Tetley Milds in 1888 (part one)

As my interminable series on Tetley Milds trundles on we've hit the 1880's. The decade of the revolution in brewing brought about by the Free Mash Tun Act. What impact will it have had at Tetley?

You're going to have to wait until part two for the answer to that question when we look at grists. Today we're looking at all the boring stuff like boil times. Aren't you a lucky bunny?

To make up for any possible disappointment at the lack of gristy goodness, there's a special bonus table this time around. It compares Tetley's Milds in 1878 and 1888. What does it tell us? A few interesting things.

First, that Tetley's gravities went up slightly between 1878 and 1888. On average, they increased by about two gravity points. Not sure why this should be, unless the change in the tax regime brought in by the Free Mash Tun Act lowered the tax they were paying.

Second, that the hopping rate of the two weakest Milds, X and X1, fell. A fall of about 1 pound per quarter, or 10-20% in terms of pounds per barrel. The hopping rate of the next two Milds in the hierarchy, X2 and X3, stayed about the same. I don't know what happened to XX as I don't have an example from 1888. I know that it hadn't been discontinued, at least not permanently, because I do have one from the 1890's.

Here's that information in tabular form:

Tetley Milds in 1878 and 1888
	1878			1888
Beer	OG	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	OG	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl
X	1044.3	5.31	0.83	1046	4.31	0.69
X1	1048.5	6.23	1.16	1053.7	5.31	1.02
X1	1052.1	6.27	1.32	1053.7	5.31	1.02
X2	1060.4	6.24	1.47	1062.6	8.4	1.94
X2	1060.9	8.32	1.92	1063.2	4	2
X3	1069.3	11.60	3.43	1071.2	12	3.57
XX	1077.6	14.00	5.89
Sources:
Tetley brewing record held at the West Yorkshire Archive Service document number WYL756/25/ACC1903
Tetley brewing record held at the West Yorkshire Archive Service document number WYL756/44/ACC1903

That's the bonus round over. Let's get on with my usual comparison with London.

As before, there's no equivalent in London of Tetley's weakest Mild, X. For the first time we have Fullers represented in the London table and you can see a difference between the gravities of their Milds and those of the larger London breweries. Fuller's X is weaker and similar to Tetley's X1 in strength. Fuller's XX is only about the same gravity as the X from Whitbread and Barclay Perkins. It's more complicated in the case of Truman as they brewed their X Ale to two different strengths: 1053 an 1059.

Tetley's X2 is roughly equivalent to the X from the big London brewers. The strongest Tetley Mild in this set, X3, is weaker than Barclay Perkins XX. And not much stronger than Whitbread's XK, which looks like a one and a half X.

There's a strange pattern when it comes to attenuation. At Tetley, the attenuation increases the stronger the beer. In London, it's the other way around. Which means the weaker Tetley Milds are less well-attenuated than their London equivalents, while the stronger ones are more attenuated. Note that the FG's of all the Tetley Milds are very similar. How Scottish.

Moving on to the hopping rate, that of Tetley X1 is broadly similar to Barclay Perkins, Whitbread and Truman X and Fuller's XX, beers of similar gravity. It's hard to say much about X3 because the only beer of similar gravity, Barclay Perkins XX, has wildly varying hopping rates between the two examples in the table.

Boil times are easy: generally a little bit longer at Tetley.

We see the same story as in earlier years with the fermentation temperature. Tetley's pitched warmer, but let the wort heat up less during fermentation. The difference between pitching and maximum temperatures is just 3-7º F. In London it was mostly 10º F or more.

The fermentation was generally 2 or 3 days quicker in London, with the exception of Fullers, where it was 2 or 3 days longer.

One last general point. You can see how in London no brewer made more than two Milds, while Tetley still brewed at least four and probably five. London brewers seem to have reduced their range of Milds earlier than those outside the capital. I've no idea why this should be.

Next time we'll be looking at the grists.

Tetley Milds in 1888
Date	Year	Beer	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	boil time (hours)	Pitch temp	max. fermen-tation temp	length of fermen-tation (days)
10th May	1888	X	1046.0	1016.6	3.88	63.86%	4.31	0.67	2	65º	68º	8
11th May	1888	X	1046.0	1016.1	3.96	65.06%	4.31	0.69	2	65º	68º	8
11th May	1888	X1	1053.7	1016.6	4.91	69.07%	5.31	1.02	2	63º	68º	8
11th May	1888	X2	1062.6	1016.6	6.08	73.45%	8.40	1.94	3	61º	68º	8
9th May	1888	X2	1063.2	1018.8	5.86	70.18%	4.00	2.00	3	64º	67º	8
14th May	1888	X2	1063.2	1016.6	6.16	73.68%	8.40	2.02	3	65º	68º	9
13th Jun	1888	X3	1071.2	1016.1	7.29	77.43%	12.00	3.57	3	63º	68º	8
Source:
Tetley brewing record held at the West Yorkshire Archive Service document number WYL756/44/ACC1903

London Milds 1886 - 1888
Date	Year	Brewer	Beer	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)
28th Dec	1886	Barclay Perkins	X	1060.0	1012.2	6.33	79.69%	6.27	1.58	1.5	2			63º	72º	3 + 2
24th Jun	1886	Barclay Perkins	X	1064.0	1015.0	6.49	76.63%	8.00	1.97	2	2.5			60º	72º	3 + 3
21st May	1886	Barclay Perkins	XX	1076.0	1022.7	7.05	70.11%	12.00	3.86	2.5				60º	67º	2 + 4
17th Aug	1886	Barclay Perkins	XX	1076.0	1022.4	7.09	70.48%	18.00	6.59	2				60º	70º	3 + 3
1st Mar	1888	Whitbread	X	1060.7	1016.9	5.79	72.15%	7.62	2.06	1.75	2.17			60º	º
1st Mar	1888	Whitbread	XK	1068.1	1020.8	6.27	69.51%	7.62	2.32	1.75	2.17			60º	º
23rd Apr	1887	Fuller	X	1054.6	1020.5	4.51	62.44%	6.64	1.63	1.5	1.75			58º	71º	12
23rd Apr	1887	Fuller	XX	1064.8	1023.3	5.50	64.10%	6.64	1.93	1.5	1.75			57º	72º	12
12th Jul	1886	Truman	D Ale	1052.6				6.1	1.44	2	2	2.5	2.5	62º	º
12th Jul	1886	Truman	X Ale	1058.7				6.0	1.57	2	2	2	2	62º	º
18th May	1886	Truman	X Ale	1058.7				8.1	2.11	2	2	2.25	2.25	60.5º	º
Sources:
Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives document number LMA/4453/D/01/053.
Fullers brewing record held at the brewery.
Truman brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives document number B/THB/C/166.
Barclay Perkins brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives document numbers ACC/2305/1/583 and ACC/2305/1/584.