Monday 1 July 2019

Whitbread Double Brown grists 1939 - 1945

One of the features of the war was a rapid change in recipes to cope with government restrictions and the availability of ingredients. The six years of the war saw more changes than would usually have taken place over a couple of decades.

Whitbread Double Brown is a good example of constant recipe tinkering. There’s not a single type of malt which was in every wartime version. Admittedly, pale malt and PA malt were very similar. But I find the chopping and changing between chocolate and crystal malt rather more surprising.

The explanation of the presence of mild malt in the 1941 version is that it was parti-gyled with XX Mild. Before the war, Double Brown was always brewed single-gyle. During the early war years, it was first parti-gyled with 33, Whitbread’s Burton, then with XX Ale.

I can think of no simple explanation for the presence of wheat malt. Except, again, that it was on account of the parti-gyling with XX. In 1940 and 1941 XX suddenly acquired a small percentage of wheat malt. Perhaps for head retention.


Whitbread Double Brown grists 1939 - 1945
Date Year OG pale malt PA malt chocolate Malt crystal malt mild malt wheat malt
21st Sep 1939 1054.5 25.27% 52.17% 2.45%
11th Apr 1940 1054.1 6.35% 85.71% 3.17%
14th Aug 1940 1049.3 5.92% 79.93% 2.96%
20th Nov 1940 1047.3 81.42% 11.63%
31st Jan 1941 1046.1 20.17% 12.10% 58.49% 2.02%
13th Oct 1944 1044.2 74.80% 3.25%
24th Aug 1945 1043.3 66.49% 3.17%
Sources:
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers LMA/4453/D/01/107, LMA/4453/D/01/108, LMA/4453/D/01/111 and LMA/4453/D/01/112.

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