Scottish colours

Just a quick post. Something I harvested at the Scottish Brewing Archive on my recent visit.

It's quite a handy document. It has the brewery specifications of all the beers brewed and William Younger's Holyrood Brewery and William McEwan's Fountain Brewery. Lost of useful information about the beers. But tehre's one little problem: I don't no when exactly it's referring to.

The document is a bunch of loose leaves which was the response to an enquiry to a former brewer. The covering letter is dated 23rd June 2001. But it must refer to much earlier because the Holyrood Brewery closed in 1986. It also mentions No. 1, which I think was discontinued well before Holyrood closed. My guess would be 1960's or 1970's.

It's another demonstration of how crazy the Scots were about colouring beer.

Fountain Beers
Beer	colour (EBC)
B5/A (BL)	30
XXPS (Btg)	24
No 3 (Btg)	48
H5/B	24
4/A	26
H2/B	95
E2/B	80
XXP (P5/A)	30
G5/A (D5/A)	80
XXP (Pale)	18
XXP (P70/-)	20
3 L	65
P80/-	25
BE2/B	80
1 BR	75
3 BR	55
1 BR	90
200/- B	80
NBA	52
Source:
Holyrood and Fountain beer specification sheets held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number WY/6/1/8/1.

NBA = Newcastle Brown Ale.

Holyrood Beers
Beer	colour
* S/Stout	270
Harp (bott)	9
DCA	70
DBS	270
PA	24
K 5/A	48
** BA	85
Harp (CT)	9
XXPS	25
5/B	25
Source:
Holyrood and Fountain beer specification sheets held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number WY/6/1/8/1.

There's a lovely note under this second table:

* SS is brewed at a colour of 600° - when blended with reprocessed beer, the final colour is 270°
** BA is brewed at a colour of 220° - when blended reprocessed beer, the final colour is 85°

"Reprocessed beer" is a euphemism for returned beer and all sorts of other shit. It must have formed a large pecentage of the blend, given that it's more than halved the colour value.

DCA = Double Century Ale.
DSB = Double Brown Stout.
BA = Brown Ale.

I'm amazed at how many different products they had. Most Scottish breweries only had half a dozen.