Saturday 5 October 2019

Let's Brew - 1938 William Younger P

What I'm sure you've all been waiting for - a dead watery Scottish Bitter from just before WW II.

Over at Younger’s other Edinburgh plant, the Holyrood Brewery, there were yet more Pale Ales being brewed. Mostly XXP and the ones weaker than that.

Weediest of the bunch was plain old P, which, at just a shade over 1030º, was about as weak as Pale Ale got between the wars. Even in Scotland, where there were some pretty watery examples.

I’ve taken the FG from a 1937 analysis in the Whitbread Gravity Book. In the brewing record, it’s listed as 1012º, but that was the cleansing gravity, not the real final gravity.  It seems like a much more realistic degree of attenuation this way.

The grist is the same as the majority of Younger’s other beers: pale malt and grits. They didn’t vary their recipes much, especially when it came to Pale Ales.

The hops were mostly Kent from the 1936 harvest topped with a few Oregon from 1938. The hopping level is the lowest of all Younger’s Pale Ales: just 3 lbs per quarter (336 lbs) of malt. Which is only a little higher than the truly weedy 2.5 lbs per quarter that their Mild Ales contained.


1938 William Younger P
pale malt 5.00 lb 64.52%
grits 2.75 lb 35.48%
Cluster 105 min 0.25 oz
Fuggles 90 min 0.25 oz
Fuggles 30 min 0.25 oz
Goldings dry hops 0.25 oz
OG 1033.5
FG 1008
ABV 3.37
Apparent attenuation 76.12%
IBU 12
SRM 3
Mash at 151º F
Sparge at 160º F
Boil time 105 minutes
pitching temp 62º F
Yeast WLP028 Edinburgh Ale

1 comment:

Seez said...

Looks like a Scottish version of Bud Light.