Monday 3 December 2012

X Ales in the 1880's

Once I get started, it can be difficult to stop. That's my excuse for continuing with this series looking at X Ales in detail. Far too much detail, really.

We're now in the 1880's, a key period in the development of British beer, when brewers had been unshackled by the 1880 Free Mash Tun Act. Suddenly a whole range of new ingredients were allowed. I'd been hoping/expecting to find maize and rice and other shit like that. I didn't. But more about that in the next part about the grists. Here I'm limiting myself to looking at the beer specifications.

This lot are quite tricky to make sense out of. With gravities all over the shop. Different examples of Barclay Perkins X ranged from 1055º to 1064º. Not sure what that was about. Truman seem to have brewed their X Ale to two slightly different strengths, 1053º and 1059º. The two in the table were parti-gyled together. It's very confusing. Possibly they could be London and Country versions. The "L" in Whitbread's XL almost certainly stands for London.

What is clear, is the disappearance of most of the stronger London X Ales. There are only a couple of XX Ales in the table. The stronger ones - XXX and XXXX Ale - had completely disappeared. The strongest London Mild is Barclay Perkins XX Ale at 1078º. If you can remember back that far, you'll recall that in my table for the 1860's there was a Mild over 1090º. In the 1830's table there were many Milds over 1100º. Stronger Milds continued to disappear right up until WW I, by which time London brewers generally only brewed X Ale.

It's intriguing that outside London breweries continued to brew a range of different-strength Milds. At the same time, it's worth noting that the third Mild up from Tetley and William Younger were only about the same level as The X Ales of Barclay Perkins and Whitbread.

I can't see any pattern in the rate of attenuation. Both the London and provincial examples mostly fall in the range 65% to 75%.

As the sample contains beers with very different gravities, the fairest way to compare hopping rates is to look at pounds per quarter of malt. Ignoring the outliers in each set (Barclay's XX and Tetley's X3), the London beers have between 6.5 and 9 pounds, the provincial ones 4.25 to 9 pounds. The averages are 7.61 for London and 6.44 for the provinces. I think it's fair enough to say that London X Ales were a little more heavily hopped than their provincial cousins.

I love looking at boil times. If only to demonstrate what bollocks all that shit is about Scottish brewers boiling their first runnings down to syrup. Note that the two Scottish brewers, William Younger and Thomas Usher, did not have the longest boils. In fact only Fullers boiled for a shorter time than Usher and the longest boils by far were at Truman's Burton brewery.

This is good. There's a clear pattern in the fermentation temperatures. London brewers pitch slightly cooler and let their worts get warmer. To make it easy, I've put the averages into a table:


Pitch max
London 59.3º 71.4º  
Provincial 60.6º 68.3º

Note that the two Scottish brewers are close to the provincial average in their fermentation temperatures. Disproving that other load of Scottish bollocks, the one about them fermenting at near lager temperatures. Not even close to being true.

Most of the fermentations, both London and provincial, took 7 or 8 days. Not much else I can say about that.

Next time we'll be looking at the grists of these beers.


London X Ales in the 1880's
Date Year Brewer Beer Style OG FG ABV App. Atten-uation lbs hops/ qtr hops lb/brl boil time (hours) boil time (hours) boil time (hours) boil time (hours) Pitch temp max. fermen-tation temp length of fermen-tation (days)
4th May 1886 Barclay Perkins X Mild 1055.0 1010.0 5.96 81.87% 6.42 1.61 1.5 2 60º 72º 3 + 2
24th Jun 1886 Barclay Perkins X Mild 1064.0 1015.0 6.49 76.63% 8.00 1.97 2 2.5 60º 72º 3 + 3
3rd May 1887 Barclay Perkins XX Mild 1078.0 1024.9 7.02 68.04% 16.00 5.85 2 59º 70º 3 + 4
19th Oct 1886 Whitbread X Mild 1061.2 1015.8 6.01 74.21% 9.11 2.38 2 59º º 8
12th Nov 1885 Whitbread XL Mild 1071.2 1020.8 6.67 70.82% 8.13 2.48 1.5 2 60º º 7
19th May 1886 Truman X Ale Mild 1052.6 8.0 1.88 2 2 2.25 2.25 60.5º º 8
19th May 1886 Truman X Ale Mild 1058.7 8.0 2.09 2 2 2.25 2.25 60.5º º 8
23rd Apr 1887 Fuller X Mild 1054.6 1020.5 4.51 62.44% 6.64 1.63 1.5 1.75 58º 71º 12
23rd Apr 1887 Fuller XX Mild 1064.8 1023.3 5.50 64.10% 6.64 1.93 1.5 1.75 57º 72º 12
Sources:
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives document numbers LMA/4453/D/01/051 and LMA/4453/D/01/052.
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives document number ACC/2305/1/584.
Truman brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives document number B/THB/C/166.


