Monday 3 October 2022

Rose sugars in 1896

Rose used quite a few different sugars. Seven in total. Every beer contained at least one and some had as many as three.

Average sugar content was just short of 9%, which isn’t all that much, really. And in one was, IPA, was only just over 5%.

Most common, occurring in six of the ten beers, was caramel. It’s in all of the Mild Ales and the Stout. Obviously, its role was colour correction.

Next most frequent is D.M.I., which I assume is a form of dextro-maltose. It occurs in all the same beers as caramel, with the exception of X. Being less readily fermentable than most sugars, it was used to add body. Something desirable in a Mild or a Stout.

Invert of one sort or another pops up in five beers. No. 1, as you would expect, shows up in a couple of the Pale Ales. There’s No. 2 in XX, for some reason. It seems a slightly odd choice. An unspecified type of invert turns up in XXXX and IPA. It might well really be No. 1 or No. 2.

Plain old sucrose isn’t something you see often in commercial beers. Here it was used in a few random beers: two Milds and the weakest Pale Ale. White may be the same thing. Or it could be the name of a manufacturer. It’s impossible to say for sure. 

Rose sugars in 1896
Beer Style no. 1 sugar no. 2 sugar invert sucrose White D.M.I. caramel total
M Mild           7.67% 0.34% 8.01%
X Mild       8.68%     0.16% 8.84%
XX Mild   4.99%       4.99% 0.22% 10.20%
XXX Mild       4.59%   2.29% 0.20% 7.09%
XXXX Mild     4.64%     4.64% 0.25% 9.53%
B Pale Ale       6.25%       6.25%
AK Pale Ale 5.80%       5.80%     11.59%
IPA IPA     5.26%         5.26%
PA Pale Ale 4.49%       4.49%     8.99%
Stout Stout         6.33% 4.22% 1.58% 12.14%
Source:
Rose brewing record held at the North Yorkshire County Record Office, catalogue number ZDI.

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