Let's Brew Wednesday - 1868 William Younger DBS

As part of my Scottish decade, we'll be continuing with Scottish recipes for some time. It's so exciting to be able to present real Scottish recipes. Not just any old made-up nonsense.

Today it's DBS, or Double Brown Stout. Porter and Stout never dominated the Scottish market like they did in England. Yes, Scottish brewers made them, but in far smaller quantities than Pale Ales or Mild Ales.

In the 1860's, William Younger only brewed one Porter and one Stout. We've already had a recipe for the bottling version of the Porter, called Bg. The non-bottling version was confusingly called both P and BS (standing presumably for Brown Stout). How did these compare to the Porter and Stout brewed in London? Let's take a look

1868 William Younger:
Bg Porter 1046
BS Porter 1041
DBS Stout 1062

1868 Whitbread:
P 1048
SS 1080
SSS 1099

1870 Truman:
Running Porter 1057
Running Stout 1072
Double Stout 1080
Imperial Stout 1084
Double Export Stout 1092

One thing is obvious: Younger's versions were lower in gravity. 1062 was their strongest - a gravity that would barely qualify a beer as a Stout in London.

Truman brewed their Porters and Stouts from pale, black, brown and amber malt. Whitbread went for pale, brown and black malt, plus sugar. The difference with Younger's grists is the use of brown malt. That's a habit London brewers never gave up, not even in the 20th century.

As the 19th century progressed, Younger's beers digressed further from London Stout. They became sweeter and less alcoholic, with apparent attenuation barely hitting 50%. This trend continued into the 20th century, finally resulting in beers like George Younger's Sweetheart Stout.






That's me done. Let's see what Kristen has to say . . . . . . . .

Kristen’s Version:

Same deal as the previous Younger logs. Very simple stuff. Lots of repeats from last week. That will happen when we are doing the Scots stuff.

Ingredients

Grist – Four times the malts as normal on this baby! Two pale malts some toasty amber malt and some tasty blackness. I really like Maris Otter for stouty things. I had some Great Western pale malt for the other pale so I decided to go with that one. I’d equally go with the MFB pale but I have more of this and the tastacular MFB would get kinda buried. The amber makes up a pretty good portion of the grist so use something you really like. I tried this also with the MFB special aromatic that would be similar to old timey amber malt. Very different. Give it a shot. The black malt was more Fawcett as its nice and dark.

Hops – Three different hops, from three different areas give this beer a really unique profile. Some herby English Fuggles provide most of the bitterness backbone. The Popering Goldings really add a nice citrusy orange character and the Saaz are well, saazy. Very unique but awesome all the way around.

Yeast – Use something dry. I really like the Fullers strain…or Nottingham.