Thursday 20 October 2011

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.

8 comments:

Graeme said...

I actually find WLP028 throws a load of sulphur during the ferment. Not had bananas out of it though... nor particularly a lot of diacetyl, but I've tended to use it on the cool side (17C or so).

Craig said...

Kristen,

Talk about my War Series of WWII British inspired brews? I'd love to!

Some of the specs have changed a bit, but the gist is there: The War Series overview

...and the redux here

The 1939 Mild is in the bottle! I was off on my gravity a bit (1037 rather than 1041), but It'll be fine. I'll update in about two weeks!

By the way make sure to check out the logos in the redux post!

Oblivious said...

Can you still get dry Manchester yeast?

Kristen England said...

Graeme,

Really? I've never found it to be sulfury at all. Even at cooler temps. I guess it could happen if the yeast is stressed or old and such.

Craig,

Nice work. Were any of the beers ones we did for LB wednesdays or from the 1909! book?

Oblivious,

Hmmm...thats a really good question. I have some in my freezer but haven't bought any recently. If you can't find it, just use the dry Windsor instead, yeah?
http://www.danstaryeast.com/sites/default/files/windsor_datasheet.pdf

Its a nice little yeast that doesn't dry out so much.

Craig said...

Kristen,

Nope, they're all of my own design and meant to be "in the style of..." For The Hurricane 39—the mild I just bottled—I used mild, American 6-row and dark British crystal malts with homemade No. 2 invert and a little bit of Fuggles. I figured, because it was so early in the war, there would still have been some American barley available, so I tipped my hat to that. The Spitfire 40 Bitter, I'm doing next, has amber malt, British 2-row, flaked barley and light malt extract; with Bramling Cross and EKGs for the hops. The extract is my homage to the sugar rations—less sugar meant brewers had to come up with another options on the fermentables, hence the extract and flaked barley. I didn't use any dark crystal in this one, but have another bitter—The Beaufighter 44—that I will use it in, down the road.

Will said...

How would WLP006 (Bedford Bitter) do in a beer like this? I have a bunch of the stuff sitting around, although I haven't been using it since I've heard it can drop a lot of esters, similar to Ringwood.

Anonymous said...

I've got a few batches going in primary and secondary from stuff found on this site. I'll be sure to post pics and such when bottled.

Quick question, but I keep getting confusing answers from others...why do super long boils like this? What would suffer if one calibrated the IBU's to hit the target bitterness at 60 minutes? I know there has to be a good reason. Please enlighten me.

Kristen England said...

Will,

You really can use any yeast you want for any of these. You just want to make sure the yeast fits more for the final gravity than anything else. Eg meaning a low gravity beer is hard to have a higher FG on unless the yeast doesn't attenuate fully. Specifically, i do particulaly like the Bedford in low gravity bittery things.

Jeremy,

I've touched on this before but you don't have to do the full boil times. There as been many experiments showing that you really don't get a whole lot more hop utilization out of a 120min boil than the standard 90min boil. American home brewers have always been set on one hour for some reason. A lot of the time when it comes to longer boil times its basically to reach the gravity in which they wer aiming. Meaning it will take 2.5 hr boil off enough water to get the required gravity.

I do have to say I find a difference in 90min vs 60min though. Not just in hop bitterness but in overall hoppiness (tannin extraction and such) not to mention the beers usually come out clearer with a better hot and cold break.