Wednesday 12 February 2020

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1940 Truman XXX

The strongest Mild Ale flowing from Truman’s Burton brewery remained a powerful beer. Still weighing in at over 5% ABV.

At least that’s what I thought until recently. Then I had a look at some analyses of Truman beers in the interwar period. It pretty soon became obvious what XXX was: their draught Burton. Which makes a lot of sense.

No-one brewed a 5% Mild Ale between the wars. I thought it seemed odd that Truman did. When I saw that the OG of XXX matched that of Truman’s Burton, then it was obvious what was going on. Burton was, after all, a sort of super-strength Mild Ale.

It wasn’t just the odd barrel that was brewed, either. This batch was 95 barrels. The shortest length of the three beers in the parti-gyle – there were 230 barrels of 7 and 194 of XX – but still a decent amount.

The basic recipe is not far from that of the X “Dark” and XX “Dark” parti-gyle above. Other than the lack of caramel. And a lower hopping rate. Which leaves the (calculated) IBUs of XXX lower than the much weaker X “Dark”.

1940 Truman XXX
pale malt 6.25 lb 56.82%
high dried malt 2.50 lb 22.73%
crystal malt 60 L 1.00 lb 9.09%
flaked rice 0.75 lb 6.82%
No. 3 invert sugar 0.50 lb 4.55%
Fuggles 90 mins 0.50 oz
Fuggles 60 mins 0.50 oz
Goldings 30 mins 0.50 oz
OG 1047.5
FG 1008
ABV 5.23
Apparent attenuation 83.16%
IBU 18
SRM 12
Mash at 149º F
Sparge at 160º F
Boil time 90 minutes
pitching temp 60.25º F
Yeast Wyeast 1028 London Ale (Worthington White Shield)

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