Scottish Pale Ale 1920 - 1924

Time for a look at Scottish beer in more detail. Lots more detail. More detail than you can cope with, possibly. But isn't that what this blog is all about?

I'm kicking off with Pale Ales in the first half of the 1920's. Why? No particular reason. I have to start somewhere. And I've loads of Pale Ale analyses. It will take several posts to get through the interwar years.

Scotland was a strange place, beer-wise. Quite different from England. Not so much in the beers themselves as the names under which they were sold. Rather than Bitter and Best Bitter, in Scotland they used shillings to differentiate between Pale Ales of different strengths. With 60/- being ordinary Bitter, 70/- Best Bitter and 80/- Strong Bitter. All very logical. Except when you get to 90/-. Logic would dictate that this would be stronger than 80/-. It wasn't. For some reason 90/- was used for bottled Pale Ales around the strength of draught 60/-. Make any sense to you? It doesn't to me.

The analyses below all come from brewery sources. Pretty much every beer was specifically called Pale Ale (or PA) in the  original documents. Not Light, Heavy or Export. Because, despite what later style fetishists might claim, Scottish brewers themselves considered all these beers  Pale Ales. Light, Heavy and Export were the names used by drinkers. Much in the same way English beers were called Pale Ale in the brewery and Bitter in the pub.

I'm not surprised the shilling designations have caused so much confusion. Because they don't really pin down a style of beer. Before WW II, 60/- was the equivalent of ordinary Bitter. The sixty bobs I can recall from the 1970's were all Dark Milds. I'll repeat this once again: all the shillings tell you is the relative strength of the beer. Not which style it's in. If you forget this, Scottish beers won't make the slightest sense.

Most of the beers in the table are 60/- PAs. Though not all were clearly identified as that. Their average OG is 1039.4, average FG 1009.6, average ABV 3.8%, average apparent attenuation 75.6%. Retailing for 7d a pint. The William Younger beers from 1921, though not all are identified as such, in the source, are 60/-, 70/- and 80/- PA. Retailing for, respectively, 7d, 8d and 9d per pint. 70/- having a gravity around 1046 and 80/- 1052. This is very similar to the beers brewed in London, where Pale Ales over 1050 cost 9d a pint and ones in the mid 1040's were 8d a pint.

How, in a time when beer strengths weren't public knowledge, did brewers manage to keep their beers of such similar strength? The answer lies in the sources of this information: various breweries' Gravity Books. Brewers kept a close eye on what their competitors were up to. Gravities naturally tended to align with each other.

A final point: colour. That's where there is a difference. English Pale Ales were in the range 20 to 28. I've a log of Whitbread PA where the colour is 34 and there's a note saying "Too high". Most of the Scottish examples are darker, in the 30's or 40's. Or the colour of an amber Mild like Barclay Perkins'. Two of McEwan's Pale Ales from 1924, presumably 60/- PA, seem to confirm the Scottish practice of colouring a beer differently for different markets. Their gravities are about the same, but one has a colour of 35, the other 52. It's unlikely that this could be explained by them coming from different batches or by accident. The difference is too great.

Here's the luvverly table:

