Let's Brew - 1949 William Younger Pale XXPS

Another exciting beer from the colourful late 1940’s. Only joking. I realise the period was as grey as its beers were watery.

This is so exciting. Because this is a beer I drank quite often, it being one of Younger’s main cask beers. Though it was sold under different names: 70/- in Scotland, Scotch in England. It seems to have been introduced just after WW I, possibly as a reaction to the drop in gravity of their former flagship Pale Ale, XXP. Post-war, XXP became 60/-. So a beer which had originally been an IPA, ended up as Dark Mild. Now there’s a weird transformation. But I digress.

On paper, this looks very similar to the beer I drank in the 1970’s and 1980’s. The gravity, 1037º, is identical. Though I suspect the recipe was rather different by then. I can’t imagine that they continued to use flaked barley. I wonder if they went back to grits when maize became available again?

I know from a 1960 document that XXPS came in three different colours: 5, 6 and 9 SRM. The first was the as-brewed number, which is pretty close to the figure BeerSmith spat out.

Not much else to say, other than that this looks like an archetypal post-war Ordinary Bitter. Maybe the bitterness is a little below average.

1949 William Younger Pale XXPS
pale malt	7.25 lb	85.29%
flaked barley	1.25 lb	14.71%
Fuggles 90 min	0.50 oz
Fuggles 60 min	0.50 oz
Fuggles 30 min	0.50 oz
Goldings dry hops	0.25 oz
OG	1037
FG	1011
ABV	3.44
Apparent attenuation	70.27%
IBU	21
SRM	4
Mash at	153º F
Sparge at	160º F
Boil time	75 minutes
pitching temp	62º F
Yeast	WLP028 Edinburgh Ale