William Younger's Scotch Ales and others

I'm still hard at work doing a preliminary sweep through the stuff I collected at the Scottish Brewing Archive. Here's a little snippet to be getting on with. Though I do have a reason for sharing it.

There's a lot on confusion about Scottish beer. In particular, about the difference between Scotch Ale and Scottish Ale. Best get it cleared up before we start going into any more detail. And what better way than by taking a look at William Younger's product range in 1858.

Younger brewed quite a few beers. Eighteen I make it, though I could have missed the odd one. They fall into five groups: Scotch Ales, Pale Ales, Mild Ales, Stock Ales and Stout. All but the first group are analogous to beers brewed in London. (As I'll demonstrate when we get into the details in later posts.)

Twenty years earlier, it was a very different story. For one thing, they were still using bolls to measure the malt (2 bolls = 1 quarter). Rather more significantly, the "English" type beers are totally missing.

Let's take a look at the 1858 beers:


The Scotch Ales are the 60/-, 80/-, 100/-, 120/- and 140/-. (Don't get confused by those names. They have nothing to do with the modern beers called 60/-, 70/-, 80/-. Those are the Scottish equivalents of, respectively, Mild, Bitter and Best Bitter.)

Is that clear?