Scottish Pale Ale 1920 - 1924
Year	Brewer	Beer	Style	Price	size	package	FG	OG	colour	ABV	App. Atten-uation
1920	Usher	PA 54/-	Pale Ale		pint	draught	1010.5	1034		3.04	69.12%
1920	Usher	PA 60/-	Pale Ale		pint	draught	1012.9	1040		3.51	67.75%
1920	Usher	PA 90/-	Pale Ale		pint	draught	1016	1054		4.93	70.37%
1921	Bernard	PA 60/-	Pale Ale		pint	draught	1011	1039.2		3.65	71.94%
1921	McEwan	PA 60/-	Pale Ale		pint	draught	1007.1	1040.2		4.31	82.34%
1921	Younger, Wm. & Co	PA	Pale Ale	9d	pint	draught	1013.1	1053.2		5.21	75.38%
1921	Younger, Wm. & Co	PA	Pale Ale	8d	pint	draught	1012	1046		4.41	73.91%
1921	Younger, Wm. & Co	PA 60/-	Pale Ale		pint	draught	1011.2	1039.5		3.67	71.65%
1922	Aitken	PA	Pale Ale		pint	draught	1009.2	1036.2		3.50	74.59%
1922	Ballingall	PA 60/-	Pale Ale		pint	draught	1012.8	1040		3.52	68.00%
1922	Bernard	Pale Ale	Pale Ale	7d	pint	draught	1009.6	1039.2	40	3.84	75.49%
1922	Bernard	Pale Ale	Pale Ale		pint	bottled	1005.4	1042.5	27	4.85	87.31%
1922	Deucher, James Ltd	Lochside Beer	Pale Ale	7d	pint	draught	1011	1039.5		3.69	72.15%
1922	Hamilton	PA	Pale Ale		pint	draught	1010.2	1036		3.34	71.67%
1922	McEwan	Pale Ale	Pale Ale		pint	draught	1007.6	1039.8	30	4.18	80.83%
1922	McEwan	Pale Ale	Pale Ale	7d	pint	draught	1010	1038.7	35	3.72	74.16%
1922	McEwan	PA	Pale Ale	7d	pint	draught	1007	1039		4.16	82.05%
1922	Murray	PA	Pale Ale		pint	draught	1005	1037		4.17	86.49%
1922	Steel Coulson	PA	Pale Ale		pint	draught	1012	1040		3.63	70.00%
1923	Bernard	Carbonated Beer	Pale Ale	4d	half pint	bottled	1012.4	1037.6	45	3.26	67.02%
1923	Bernard	PA	Pale Ale		pint	bottled	1005	1039		4.43	87.18%
1923	McEwan	Pale Ale	Pale Ale		pint	bottled	1007	1040		4.29	82.50%
1923	Murray	Carbonated Beer	Pale Ale	4d	half pint	bottled	1011.8	1035.2	27	3.03	66.48%
1923	Tennent	Beer	Pale Ale		pint	draught	1006	1038	45	4.17	84.21%
1923	Tennent	Carbonated Beer	Pale Ale	4d	half pint	bottled	1007	1038	44	4.03	81.58%
1923	Tennent	Carbonated Beer	Pale Ale	4d	half pint	bottled	1005.5	1039.6	45	4.44	86.04%
1923	Tennent	PA 90/-	Pale Ale		pint	bottled	1006	1039		4.30	84.62%
1923	Younger, Geo.	carbonated	Pale Ale		pint	bottled	1007.3	1033.8	33	3.44	78.47%
1923	Younger, Geo.	No. 1 Pale Ale	Pale Ale		pint	bottled	1008.2	1014.9	31	0.87	45.27%
1924	Bernard	Pale Ale	Pale Ale	4d	half pint	bottled	1013.2	1040.2	35	3.49	67.16%
1924	Bernard	60/-	Pale Ale		pint		1014	1040	42	3.36	65.00%
1924	Gordon & Blair Ltd	Pale Ale	Pale Ale		pint	draught		1038.1
1924	J. Deuchar	Pale Ale	Pale Ale		pint	bottled	1005.3	1038.9	35	4.37	86.29%
1924	McEwan	Pale Ale	Pale Ale		pint	bottled	1008.6	1039.5	35	4.01	78.23%
1924	McEwan	Pale Ale	Pale Ale	6d	pint		1009.4	1038.7	52	3.80	75.71%
1924	McEwan	Pale Ale	Pale Ale		pint	draught		1041.6
1924	Murray	Pale Ale	Pale Ale	4d	half pint	bottled	1011.1	1036.3	25	3.26	69.42%
1924	Murray	Pale Ale	Pale Ale		pint	draught		1037.2
1924	Murray	Strong PA	Pale Ale		pint	bottled	1013	1057		5.73	77.19%
1924	Tennent	Pale Ale	Pale Ale	4d	half pint	bottled	1009.8	1037.3	48	3.57	73.73%
1924	Younger, Geo.	Alloa Pale Ale	Pale Ale			bottled		1039.7
1924	Younger, Wm. & Co	Sparkling Ale 90/-	Pale Ale		pint	bottled	1010.5	1041.5	30	4.02	74.70%
Sources:
Thomas Usher Gravity Book document TU/6/11 held at the Scottish Brewing Archive
Whitbread Gravity Book document LMA/4453/D/02/001 held at the London Metropolitan Archives
Younger, Wm. & Co Gravity Book document WY/6/1/1/19 held at the Scottish Brewing Archive