Sunday 5 February 2017

Pale Ale takes over Scotland

I'm still as busy as a flobble stick with my new Scottish book. As you must be able to tell from the low quality of my recent posts.

I've gone full reverse on the blog. Rather than using blog pieces to nail together a book, I'm jerry building posts from book scraps. Mostly tables. You can't have any of the words. I'm saving them for the book itself.

Very nicely. The book is coming along, I mean. I'm sure you wanted to ask about my progress. 52,000 words currently. Probably about another 20,000 to go.

That's for the full geek version. Which is what I'll be tarting around the US in April. A white-label version of the book packed with a ridiculous amount of information. Table after table. Literally hundreds of recipes.

Back to the nominal topic of this post, the dominance of Pale Ale in post-WW I Scotland. The table below is based on seven and a half weeks of brews in October and November. Just three beers made up over 90/- of Usher's output. All low-gravity Pale Ales. Clearly that was what the Scottish market demanded.. The stronger Pale Ales, 70/- and 80/-, were brewed in tiny quantities.

It's actually unusual that Usher still produced a real Mild Ale. Most Scottish brewers didn't bother any more.


Usher output by type 1st Oct - 20th Nov 1931
Beer OG barrels brewed %
IPA 1032 1,067.5 19.32%
PA 1034 573 10.37%
PA 60/- 1040 3442.5 62.32%
PA 70/- 1047 240.25 4.35%
PA 80/- 1055 38.5 0.70%
MA 1040 92.5 1.67%
Stout 80/- 1052 34.75 0.63%
Brown Ale 1055 35 0.63%
Total 5,524
Source:
Thomas Usher brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number TU/6/1/6.

Based on the amount of beer produced over the seven weeks or so, I reckon Usher brewed around 38,000 barrels a year.

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