England vs Scotland, part 1: the 1830's.

Treat or nightmare. I've one of them for you today. Which it will be, depends on your attitude to detail.There's going to be lots of that. If you're the more superficial type, I'd bog off now before you get bogged down.

Ever since I dragged the family to Glasgow to spend some time with the Scottish Brewing Archive, I've been planning a series of in-depth comparisons between English and Scottish beers and brewing practices. This is part one.

It's taken me a wee while to lasso and tie all those pesky numbers. More than two years. But the wait has been well worth it.

In the interests of fairness and coming up with results that actually have some effing meaning, I'm comparing like for like. That is, beers in the same style and with similar gravities. Not that there's a heap of variety in this first set. All I have from Younger are Shilling Ales. It'll get more complex as we progress through the 19th century and Younger's range gets ever broader.

It says something about early 19th-century beer strengths that only one solitary, single example we'll be looking at today is below 1070º. Nice Cooking Milds.

Date	Year	Brewer	Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Attenuation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)	Pitch temp º F	max. fermentation temp º F
17th Feb	1837	Whitbread	X	Mild	1066.2	1030.5	4.73	53.97%	7.65	2.15	2	2	3	63	72
7th Mar	1837	Barclay Perkins	X	Mild	1071.5	1013.2	7.71	81.53%	7.05	2.44	2.5			58	70
16th Aug	1839	Barclay Perkins	X	Mild	1071.5	1012.3	7.83	82.79%	9.09	3.16	3.25			59	77
14th Mar	1839	Barclay Perkins	X	Mild	1071.7	1013.4	7.72	81.32%	7.11	2.48	3.5			58.5	72
12th Apr	1832	Truman	X Ale	Mild	1072.0	1032.7	5.20	54.62%	4.5	1.30				64	75
3rd Dec	1831	Truman	X Ale	Mild	1072.3	1021.6	6.71	70.11%	7	2.33				62	77
15th Mar	1837	Whitbread	X	Mild	1072.6	1033.8	5.13	53.44%	6.05	1.87	2	2	3	62.5	73
14th Feb	1837	Whitbread	X	Mild	1072.6	1030.5	5.57	58.02%	7.60	2.38	2	2	3	63.5	74.5
2nd Jan	1837	Whitbread	X	Mild	1072.9	1032.7	5.31	55.13%	7.49	2.43	2	2	3	60	73
13th Mar	1837	Whitbread	X	Mild	1073.7	1031.6	5.57	57.14%	7.64	2.41	2	2	3	63.5	72.5
23rd Dec	1836	Whitbread	X	Mild	1074.0	1031.6	5.61	57.30%	7.00	2.35	2.17	2	2.5	64	71
27th Feb	1837	Whitbread	X	Mild	1074.2	1031.6	5.64	57.46%	6.11	1.99	2	2	3	63	73.5
3rd Mar	1837	Whitbread	X	Mild	1075.6	1031.6	5.83	58.24%	8.07	2.65	2	2	3	63	71.5
11th Nov	1836	Whitbread	X	Mild	1075.9	1030.5	6.01	59.85%	6.09	2.07	2	2	3.5	64	75
5th Dec	1836	Whitbread	X	Mild	1077.0	1029.4	6.30	61.87%	6.55	2.33	2	2	3	63.5	74.5
2nd Dec	1831	Truman	XX Ale	Mild	1077.3	1024.4	7.00	68.46%	8	2.77				62	79
average					1073.2	1026.9			7.06	2.32	2.3	2.0	3.0	62.1	73.8
24th Dec	1831	Younger, Wm. & Co	60/-	Mild	1076				3.97	1.67	1.25			53	70
difference									-3.10	-0.65	-1.01	-2.00	-3.00	-9.09	-3.78
Sources:
Whitbread brewing book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/01/001
Barclay Perkins brewing book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number ACC/2305/1/550
William Younger brewing book held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document WY/6/1/2/1
Truman brewing book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number B/THB/C/115

I guess you want me to kick the teeth out of that? Sorry, I meant pick the bones out of that.


Don't read anything into 60/- equating to X Ale, or ordinary Mild. That's pure historical coincidence.

Based on the standard bolleaux written about Scottish beer, I'm concentrating on three areas:

• hopping rate
• boil length
• fermentation temperature

Which, according to the standard story, should be low, low and long for Scottish beer.

Let's go through them in order.

The Younger's beer is on average about 50% less heavily hopped than the London beers. There's only one English beer, a Truman's X Ale, that contains fewer hops.

Oh look at that! The Younger's beer has a much shorter boil than any of the English beers. None of them was boiled for less than 2 hours. The Scottish beer is, on average, boiled for more than an hour less.


According to Roberts (an other sources), Scottish beers were pitched on average around 10º F cooler than English beers, usually around 50º F. You can see that the Younger's beer was pitched at a greater temperature than that, 53º F. It was indeed pitched 9º F cooler than the average of the English beers. However there's a much smaller difference in the maximum fermentation temperature - just shy of 4º F. And one English beer had the same maximum of 70º F.


The Younger's beer was definitely fermented cooler than the English beers, but the difference than is usually stated.

I've too much for just today. I'll need  a couple more posts to get through it all. What a treat.