Sunday 7 January 2024

Let's Brew - 1952 Shepherd Neame SS

This is a weird one. Something I’ve only seen Scottish brewers do before: parti-gyle a Stout with a Pale Ale.

How did they do that? By adding black malt and caramel to just one of the coppers. Hey presto! Pale Ale is now Stout. Though they did also end up with a Pale Ale that contained malted oats. I wonder if anyone ever noticed?

Compared to Shepherd Neame’s other recipes, this one looks insanely complicated. A massive three types of malt, plus sugar and caramel. I’ve increased the quantity of black because, as it was added in the copper, it would have added more colour than if it were mashed. 

1952 Shepherd Neame SS
pale malt 5.75 lb 77.91%
black malt 0.75 lb 10.16%
malted oats 0.25 lb 3.39%
raw cane sugar 0.25 lb 3.39%
caramel 1000 SRM 0.33 lb 4.47%
malt extract 0.05 lb 0.68%
Fuggles 120 mins 0.75 oz
Goldings 30 mins 0.75 oz
OG 1030
FG 1008
ABV 2.91
Apparent attenuation 73.33%
IBU 21
SRM 36
Mash at 149º F
Sparge at 170º F
Boil time 120 minutes
pitching temp 62º F
Yeast WLP007 Dry English Ale

The above is an excerpt from my overly detailed look at post-war UK brewing, Austerity!

https://www.lulu.com/shop/ronald-pattinson/austerity/paperback/product-1mkrq4zg.html


There's also a Kindle edition.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry for the incredulity - but how can a 2.91 abv beer, ever be considered a stout.? Or, is it, any given beer, is what the brewer choses to call it - despite history, tradition and perhaps logic.?

Anonymous said...

I wonder what the weakest stout recipe you have is Ron?

InSearchOfKnowledge said...

You should really dig through Ron's blogs, that will give you an idea how styles really changed throughout the years, and the reasons for them. The main reason in Britain, taxes on beer.

But it makes clear that the brewer decided the name and type of his product, not the style police :-p

There is no logic based upon history, and even less tradition. In these blogs one can see evolve British beers every ten years (more or less), but the names stay the same.

Anonymous said...

Thanks. All good points -much as suspected

Ron Pattinson said...

Anonymous,

by this point, Stout had stopped meaning "strong" and become "dark and roasty".

Ron Pattinson said...

Anonymous,

I think this is about the weakest recipe that I have. I have analyses of Scottish Stouts which were under 2% ABV.