Wednesday 2 January 2019

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1939 Fullers XX

XX was the big brother of X. As parti-gyle pals, the recipes were obviously identical, just more of everything in XX.

There’s a big difference in the hopping rate of London Milds and those brewed elsewhere. For example, Tetley’s Milds contained 3.5-4 lbs of hops per quarter (336 lbs) of malt, Fullers 7.5 lbs. In fact Fullers Milds were more heavily hopped than most provincial Pale Ales. This is reflected in the 37 (calculated) IBUs.

I’m not sure what the final colour of XX was. Based on the ingredients listed in the brewing record, it doesn’t come out that dark. However, I know that some other London brewers darkened their Milds at racking time. Unfortunately, the earliest Whitbread Gravity Book analysis that I have is from 1951. That lists X Ale as around 22 SRM.


1939 Fullers XX
pale malt 7.75 lb 79.86%
flaked maize 1.50 lb 15.46%
glucose 0.33 lb 3.40%
caramel 1000 SRM 0.125 lb 1.29%
Fuggles 90 mins 1.25 oz
Fuggles 30 mins 1.25 oz
OG 1042.5
FG 1010
ABV 4.30
Apparent attenuation 76.47%
IBU 37
SRM 12
Mash at 147º F
After underlet 151º F
Sparge at 168º F
Boil time 90 minutes
pitching temp 62.5º F
Yeast WLP002 English Ale

4 comments:

Kevin said...

I've got a question not directly related to today's recipe but it did come while listening to an interview with Fuller's John Keeling... he was describing the gravity of one of their beers and and was saying the starting gravity was "58 point 6" and the finishing gravity was something like "8 point 8".

That's obviously not Plato because that would would be a SG of 1.283! So is he saying that the SG is 1.0586? Also, I assume that 58.6 could be rounded up to 1.059?

Sorry if I'm asking something elementary and dumb but I've never heard gravity stated that way.

Thanks

Ron Pattinson said...

Kevin,

he means 1058.6. So he must have been talking about the export version of ESB, which is the only one of their beers which has that OG.

UK brewers never use Plato. Fullers only went over to using SG fairly recently. Until at least 1968 they measured gravity in brewer's pounds.

qq said...

@Kevin
Bear in mind that Fuller's typical brewlengths are multiples of 260hl (a tad under 160bbl) and that they are taxed in proportion to alcohol. The rounding error on 260hl between 1.0586 and 1.059 becomes a significant amount of extra tax, it's worth being accurate...

Ron Pattinson said...

qq,

but tax isn't on the OG any more, but the ABV at the brewery gate.

Incidentally, many Barclay Perkins records give the "declared gravity" as well as the actual gravity. It's usually rounded down by 1º.