X Ales in the 1880's

Once I get started, it can be difficult to stop. That's my excuse for continuing with this series looking at X Ales in detail. Far too much detail, really.

We're now in the 1880's, a key period in the development of British beer, when brewers had been unshackled by the 1880 Free Mash Tun Act. Suddenly a whole range of new ingredients were allowed. I'd been hoping/expecting to find maize and rice and other shit like that. I didn't. But more about that in the next part about the grists. Here I'm limiting myself to looking at the beer specifications.

This lot are quite tricky to make sense out of. With gravities all over the shop. Different examples of Barclay Perkins X ranged from 1055º to 1064º. Not sure what that was about. Truman seem to have brewed their X Ale to two slightly different strengths, 1053º and 1059º. The two in the table were parti-gyled together. It's very confusing. Possibly they could be London and Country versions. The "L" in Whitbread's XL almost certainly stands for London.

What is clear, is the disappearance of most of the stronger London X Ales. There are only a couple of XX Ales in the table. The stronger ones - XXX and XXXX Ale - had completely disappeared. The strongest London Mild is Barclay Perkins XX Ale at 1078º. If you can remember back that far, you'll recall that in my table for the 1860's there was a Mild over 1090º. In the 1830's table there were many Milds over 1100º. Stronger Milds continued to disappear right up until WW I, by which time London brewers generally only brewed X Ale.

It's intriguing that outside London breweries continued to brew a range of different-strength Milds. At the same time, it's worth noting that the third Mild up from Tetley and William Younger were only about the same level as The X Ales of Barclay Perkins and Whitbread.

I can't see any pattern in the rate of attenuation. Both the London and provincial examples mostly fall in the range 65% to 75%.

As the sample contains beers with very different gravities, the fairest way to compare hopping rates is to look at pounds per quarter of malt. Ignoring the outliers in each set (Barclay's XX and Tetley's X3), the London beers have between 6.5 and 9 pounds, the provincial ones 4.25 to 9 pounds. The averages are 7.61 for London and 6.44 for the provinces. I think it's fair enough to say that London X Ales were a little more heavily hopped than their provincial cousins.

I love looking at boil times. If only to demonstrate what bollocks all that shit is about Scottish brewers boiling their first runnings down to syrup. Note that the two Scottish brewers, William Younger and Thomas Usher, did not have the longest boils. In fact only Fullers boiled for a shorter time than Usher and the longest boils by far were at Truman's Burton brewery.

This is good. There's a clear pattern in the fermentation temperatures. London brewers pitch slightly cooler and let their worts get warmer. To make it easy, I've put the averages into a table:

	Pitch	max
London	59.3º	71.4º
Provincial	60.6º	68.3º

Note that the two Scottish brewers are close to the provincial average in their fermentation temperatures. Disproving that other load of Scottish bollocks, the one about them fermenting at near lager temperatures. Not even close to being true.

Most of the fermentations, both London and provincial, took 7 or 8 days. Not much else I can say about that.

Next time we'll be looking at the grists of these beers.

London X Ales in the 1880's
Date	Year	Brewer	Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)	Pitch temp	max. fermen-tation temp	length of fermen-tation (days)
4th May	1886	Barclay Perkins	X	Mild	1055.0	1010.0	5.96	81.87%	6.42	1.61	1.5	2			60º	72º	3 + 2
24th Jun	1886	Barclay Perkins	X	Mild	1064.0	1015.0	6.49	76.63%	8.00	1.97	2	2.5			60º	72º	3 + 3
3rd May	1887	Barclay Perkins	XX	Mild	1078.0	1024.9	7.02	68.04%	16.00	5.85	2				59º	70º	3 + 4
19th Oct	1886	Whitbread	X	Mild	1061.2	1015.8	6.01	74.21%	9.11	2.38		2			59º	º	8
12th Nov	1885	Whitbread	XL	Mild	1071.2	1020.8	6.67	70.82%	8.13	2.48	1.5	2			60º	º	7
19th May	1886	Truman	X Ale	Mild	1052.6				8.0	1.88	2	2	2.25	2.25	60.5º	º	8
19th May	1886	Truman	X Ale	Mild	1058.7				8.0	2.09	2	2	2.25	2.25	60.5º	º	8
23rd Apr	1887	Fuller	X	Mild	1054.6	1020.5	4.51	62.44%	6.64	1.63	1.5	1.75			58º	71º	12
23rd Apr	1887	Fuller	XX	Mild	1064.8	1023.3	5.50	64.10%	6.64	1.93	1.5	1.75			57º	72º	12
Sources:
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives document numbers LMA/4453/D/01/051 and LMA/4453/D/01/052.
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives document number ACC/2305/1/584.
Truman brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives document number B/THB/C/166.

Provincial X Ales in the 1880's
Date	Year	Brewer	Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)	Pitch temp	max. fermen-tation temp	length of fermen-tation (days)
11th May	1888	Tetley	X	Mild	1046.0	1016.1	3.96	65.06%	4.31	0.69	2			65º	68º	8
11th May	1888	Tetley	X1	Mild	1053.7	1016.6	4.91	69.07%	5.31	1.02	2			63º	68º	8
14th May	1888	Tetley	X2	Mild	1063.2	1016.6	6.16	73.68%	8.40	2.02	3			65º	68º	9
13th Jun	1888	Tetley	X3	Mild	1071.2	1016.1	7.29	77.43%	12.00	3.57	3			63º	68º	8
22nd May	1885	William Younger	X	Mild	1048	1009	5.16	81.25%	5.29	0.99	2	2.5		60º	67º	6
24th May	1885	William Younger	XX	Mild	1056	1012	5.82	78.57%	6.19	1.53	2	2.5		60º	69º	7
1st June	1885	William Younger	XXX	Mild	1065	1021	5.82	67.69%	6.67	1.86	2	2.5		58º	67.5	6
9th Jan	1885	Thomas Usher	X	Mild	1050	1013	4.89	74.00%	9.00	2.00	1.5	2		58º	69.5º	6
18th Jan	1887	Truman (Burton)	A	Mild	1052.1	1012.2	5.28	76.60%	7.19	1.40	3	3	3	60º	68º	8
18th Jan	1887	Truman (Burton)	8	Mild	1054.0	1013.9	5.31	74.36%	7.19	1.45	3	3	3	60º	69º	8
8th Feb	1887	Truman (Burton)	7	Mild	1061.2	1016.6	5.90	72.85%	5.90	1.46	3	3	3	59º	68º	8
19th Jan	1887	Truman (Burton)	6	Mild	1066.5	1019.9	6.16	70.00%	6.64	1.95	3	3	3	57º	69º	8
8th Jan	1886	Hodgson	XX	Mild	1063.71				5.23	1.32				60º	69.5º
Sources:
Tetley brewing record held at the West Yorkshire Archive Service, Leeds document number WYL756/44/ACC1903
William Younger brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive document number WY/6/1/2/31
Thomas Usher brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive document number TU/6/1/1.
Truman brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives document number B/THB/BUR/11.
Hodgson brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives document number ACC/2305/08/253.