Robert Younger's grists in 1957

It's time for the second part of my enthralling look at the beers of Robert Younger in 1957. Don't worry. I'll stop being so general and get more specific soon.

Robert Younger's beers have been an education to me. And shown me how atypical William Younger was. All those different recipes. Other Scottish brewers kept it much simpler. Much, much simpler.

How simple the malt stores must have been in Scotland. On one corner a pile of Scottish malt, in another malt from foreign barley. And finally a carrier bag of black malt. The sugar stores, on the other hand, were piled high with different sweet wonders.

If you're wondering why the grists look so similar for all their beers there's a good reason: they were all brewed from the same basic recipe. That includes the Sweet Stout, which they cleverly managed to parti-gyle with 60/-. How? That's a good question. One I'll attempt to explain.

It's all to do with the coppers. For each brew they used a single mash tun but multiple coppers, usually three. As in English breweries, the sugars weren't divided evenly between the coppers, but tended to be concentrated in those of the later, weaker worts. When brewing Sweet Stout, they took it a bit further, dumping black malt and liquorice into one of the coppers.

Those of you who understand true parti-gyling, are probably thinking: "What happens when the worts all get blended together? Won't some of the wort from the black malt and liquorice copper end up in the 60/-?" The answer is simple: yes. Unless they were throwing away wort, which is extremely unlikely.

How do I know that for sure? By looking at the numbers. The Black malt copper yielded 52 barrels at 1041º. But there were 52.75 barrels at 1031º of Sweet Stout wort in the fermenter. I make that 500 missing gravity points. Where else could that wort have gone, other than in another beer in the parti-gyle?

Robert Younger's grists in 1957
Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	pale malt	black malt	caramel	liquorice	invert sugar	hydrol sugar	flaked maize	malt extract
54/-	Pale Ale	1028	1008	2.65	71.43%	71.47%		0.06%		4.65%	4.65%	17.43%	1.74%
60/-	Pale Ale	1030	1012	2.38	60.00%	75.34%		0.05%		4.02%	4.02%	15.07%	1.51%
70/-	Pale Ale	1035	1011	3.18	68.57%	75.32%		0.05%		4.83%	3.86%	14.49%	1.45%
80/-	Pale Ale	1043	1012	4.10	72.09%	75.32%		0.05%		4.83%	3.86%	14.49%	1.45%
Export	Pale Ale	1045	1012	4.37	73.33%	76.67%		0.05%		4.56%	3.65%	13.69%	1.37%
Old Edinburgh Ale	Old Ale	1044	1012	4.23	72.73%	77.06%		0.47%	0.06%	4.37%	3.28%	13.12%	1.64%
Sweet Stout	Stout	1030	1015	2.05	51.67%	75.99%	0.68%	0.15%	0.11%	4.52%	3.62%	13.57%	1.36%
Strong Ale	Strong Ale	1070	1024	6.09	65.71%	71.71%		0.05%		3.48%	5.21%	18.25%	1.30%
Source:
Robert Younger brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive document number RY/6/1/2.