44%
Source:
Young's brewing record held at Battersea Library, document number YO/RE/1/29.

 

Volume of Youngs beers brewed in 1960/1961

The quantities brewed of the Youngs beers varied an awful lot. As the next table will demonstrate. A word of warning, this isn’t based on every brew in the year 1960/1961. Instead, it’s based on the photographs my son Andrew took. These cover a total of 112 brews. Which hopefully is a reasonably representative sample.

X Ale accounted for a third of Youngs output. With considerably more being brewed than of any other types. This is exactly when Mild went into steep decline as a style. 1960 being the last year when more than 50% of beer produced in the UK was Mild.

Given its very high strength for the day, it’s a surprise that Special Bitter is in second place. Just a shade ahead of PAB, the bottled Pale Ale. It’s an indication of how popular bottled beer was. I’m sure most of it would have been consumed in pubs mixed with Ordinary as Light and Bitter.

PA, Ordinary Bitter, trails a little behind those other two. Despite being in the most popular style of Bitter nationally. Combined, these three Bitters made up 62% of output.

Volume of Youngs beers brewed in 1960/1961
Beer	Style	barrels	brews	average brew size	% of total
X	Mild	6329	24	263.7	33.18%
XS	Mild	198	6	33.0	1.04%
PAB	Pale Ale	4037	14	288.4	21.17%
PA	Pale Ale	3459	26	133.0	18.14%
SPA	Pale Ale	4386	26	168.7	23.00%
QSPA	Pale Ale	194	2	97.0	1.02%
Ex PA	Pale Ale	63	1	63.0	0.33%
MS	Stout	253	8	31.6	1.33%
XXX	Strong Ale	62	2	31.0	0.33%
XXXX	Strong Ale	31	1	31.0	0.16%
CA	Barley Wine	60.5	2	30.3	0.32%
	total	19,072.5	112	170.3
Source:
Young's brewing record held at Battersea Library, document number YO/RE/1/29.

 

Youngs beers in 1960/1961

A happy new decade, the 1960s. Where regional breweries flourished. Yeah, right. It’s when keg beer began its long march to notoriety. And Youngs enthusiastically didn’t join in the rush to keg, remaining faithful to cask.

Now, I’m not 100% sure that this is an exhaustive list of Youngs beers. With eleven in total, it must be close. They break down into two Mild Ales, five Pale Ales, two Strong Ales, a Barley Wine and a Stout. Come to think of it, there must have been a Brown Ale. Presumably based on X Ale.

Let’s kick off with the Mild Ales. I admit to being shocked that Youngs were still brewing two. Though the quantities brewed of XS were pretty modest. Usually just 30 barrels. While standard X Ale was produced in batches of 150 to 350 barrels.

In the 1950s, it was relatively common for breweries to have both a Mild and a Best Mild. With the difference in gravity only being 2º or 3º. As is the case here. Where differing degrees of attenuation leave the two beers with almost identical ABVs.

Not sure why the hopping rate is higher for X Ale. It seems to be a one-off. As all the other examples are hopped at 4.5 lbs to 5 lbs per quarter (336 lbs) of malt. About the same as the XS in the table.

Of the Pale Ales, only three were brewed in substantial quantities: PAB, PA and SPA. That is, Light Ale, Ordinary Bitter and Special Bitter. Only small quantities of the two strong Pale Ales, QSPA and Export PA.

Speaking of those two beers, they could well be the same thing. Just that the brew house name was changed. The gravities of the two beers are very similar.  Export Pale is the most heavily hopped of all their beers. Almost 8 lbs per quarter (336 lbs) of malt. While the weaker Pale Ales received just 6 lbs of hops per quarter.

The rate of attenuation for the three weaker Pale Ales is very high, well over 80%. Leaving Special at almost 5.5% ABV. Which would have made it one of the strongest Bitters in the country.

MS, which I think stands for Milk Stout is a pretty weird beer. Being parti-gyled with X Ale. When we get to the ingredients, you’ll see just how weird a Stout it was.

It seems that Youngs were brewing two Burton Ales, XXX and XXXX. The latter looks very much like the Old Burton Extra that Fullers brewed between the wars. Given its strength, I suspect that it was only available in bottled form. While XXX, the standard Burton Ale, was primarily a draught beer.

Top of the pile is Celebration Ale (CA). A beer originally called Coronation Ale, introduced for the, er, coronation of Elizabeth II. All three of the Strong Ales were parti-gyled with X Ale. 

Youngs beers in 1960/1961
Year	Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl
1961	X	Mild	1030.6	1005.5	3.32	81.90%	6.67	0.94
1960	XS	Mild	1033.6	1008.3	3.35	75.27%	4.37	0.61
1960	PAB	Pale Ale	1031.6	1003.9	3.67	87.73%	6.00	0.75
1960	PA	Pale Ale	1037.6	1005.5	4.24	85.27%	6.00	0.89
1960	SPA	Pale Ale	1049.6	1008.3	5.46	83.25%	5.93	1.18
1960	QSPA	Pale Ale	1061.8	1017.7	5.83	71.31%	6.67	1.67
1961	Ex PA	Pale Ale	1062.7	1016.6	6.10	73.49%	7.91	2.03
1961	MS	Stout	1041.7	1008.9	4.34	78.74%	6.67	1.29
1961	XXX	Strong Ale	1048.4	1009.4	5.16	80.54%	6.67	1.49
1960	XXXX	Strong Ale	1077.6	1022.2	7.33	71.44%	5.30	1.74
1961	CA	Barley Wine	1079.7	1026.6	7.03	66.63%	5.07	2.24
Source:
Young's brewing record held at Battersea Library, document number YO/RE/1/29.