Wednesday 22 April 2020

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1936 Perry XX Stout

An even more special Irish beer today. A genuine Irish Stout.

This is more the type of beer you would expect an Irish brewery to be making: a Stout. It looks like it’s meant to be along the same lines as Guinness Extra Stout, which in the 1930s had an OG of 1054.5º.  Though Perry’s beer is a little weaker.

It does appear that Stout was only a small part of what Perry brewed, judging by the gyle numbers. This was brew 8 of XX Stout that year. An XX Ale brewed a few days earlier was the 49th brew. The brew length of XX Ale, at 72 barrels, was more the double the size of this batch, which was just 32. Clearly Perry’s main trade was in Ale.

The grist of this beer might come as a bit of a surprise. Not only is there no roasted barley, there isn’t even any black malt. The roasted grains being chocolate and brown malt. Which makes it look rather like a Whitbread Stout recipe. They also used a combination of brown and chocolate malt for colour.

The hops are again a mix of English and Oregon, both from the 1933 harvest. Which is rather on the old side. But there were rather a lot of them, which is why the (calculated ) IBUs are so high.

1936 Perry XX Stout
pale malt 9.25 lb 77.89%
chocolate malt 1.00 lb 8.42%
brown malt 0.75 lb 6.32%
crystal malt 60 L 0.75 lb 6.32%
malt extract 0.125 lb 1.05%
Cluster 150 mins 1.75 oz
Fuggles 60 mins 1.75 oz
OG 1050
FG 1017
ABV 4.37
Apparent attenuation 66.00%
IBU 62
SRM 31
Mash at 152º F
Sparge at 164º F
Boil time 150 minutes
pitching temp 60º F
Yeast Wyeast 1084 Irish ale

1 comment:

Martyn Cornell said...

Perry's was an ale specialist from at least the end of the 19th century, and indeed had a Royal Warrant to supply ale to Queen Vic, Ed VII and George V when they were in Ireland, so no big surprise that ale brewings outnumbered stout brewings.

Those Oregons, I suspect, may well have been Fuggles rather than Cluster: in 1930 Oregon hop growers still had 11 per cent of their acreage devoted to the Fuggle, and a report in 1931 said that Fuggles were grown in Oregon "primarily for the English and Canadian markets."