Provincial X Ales in the 1880's
Date Year Brewer Beer Style OG FG ABV App. Atten-uation lbs hops/ qtr hops lb/brl boil time (hours) boil time (hours) boil time (hours) Pitch temp max. fermen-tation temp length of fermen-tation (days)
11th May 1888 Tetley X Mild  1046.0 1016.1 3.96 65.06% 4.31 0.69 2 65º 68º 8
11th May 1888 Tetley X1 Mild  1053.7 1016.6 4.91 69.07% 5.31 1.02 2 63º 68º 8
14th May 1888 Tetley X2 Mild  1063.2 1016.6 6.16 73.68% 8.40 2.02 3 65º 68º 9
13th Jun 1888 Tetley X3 Mild  1071.2 1016.1 7.29 77.43% 12.00 3.57 3 63º 68º 8
22nd May 1885 William Younger X Mild 1048 1009 5.16 81.25% 5.29 0.99 2 2.5 60º 67º 6
24th May 1885 William Younger XX Mild 1056 1012 5.82 78.57% 6.19 1.53 2 2.5 60º 69º 7
1st June 1885 William Younger XXX Mild 1065 1021 5.82 67.69% 6.67 1.86 2 2.5 58º 67.5 6
9th Jan 1885 Thomas Usher X Mild 1050 1013 4.89 74.00% 9.00 2.00 1.5 2 58º 69.5º 6
18th Jan 1887 Truman (Burton) A Mild 1052.1 1012.2 5.28 76.60% 7.19 1.40 3 3 3 60º 68º 8
18th Jan 1887 Truman (Burton) 8 Mild 1054.0 1013.9 5.31 74.36% 7.19 1.45 3 3 3 60º 69º 8
8th Feb 1887 Truman (Burton) 7 Mild 1061.2 1016.6 5.90 72.85% 5.90 1.46 3 3 3 59º 68º 8
19th Jan 1887 Truman (Burton) 6 Mild 1066.5 1019.9 6.16 70.00% 6.64 1.95 3 3 3 57º 69º 8
8th Jan 1886 Hodgson XX Mild 1063.71 5.23 1.32 60º 69.5º
Sources:
Tetley brewing record held at the West Yorkshire Archive Service, Leeds document number WYL756/44/ACC1903
William Younger brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive document number WY/6/1/2/31
Thomas Usher brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive document number TU/6/1/1.
Truman brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives document number B/THB/BUR/11.
Hodgson brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives document number ACC/2305/08/253.

1 comment:

Gary Gillman said...

It seems hard to think that people regularly drank 8-9-10%+ ABV beers by the P much less Q even in the golden age of strong beer. This is just a musing, but given that for a long time watering or mixing of small and strong beer was an established practice (see Accum's detailed comments and proof on this, and there are others), perhaps the strong end of the spectrum died out largely because enforcement/public censure became stronger as the century moved on.

In other words, in a time of greater enforcement, you won't make an 8%+ ABV beer that won't be watered down by 20%, you will make more 6% ale, in other words. It is my understanding from reading many sources, that public scrutiny of brewing and retailing practices grew as the century wore on, indeed to the point where by later in the century you stop reading about beer watering, it seems to have died as an issue in the trade.

Of course there was and still is a market for very strong ale, but it is a small one today and I should think was then too. In other words, I just can't believe an 8%+ ABV ale was a pub staple ever.

A counter-argument is that people simply drank more then. We all know the stories of reputed massive port consumption, of the "two and three bottle-a-day men". Port is at least 20% alcohol.

But watering was a factor at least in this story, I believe.

Gary