Shepherd Neame malts in 1947

You may recall that in 1940 Shepherd Neame’s four draught Pale Ales were all malt. Well, other than a tiny quantity of malt extract. And I suppose you could argue that is still a form of malt, just in a slightly different format. That was never going to remain the case throughout the war. Everyone was forced to use adjuncts after the first year or two of war.

They may have been working their way to returning their draught Pale Ales to being all-malt. The AK in the table is from a little later than the others – July rather than January – and it contains no sugar. Neither did the BA and BB it was parti-gyled with.

Though it did still contain flaked barley. My guess is that they were forced to use it by the government. While using sugar was probably at their own discretion. All the other beers include it, too. Other than the Stout which goes for oats instead.

With the exception of the Stout, which has black malt, no other malt than pale was employed. There isn’t even crystal malt in the Mild, which is what you might have expected. It wasn’t that uncommon, however, for breweries to use a very limited palette of malts. Especially ones which didn’t brew much in the way of Stout.

Shepherd Neame malts in 1947
Beer	Style	OG	pale malt	black malt	flaked barley	malted oats
MB	Mild	1027.1	75.63%		10.08%
LDA	Pale Ale	1027.1	74.42%		9.30%
AK	Pale Ale	1027.1	92.31%		6.29%
BB	Pale Ale	1031.3	74.42%		9.30%
BA	Pale Ale	1034.3	86.90%		12.41%
SS	Stout	1027.1	60.94%	9.38%		9.38%
Source:
1947 Shepherd Neame brewing book, held at the brewery.