If you were paying attention last week, you may remember that I said Fullers only really had three brews in 1962. One for Nourishing Stout, a second for all the other dark beer (Old Harry, Hock, OBE) and a third for all the Pale Ales. It's the last one we'll be looking at today. Though it does have one beer missing - Golden Pride. Sorry about that.Party-gyling is one of the defining traits of British brewing over the past 150 years. And, it case you weren't listening all the other times I've said this, it isn't about making a single beer from each running. It's about combining two or three worts to make beers of different gravities.
Why party-gyle? For efficiency, simple as that. It's a good way of using as much of the fermentable materials in the mash as possible. And making efficient use of the equipment. It allowed a brewer like Fullers to make beers that wouldn't have been economic if they'd been made separately. By party-gyling, they were able to use the full capacity of the mash tun every time they brewed.
Like all beers that have been brewed for any length of time, the recipe of London Pride has gone through many incarnations. The one brewed today is quite different from this 1962 version. Particularly in terms of adjuncts. I'm pretty sure Fullers no longer use maize.
Good luck with this one. If you want to be authentic and party-gyle. This is the most complex recipe we've published so far. Oh, and you can mix and match any of the four beers. In the brewing logs they appear in all possible combinations: LP and PA; ELP, LP and LA; etc, etc.
Time for Kristen to take control . . . . .
Fullers 1962 ELP, LP, PA, LA
Sweet Sally in the Alley this took some work. It looks complex but its no more so that the gyle system last week. There are 4 different beers this type and a 3rd gyle to monkey with. I've broken the beers down into each of the 4 beers to brew individually. I've also broken things
down as the proper gyle into the 1st gyle and 2nd gyle which is different than before. Its basically how the beers stack up if you did them separated...then you just gotta blend them back. Someone owes me a bloody pint or 9...
Lets just get cracking...
Grist and such
Lots of adjunct here upwards near 25%. A touch of crystal, some invert sugars and 15% Flaked Maize which will definitely give a corny flavor. As for the sugar, if you have to choose one sugar, do the No2.
Mash
Same as last week, very straightforward mash and as always make sure your hot liquor has a pH around 5.4-5.6.
Hops
This recipe is march 1962 and the hops are 1961. Can't get much more fresh than this. The logs indicate that the hops are broken down per gyle by lbs per quarter. It is missing any details about dry hopping which I'm certain they did and in differing amounts for each beer. The IBU's tend to go up as the gravities go down which finishing even drier would make the beer seem more bitter than it actually is. John might be able to shine a bit more light on this. I would monkey with differing amounts of dry hops (if any) as well as different types.
Gyle breakdown and blending
I've done all th work for you. The first gyle has none of the sugars in them, just the mash. The second will have an OG from the runnings of the 1st mash of about 1.004. With all the sugars added in it will be around 1.010. This low gravity and a higher volume than the first gyle
ensures that this gyle is quite bitter at 45bu or so. The 3rd gyle would be the mash return but for us using treated liquor, or water in a pinch, is completely fine.
Gyle mashing
This is very simple. One mashes and then sparges the mash to get the volume of the first pre-boil wort based on their systems boil-off percentage. One then continues to sparge the same mash until the second wort is collected using the same parameters as the first.
Tasting notes
Sorry boys. This is one of the only ones I havent brewed. Ron got it to me Tuesday afternoon but as soon as I get a chance, I'll do it and add my tasting notes back.
I'm tempted to get Kristen to do Fullers 1962 Nourishing Stout next week. Then you'll have the full set. What do you reckon?
Excellent idea. Nourishing Stout - like a Sweet Stout or a Guinness clone?? Peter
ReplyDeleteI am far too lazy to do a proper gyle, but this is incredibly useful info on how it's done. Ron, please do the 1962 Nourishing Stout next if you can. It'd be great to have the full line up from a single year.
ReplyDeleteKristen, I realize that these recipes use newer hops but can you share how you calculate hop amounts for older hops in some of the other recipes?
Thanks for all this good work. I will try my hand at it, you can be sure of this!
ReplyDeleteBill,
ReplyDeleteThe hop calculations are based around a few things. The first being the approximate alpha acid percent of the hops. The biggest problem is knowing what is what b/c most of the logs list the hops by the places they got them from and not the variety...that didn't come until later. The Fullers logs are much easier b/c they actually describe things like middle kent, east kent, etc...which lets us know they are Kentish type hops of which I can approximate the AA quite easily. The other thing has to do with the year of the log. Different time periods used different methods for storage. You would be surprised at how long ago refrigeration was actually used. The next is the age of the hops which is always listed clearly in the logs. So if I know the type of hop, the approximate AA%, the age of the hop and storage conditions then I can make a pretty good estimate of the final BU count.
The biggest problem with the hopping is that the logs don't indicate when these things were done. The prevailing wisdom of different time periods is expressed in many different brewery manuals and is usually an addition at the beginning and 30min out for the hoppy beers and only once for the low hopped ones. Dry hopping is nearly always indicated which was massively widespread. Seems most places put a touch of dry cask hops into everything.
That make sense?
So specifically to your question, there are a few beers that I've done that have 9 year old hops which one would get VERY little out of. The hopping is through the rough and is very hard to recreate a beer that is like this. All aged hops are the same meaning the ones for lambics and such are usually aged in the open, ones that are aged in the fridge will have a much higher 'hoppy' content.
As for the Nourishing Stout...you'll all get it next week! It doesn't look like a Sweet stout or a Guinness clone. Lots of black malt and flaked maize...they bloody loved their flaked maize at this time.
Any more detailed questions just email me and if pertinent to others Ill post it here.
Morning.
ReplyDeleteFor the PA, the weight for sugar no1 doesn't correspond with the percentage; it appears to be out by a magnitude of ten.
For the ELP, the weights for the crystal and maize look like they've been swapped.
Duff
ReplyDeleteThese old logs were more hand calcs and some things got cocked up. I'll redo I. The new format and have Ron repost. Thanks.