Cairnes grists in 1923

Time to look inside the beers. Though they’re simpler than you might expect. There are only five elements to the grists: pale malt, roast barley, sugar and caramel.  But none of the beers contains more than four of them.

Cairnes were still using a brewing book that they’d had printed three decades or so earlier. Which causes some problems. Because a couple of the ingredients are hard-coded in the books: BPG (Beane’s Patent Grist) and patent malt. And, by 1923, they were no longer using either of them. With BPG replaced by “flakes” and patent malt by roast barley.

What type of sugar was it? I can only guess. And that guess would be some sort of invert. Probably No. 2. But it could also be something simple like glucose. While I’m on about what I’m guessing, I’ve also guessed that the lakes are maize. They could also be rice.

With the high percentage of roast barley, the two Stouts must have tasted pretty, er, roasty. Other than that and pale malt, there’s not much else. Just a small amount of caramel. No other sugar or adjuncts.

There’s a reason that the Bitter and Strong Ale grists are so similar: they were sometimes parti-gyled together. 

Cairnes grists in 1923
Beer	Style	pale malt	roast barley	flaked maize	other sugar	caramel
Bitter Ale	Pale Ale	83.46%		9.82%	6.55%	0.18%
Strong Ale	Strong Ale	86.66%		6.59%	6.60%	0.15%
Single Stout	Stout	86.04%	11.40%			2.56%
Double Stout	Stout	89.88%	8.56%			1.56%
Source:
Cairnes brewing record held at the Guinness archives, document number GDB/BR17/1257.