Thursday 10 February 2011

Barclay Perkins colour standards in 1936

This just to illustrate a reply to a question about the previous post. It shows the colours of the various Milds sold by Barclay Perkins in the 1930's.

8 comments:

Rob Sterowski said...

How do some of the beers end up lighter than they were brewed?

Ron Pattinson said...

Barm, I'd noticed that and asked myself the very same question.

Craig said...

Can someone clarify the cell color coding? Is this the process that uses the brown and red colored glass? I'd love to figure out a way to mimic the scale, digitally .

CarlT said...

Haze will distort the measurement (i.e. increase it), and the haze will disappear with time.

Martyn Cornell said...

"DB" I'm guessing is Double Brown? Looks the right sort of colour. And I notice the existence of the mysterious "T" - could this, in fact, stand for "Trade, and indicate a draught beer that wasn't export or bottling grade? And what's with that X Dark suddenly leaping up so much in colour- post-brewing addition of caramel to the X Light? Were they priming with darker very high OG wort for some beers and lighter for others, thus making a difference in the final colour that way??

Ron Pattinson said...

Craig, this is just a single colour cell. Lovibond, 1 inch cell.

It was Whitbread that used brown and red.

Ron Pattinson said...

Martyn, DB is Doctor Brown, named after Dr. Johnson. T does indeed = Trade, or draught beer.

For the Milds, they would often parti-gyle XX, X and A and prime them differently to get the colour they wanted. And add caramel, if necessary.

Thomas Barnes said...

Excellent stuff Ron!

@Craig: If 1" cell is the same as Lovibond, then it's about the same as Standard Reference Measurement (SRM).

@Carl T: That's a damned good answer. With modern beer color measurements, the beer sample must be degassed or it will skew the reading lighter than normal. Likewise, haze will also mess up the measurements.