Perry grists just before WW II

More Irish 1930's fun. Enjoy.

The bare stats might have looked very similar to those of London beers, but the Perry grists were another matter.

In that, other than the Stout, the grist consisted almost totally of base malt. Which, at this point, was mostly a mix of Irish and Californian. Not that dissimilar from pre-war English practice, mixing local and US malt. But it’s in the rest of the ingredients where the differences are glaring.

A typical English beer in 1939 was 78% malt, 6% adjuncts and 16% sugar.  Which is very different from Perry’s recipes. As the only sugar employed is malt extract, they’re Reinheitsgebot compliant. Though, as top-fermenting beers, they would have been allowed sugar, anyway.

It’s a feature of old Irish brewing that very little sugar was employed and almost no unmalted grains. Note that there’s no roasted barley in the Stout. As with most Stouts brewed in the UK, black malt was preferred. I guess if you’re being a total style Nazi, Perry’s version wouldn’t be true to style for a Stout.

Go back a year, and there was neither black malt nor roast barley. The roasted grains being chocolate malt and brown malt. Not at all how modern style-definers would conceive of an Irish Stout.

The malt extract seems to have been used as primings. While the small quantities of black malt were obviously for colour correction.

The dry hopping is pretty heavy. Barclay Perkins equivalent beers has 3 oz. and 6 oz. per barrel.

Perry grists just before WW II
Year	Beer	Style	OG	pale malt	black malt	crystal malt	malt extract	dry hops (oz / barrel)
1937	X	Mild	1035	98.40%	0.48%		1.12%
1938	XX	Mild	1045	99.45%	0.55%
1938	PA	Pale Ale	1046	97.28%	0.29%		2.43%	9.04
1938	IPA	IPA	1052	97.03%	0.06%	0.76%	2.14%	8.64
1938	XX Stout	Stout	1052	76.92%	9.23%	12.31%	1.54%
Source:
Perry brewing records held at the local studies department of Laois county library.