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Wednesday, 28 November 2012

X Ale grists in the 1860's

While I'm on the topic of grists, I may as well do the ones for the Milds I've been boring you with. They aren't all that exciting, one or two unexpected ingredients excepted.

19th-century grists can be a great disappointment to those hoping to find exciting recipes. Porter and Stout aside, most beers had very simple grists with nothing other than base malt. It's not what I'd expected to find. But, after looking at the odd few thousand brewing records, it's clear that this is just how they brewed back then.

Over-complication is a modern failing. How many current beers have recipes that are more complicated than they need to be? My guess is quite a lot. I don't want to bore you with this, but one of my favourite beers of all time, Pretty Things XXXX Mild*, has just four ingredients. That's including water and yeast.

The London X Ales definitely have the edge in terms of grist complexity. Only Barclay Perkins ones were 100% pale malt. That these beers were pale in colour is attested by the use of white malt in some. That was the palest kind of pale malt.

The Courage grists really are unusual. I'd forgotten that they included brown malt. The percentage is pretty small so I wonder what the point was. It would have added a little colour, but also flavour. I wonder which was the prime reason for its use?

The limited amount of sugar used is also worth highlighting. Sugar had been a legal ingredient since 1847, but it wasn't immediately hugely popular. Whitbread was the first of the big London brewers to adopt it in a big way, coincidentally about exactly at this time. This is when these brewers began using sugar regularly:

Whitbread 1865
Truman 1876
Barclay Perkins 1880

When we finally get to the next instalment in this series, you'll see just how much Barclay Perkins grists were transformed by the Free Mash Tun Act.

What can I say about the provincial grists? Very little as they are, with a single exception, 100% base malt. The only exception is the Medway X Ale with its small amount of crystal malt. This is a very early sighting of crystal malt. But that's another topic we'll be learning more about later.

Almost forgot my other point: the differing gravities. You can see that London X Ale was over 1060º, the provincial ones around 1050º. There's a similar gravity gap all the way up the strength scale

That's me done. I'll leave you with the tables.

London X Ale grists in the 1860's
Date Year Brewer Beer OG FG ABV App. Atten-uation lbs hops/ qtr hops lb/brl pale malt brown malt white malt sugar
14th May 1867 Barclay Perkins X 1061.2 1018.6 5.64 69.68% 9.85 2.77 100.00%
2nd Oct 1868 Barclay Perkins XX 1078.9 1024.7 7.18 68.77% 12.89 4.47 100.00%
2nd Oct 1868 Barclay Perkins XXX 1092.8 1030.2 8.28 67.46% 14.21 5.90 100.00%
8th Jul 1867 Whitbread X 1061.2 1020.2 5.42 66.97% 10.12 2.95 86.07% 13.93%
16th May 1867 Whitbread XL 1071.2 1026.0 5.97 63.42% 9.01 3.05 85.25% 14.75%
3rd Jun 1867 Whitbread XX 1082.3 1031.3 6.74 61.95% 9.09 3.21 85.96% 14.04%
3rd Jul 1865 Truman X Ale 1067.3 1013.9 7.07 79.42% 9 2.78 64.71% 35.29%
4th Jul 1865 Truman 40/- Ale 1072.6 1020.8 6.85 71.37% 9 3.00 100.00%
22nd Aug 1865 Truman XX Ale 1081.2 1020.5 8.03 74.74% 11.0 7.17 100.00%
22nd Aug 1865 Truman XXX Ale 1088.9 1022.7 8.76 74.45% 11.0 10.15 100.00%
23rd July 1867 Courage Ale X 1065.9 10.00 3.10 97.82% 2.18%
30th July 1867 Courage Ale XX 1078.9 10.00 3.71 91.90% 3.05% 5.05%
Sources:
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives document numbers LMA/4453/D/01/032 and LMA/4453/D/01/033.
Barclay Perkins brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives document numbers ACC/2305/1/572 and ACC/2305/08/275.
Truman brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives document number B/THB/C/147.
Courage brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives document number ACC/2305/08/275.


