Saturday 13 August 2016

Let's Brew - 1939 William Younger LAE

William Younger brewed a baffling range of Pale Ales before WW II. While most Scottish brewers would have three, Younger had loads.

At Maclay it was 5d, 6d and 7d PA. Beers which would after the war become 60/-, 70/- and 80/-. At Drybrough it was P 54/-, P 60/- and P 80/-. While Younger has P, XP, XP Btlg, XXP, XXP Btlg, XXPS, Ext, LAE and MXP E. Don’t ask me what the hell they all were and why they needed so many.

LAE comes second in the gravity pecking order after Ext. I’m fairly certain it was a bottled beer. Partly by gut feeling. But also because there’s another beer at the same gravity called XXPS which I know was a draught beer. Because I drank it myself. It was another name for Younger’s Scotch or 70/-, a beer that was fairly common in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

The recipe is, as usual, remarkably subtle and complex. Like hell it is. Just another of Younger’s pale malt and grits specials. It is untypical, in fact, of interwar Scottish Pale Ales. By this time most other brewers were using healthy doses of sugar and rather less in the way of maize. The more I research William Younger the more I realise how untypical they were in general. Just as well I’ve looked at other brewers’ records, too and haven’t based all my conclusions on William Younger. I’d be coming out with the sort of crap Horst Dornbusch does.

Sometime in the late 1930’s Younger seem to have gone over to all English hops. The records are no more specific than “Kent”. My guess is Fuggles. But Goldings wouldn’t be crazy, either.

Younger was a big fan of dry hopping. Pretty much all of their beers were dry hopped, including the weediest Milds. Other brewers could have been as keen, but most don’t bother recording dry hops on their brewing logs. Lazy bastards (I’m looking at you Whitbread).


1939 William Younger LAE
pale malt 7.75 lb 73.81%
grits 2.75 lb 26.19%
Fuggles 90 min 1.00 oz
Fuggles 30 min 1.00 oz
Goldings dry hops 0.50 oz
OG 1046
FG 1013
ABV 4.37
Apparent attenuation 71.74%
IBU 26
SRM 4
Mash at 156º F
Sparge at 160º F
Boil time 105 minutes
pitching temp 61.5º F
Yeast WLP028 Edinburgh Ale

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ron, I'm curious. How do you arrive at the use of Fuggles? Just a few posts ago you listed a dozen English hops that could have been in there. Is there some behind the scenes information that leads you to select on Fuggles?

Ron Pattinson said...

Anonymous,

Fuggles is simply the most liekly hop. The brewing record just says Kent. I usually interpret Kent as Fuggles and East Kent as Goldings.