Let's Brew Wednesday - 1868 Younger Teeble Beer

Sorry for being late again. Totally my fault. Got my head in the clouds.

Here's a quandry. What is this beer? Based on the gravity, experts like Horst Dornbusch would probably call this a 60/- or Two-penny. What do you reckon? I know what Kristen thinks. But he's a rebel. Either that or he'd been on the lash when he put this recipe together.

The big London brewers mostly abandonned Table Beer after the change in the tax system in 1830. (Until then there had been two basic tax categories: Strong and Table. The former was taxed at 10 shillings a barrel, the latter at 2s 6d.) Which removed the tax incentive to brew a really weak beer. Barclay Perkins still brewed theirs, albeit in small quantities, until at least the 1860's. That was totally different from this beer, being a low-gravity Porter.

In Scotland weak beers had been much more popular than in England. In the period 1802 to 1829, about twice as much table Beers was brewed as Strong Beer. While in England three to four times as much Strong Beer as Table Beer was brewed. Funny that.

Scottish Table Beer, some of it at least, had a good reputation and fetched a high price in England. It survived a surprisingly long time, well into the 20th century. Maclay still brewed one in 1909, but I've seen labels that date to later than that. Like the one above. Funnily enough, both from Alloa. as was the expensive Table Beer on sale in Manchester.

My last sighting of William Younger's T is 1898.



Before I leave you, Kristen has an important announcement:

"Ok you bums. You've been making all this stuff we've been putting together for ages now. How about some links and pictures back to the blog on the things you are doing or have been doing under each individual recipe. It would be great to give the little pasty skinned mole people that are lurking in the shadows a few nice pics and different ways of doing things so they get motivated and brewing."

I'd never considered my readership as pasty-skinned mole people before. It's an image I'll cherish in years to come.





Now over to Kristen . . . . . . .

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 – One malt. Just one single little malt. Well you’d better bring out the big guns and use some really good stuff. Or, you can go the opposite route and go CHEAP! Me, I chose to use my favorite pale MFB. Tasty tasty tasty. I did make this with plane of vanilla American 2-row. Meh is all I can say. Do as  you wish…

Hops – A touch of really nice and fresh Goldings at the beginning will do as well as just about anything at 150 minutes in the kettle. It finishes with a good lot of fresh Bohemian hops. I chose Saaz because I’m not sure how fresh the other Saazy hops I have laying about are…don’t use US Saaz. You’ll also notice that for such a small beer there is a heavy hand on the dry hopping. Right about 0.43lb/bbl! That’s a very healthy dose for this little guy. Whatever you use, make sure they are fresh and wonderful.

Yeast – Since we did all that talk last week about available Scottish yeast, might as well keep that theme up. Go back and read last week (2011.10.13) to catch up. If you don’t want to, use some good old London III. You dry guys, Nottingham is too much so. Give the old Manchester a go.