Provincial X Ale grists in the 1860's
Date Year Brewer Beer OG FG ABV App. Atten-uation lbs hops/ qtr hops lb/brl pale malt crystal malt white malt
1st Oct 1868 Tetley X 1047.4 1020.8 3.52 56.14% 6.00 1.11 100.00%
2nd Oct 1868 Tetley X1 1055.4 1019.4 4.76 65.00% 6.00 1.30 100.00%
5th Oct 1868 Tetley X2 1062.0 1017.7 5.86 71.43% 8.00 2.00 100.00%
19th Oct 1868 Tetley X3 1066.5 1022.2 5.86 66.67% 9.96 3.93 100.00%
17th Oct 1868 William Younger X 1053 1023 3.97 56.60% 6.30 1.36 100.00%
24th Aug 1868 William Younger XX 1057 1024 4.37 57.89% 9.58 2.25 100.00%
26th Aug 1868 William Younger XXX 1068 1028 5.29 58.82% 8.00 2.55 100.00%
18th Jun 1869 Medway X 1051.5 8.00 1.75 96.88% 3.13%
2nd Jun 1869 Medway XX 1066.8 9.00 2.63 100.00%
1864 Lovibond X Ale 1050.4 1015.5 4.62 69.23% 10.50 3.15 100.00%
1864 Lovibond XX Ale 1065.6 1015.0 6.70 77.20% 2.73 0.81 100.00%
1864 Lovibond XXX Ale 1074.2 1016.6 7.62 77.61% 6.50 1.04 100.00%
1864 Lovibond XXXX Ale 1085.3 1019.9 8.65 76.62% 10.50 2.01
100.00%
Sources:
Tetley brewing record held at the West Yorkshire Archive Service, Leeds document number WYL756/16/ACC1903
William Younger brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive document number WY/6/1/2/21
Medway brewing record owned by me
Lovibond brewing record owned by me



* Dann has promised he'll be brewing it again soon. I can't wait to get my hands on some more of it.

9 comments:

  1. Oblivious28 November 2012 at 00:31

    Looks like the Provincial X Ales had a lower hoppping rate too, especially with the higher gravity beers

    ReplyDelete
  2. Martyn Cornell28 November 2012 at 01:28

    On the other hand, IIRC, the retail prices for London X ale and provincial X ale were similar if not identical, suggesting that in London the brewers (1) competed on strength rather than price and (2) had sufficient economies of scale to enable them to offer a stronger brew for the lower price.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ron Pattinson28 November 2012 at 03:27

    Martyn, that's what I've read in other sources: the big London brewers were able to sell stronger beer at the same price as their smaller and provincial competitors.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Velky Al28 November 2012 at 06:11

    Would I be in the right ballpark for saying that using lager malt rather than something like Maris Otter would be the modern equivalent of 'white malt'?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ron Pattinson28 November 2012 at 07:06

    Velky Al, possibly. Or maybe just the palest modern pale malt.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Arctic Alchemy28 November 2012 at 21:17

    "Over-complication is a modern failing"...thank you Ron Pattinson !

    ReplyDelete
  7. Oblivious28 November 2012 at 23:59

    Would I be in the right ballpark for saying that using lager malt rather than something like Maris Otter would be the modern equivalent of 'white malt'?

    I know Durden Park had opted with a 50:50 lager, pale malt ratio

    ReplyDelete
  8. Gary Gillman29 November 2012 at 05:15

    Back in the comments here in 2009 there was a discussion of white malt with reference to malting writers and others (e.g. Michael Combrune) who used the term. Originally it seems to have meant a very lightly kilned pale malt, almost a semi-raw barley and one that needed to be used quickly to avoid going acid. I doubt modern lager malt if of this character, but on the other hand, in these current recipes being discussed, a very pale malt might work if highly modified since again the meaning of the term varied in the 1800's. Sometimes it seems to have meant a very pale malt, the whitest obtainable. Sometimes it seems to have meant regular pale malt that went slack in storage (became too wet from moisture and lost hue for this reason, bleached in effect by weather). So it is hard to know what this white malt really was.

    Gary

    ReplyDelete
  9. Gary Gillman29 November 2012 at 12:27

    This description of North American 2-row barley malt:

    http://www.byo.com/stories/techniques/article/indices/9-all-grain-brewing/174-base-malt-basics-homebrew-science

    suggests this may be ideal to use as a modern white malt. The only thing I'm wondering about is the fairly high protein level, but perhaps Victorian white malt (not the improperly stored kind) was of this character since prolonged modification seems uncharacteristic of very pale malts, i.e., white malt probably retained more starch and protein than more modified malts which latter are generally somewhat darker. At least, that is my understanding.

    Gary

    ReplyDelete