Tetley's grists in 1939

Tetley weren’t ones for using all sort of fancy malts in their beers. In fact, they didn’t use much malt of any kind in many of their beers.

The three weakest Mild Ales, F, X1 and X1 Pale, are only 55% malt. The rest being fairly evenly split between grits and sugar. That’s a very low proportion of malt. Though it did come several flavours.

In all the beers there were four types of pale malt, two made from English barley and two from Californian. It was pretty much an exact four-way split between the different types. Pretty soon the supply of Californian barley would dry up and brewers would revert to 100% English.

The posher beers have very different grists. There are no grits and the percentage of sugar is a bit lower, leaving them over 80% malt. That’s quite a contrast with the three cheap beers. The sugar also seems to be of a different type, though I’m not 100% sure about that as some of the entries are a bit vague.

While some of Tetley’s malt might have been made from foreign barley, the hops they used were 100% English. Mostly from Kent, but also from Worcester.

I’ve already mentioned the low hopping rate at Tetley. That was compounded by the use of a lot of rather old hops.

These beers were brewed in October 1939. So probably a little early to be seeing hops from the 1939 crop. Quite a large percentage – two-thirds, in some cases – were from the 1936 harvest. They had been kept in a cold store, but that’s still getting pretty old.

Not that exactly the same types of hops are used in everything except K, the Bitter. It contains none of the old Worcester hops and mostly ones from the 1938 season.

Tetley's grists in 1939
Beer	Style	OG	pale malt	grits	caramel	A Dem	Albion "A"	other sugar	ARC
F	Mild	1034.9	54.82%	23.42%	0.16%	21.60%
X1	Mild	1042.4	54.82%	23.42%	0.16%	21.60%
X1 Pale	Mild	1042.9	55.09%	23.33%	0.07%	21.51%
X2	Mild	1055.4	82.25%		0.61%		17.14%
K	Pale Ale	1047.9	82.54%					17.34%	0.12%
XXX	Strong Ale	1090.9	82.25%		0.61%		17.14%
Source:
Tetley brewing record held at the West Yorkshire Archive Services, document number WYL756/ACC3349/557.

Tetley's hops in 1939
Beer	Style	OG	Kent 1937 CS	Kent 1938	Kent 1938 CS	Worcester 1936 CS
F	Mild	1034.9	24.88%	37.56%		37.56%
X1	Mild	1042.4	24.88%	37.56%		37.56%
X1 Pale	Mild	1042.9	25.00%	37.50%		37.50%
X2	Mild	1055.4	25.20%	12.40%		62.40%
K	Pale Ale	1047.9	37.27%	50.13%	12.60%
XXX	Strong Ale	1090.9	25.20%	12.40%		62.40%
Source:
Tetley brewing record held at the West Yorkshire Archive Services, document number WYL756/ACC3349/557.