Let's Brew Wednesday - 1949 William Younger DBS

I would have posted this last week. Except I was away from home. Better late than never, eh?

We continue in the bewitching world of postwar Britain. When the food and raw materials situation was in some cases worse than during the war. That was certainly the case with brewing materials.

I'll be straight with you. This recipe was a nightmare to interpret. The malts (other than the base malts) are nothing more than a scribbled letter with a number under them. Somehow - I'm not sure how - the brewer managed to write "Rst" so it looks like "Lac". That crazy old-fashioned writing. I could only work it out by looking at other DBS brews.

See what I mean:

We've made educated guesses as to what M and C stand for, I'm pretty sure C is crystal. And the only type of malt that starts with  an M that I can think of is mild malt.

As you can probably guess from the shitload of lactose, we're in Sweet Stout territory here. Scottish Sweet Stout territory, which is the sweetest of all. That's a stack of caramel, too. Black and sweet, that's what this baby must have been. A real granny Stout.

DBS is a beer that underwent radical changes in character over its long life. Here you can see those changes in table form:

William Younger DBS 1851 - 1939
Year	Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	boil time (hours)		Pitch temp
1851	DBS	Stout	1089	1025	8.47	71.91%	14.00	5.68	2.25		64º
1858	DBS	Stout	1071	1020	6.75	71.83%	20.00	6.84	1.75		61º
1869	DBS	Stout	1065	1018	6.22	72.31%	13.33	3.83	2.25	3	62º
1879	DBS	Stout	1073	1035	5.03	52.05%	12.86	5.00	1.75	2.25	58º
1885	DBS	Stout	1073	1025	6.35	65.75%	15.86	5.51	2	2.5	56º
1898	DBS	Stout	1069	1023	6.09	66.67%	7.50	2.26	3	3.5	59.5º
1913	DBS	Stout	1065	1022	5.69	66.15%	10.65	2.63	2.5	3	59.5º
1921	Btg DBS	Stout	1060	1019	5.42	68.33%	10.65	2.63	2	2.5	60º
1923	DBS	Stout	1058	1029	3.84	50.00%	4.21	1.67	2		60.5º
1933	DBS Btlg	Stout	1066	1025.0	5.42	62.12%	9.31	2.14	2.5	3	60.5º
1939	DBS Btlg	Stout	1066	1023.0	5.69	65.15%	6.06	1.59	2.5	3	60.5º
Sources:
Documents WY/6/1/2/5, WY/6/1/2/14, WY/6/1/2/21, WY/6/1/2/28, WY/6/1/2/31, WY/6/1/2/45, WY/6/1/2/58, WY/6/1/2/70 and WY/6/1/2/76 of the William Younger archive held at the Scottish Brewing Archive.

See how, in general, the attenuation fell over time. As did the gravity. The FG, on the other hand, remained fairly constant. The beer in the recipe has a higher FG than the much stronger 1869 version. The hopping rate fell dramatically at the end of the 19th century, which must have had a big impact on the flavour of the beer.

Though I haven't shown it in the table, there were big changes in ingredients, too. The 19th-century incarnation was pale, brown and black malt, with no caramel or lactose.




Tha's me done. Over to Kristen . . . . . .

Kristen’s Version:

Notes:

This beer has a ton of different malts in it. Let’s just keep it simple shall we? The blend of pale malts makes this more complex so at least use two if you can. Some Golden Promise and Optic work very nicely but use what you can. The Mild malt can be replaced if you can’t get it with any type of pale…there isn’t enough to make that big of a difference. The two big keys to this beer are the caramel and the lactose. If you don’t have access to caramel, don’t worry about it. If you do, you’ll see you need about 30srm (60ebc). Is it needed, no, but for all those that have it, its easy enough to do. The lactose. You need it. The beer won’t be the same without. Go and find it if your shop doesn’t have it. Crunch hippy stores usually have it. Add it any time during the boil.