Let's Brew Wednesday - 1941 Truman X

Here's the first fruit from my brewing record harvest earlier this week. It's a lovely watery Mild.

I’ll be honest with you: I’m not sure if this is the light or dark version of X. Because the brewing record makes no mention of it.

At least the gravity hasn’t fallen. Then again, it didn’t really have anywhere to go. An increase in the rate of attenuation, however, has boosted the ABV to over 3%. Happy days.

Grist-wise, there are a couple of changes. Most striking being the dropping of any sort of adjunct. The flaked rice of the previous year is gone forever more.

Added is an amount of black malt. It’s not clear from the record how much. Because it’s not in with the other malts and isn’t included in the malt total. It says “2 black” – my guess is that it means 2 bushels and not 2 quarters. That would be too much for a beer like this.

Frustratingly, Truman doesn’t seem to always list the caramel used in a beer. I think because it was only added at racking time. I know from materials totals in some brewing records that they did use considerable amounts of caramel. It’s just not clear exactly where and in what amount.

Both of the types of hops were English, from the 1939 harvest and kept in a cold store. The hopping rate has dropped a lot, about halving the (calculated) IBUs.

1941 Truman X
pale malt	3.75 lb	58.87%
high dried malt	1.75 lb	27.47%
crystal malt 60 L	0.50 lb	7.85%
black malt	0.040 lb	0.63%
No. 3 invert sugar	0.33 lb	5.18%
Fuggles 90 mins	0.25 oz
Fuggles 60 mins	0.25 oz
Goldings 30 mins	0.25 oz
OG	1027.5
FG	1003.5
ABV	3.18
Apparent attenuation	87.27%
IBU	10.5
SRM	9
Mash at	147º F
Sparge at	160º F
Boil time	90 minutes
pitching temp	62.5º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1028 London Ale (Worthington White Shield)