Robert Younger's beers in 1957

Another year, another set of details from a defunct Scottish brewery.

Sadly, the Scottish Brewing Archive only has three of Robert Younger's brewing books. They cover the 7 or 8 years before the brewery's closure in 1961. But they've still been useful in helping me get my head around Scottish brewing after WW II. In conjunction with Maclay's records. It's quite different from what I've seen in England.

My first impression was: what a lot of Pale Ales they brewed. Five in all, with a spread of just 17 gravity points. To be honest, they didn't brew a great deal of most of them. Over 50% of what they brewed was 60/-. Here's a table to demonstrate

Beer	barrels brewed	% of total
54/-	155.8	4.76%
60/-	1754.5	53.60%
70/-	279.8	8.55%
80/-	237.5	7.26%
Export	564.3	17.24%
OEA	31.0	0.95%
Sweet Stout	250.8	7.66%
Total	3273.5	100.00%

It's not totally scientific, the way I've assembled that table. It's just what was on the half dozen or so pages of the brewing log I went through. But I think it gives a reasonable rough idea of how much of each beer they brewed.

Notice something odd about the Pale Ales? The FG is the same for most of them. English brewers usually aimed for about 75% attenuation in most of their beers. Robert Younger seems to have been aiming for a specific FG number, rather than a degree of attenuation. Which means that their lower-gravity Pale Ales have higher FG's than equivalent English beers.

You may be asking yourselves "What the hell is the difference between 80/- and Export?". Why have two beers of such similar gravity? And isn't 80/- Export, anyway? They weren't the only brewery to do this. In the 1950's, Drybrough had XXP at 1043º and Export at 1045º. Weird, isn't it?

Old Edinburgh Ale was a dark beer. As was the Strong Ale. How they brewed them and the Sweet Stout is, er, interesting. I'm sure there are some that would call them fake beers. I prefer the adjective ingenious. We'll be going into that in more detail next time.

Robert Younger's beers in 1957
Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	hops lb/brl
54/-	Pale Ale	1028	1008	2.65	71.43%	0.50
60/-	Pale Ale	1030	1012	2.38	60.00%	0.60
70/-	Pale Ale	1035	1011	3.18	68.57%	0.67
80/-	Pale Ale	1043	1012	4.10	72.09%	0.83
Export	Pale Ale	1045	1012	4.37	73.33%	0.86
Old Edinburgh Ale	Old Ale	1044	1012	4.23	72.73%	0.71
Sweet Stout	Stout	1030	1014.5	2.05	51.67%	0.57
Strong Ale	Strong Ale	1070	1024	6.09	65.71%	1.22
Source:
Robert Younger brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive document number RY/6/1/2.