Boring Drybrough

Not that they’re unique in that. Most Scottish breweries had dull product ranges. Just two recipes, one for Pale Ales and Strong Ale, another for Stout. Drybrough didn’t even brew a Stout.

Back in 1934, they only brewed four beers: three Pale Ales, 54/-, 60/- and 80/-; and Burns Ale, a Strong Ale. Though 85% of what they brewed was 60/-. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a brewery where one beer dominated quite that much.

Though having done a quick newspaper search, I’m wondering whether it was all sold as 60/-. Because I’ve found adverts from the 1950’s for something called Nourishing Stout. But there’s no Stout in the brewing records. So they must have been using some sort of primings to transform one of their Pale Ales into Stout.

Just checked something else. My mega table of beer analyses. And guess what I found? Drybrough Nourishing Stout from the 1930’s. Two examples. One with an OG of 1033, the other 1031. Meaning there’s only one beer they could have been fiddling with: 54/-. All the others had a higher OG.

Their grists are fairly typical of the mid-20th century: pale malt, flaked maize and sugar. With a tiny hint of black malt and enzymic malt. The same recipe for all the Pale Ales, 54/-, 60/- and 80/-. While the sugar is slightly different for Burns. The hops were all English for most beers, though later it was always a mix of Oregon and English.

I wouldn’t like to guess what colour any of these beers were. I know from the monthly ingredients summaries that they used caramel, though it doesn’t appear in any of the logs. Like most Scottish brewers, I suspect they coloured their beers to several different shades.

All the beers listed below were brewed with another Edinburgh brewer, Bernard's, yeast. Using yeast from another brewery was pretty common in Edinburgh. It makes me wonder whether the breweries really had their own proprietary strains, given how often they swapped yeast with each other.

I’m going to leave you with some tables. First, one showing the predominance of 60/-:

Drybrough output January 1934
	OG	bulk barrels	bulk gallons	%
54/-	1029	123.36	4,441	10.93%
60/-	1035	958.56	34,508	84.96%
80/-	1049	25.39	914	2.25%
Burns	1080	4.53	163	0.40%
primings	1140	16.36	589	1.45%
total		1,128.19
Source:
Drybrough brewing record held at the Scottish Brewin Archive, document number D/6/1/1/4

Using that, I was able to calculate the average OG of all they brewed: 1036.4. Which is well below the average for the UK in 1934, which was 1040.99*.

Now the full details of the beers:

Drybrough beers in 1934
Beer	Style	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)
54/-	Pale Ale	1029.0	1012.0	2.25	58.62%	4.91	0.58	2	60º	65º	5
60/-	Pale Ale	1035.0	1013.0	2.91	62.86%	5.26	0.75	2	62.5º	67.5º	6
80/-	Pale Ale	1049.0	1015.0	4.50	69.39%	5.26	1.06	2	62.5º	68.5º	7
Burns	Strong Ale	1084.0	1033.0	6.75	60.71%	5.99	2.49	3.5	57.5º	67º	7
Source:
Drybrough brewing record held at the Scottish Brewin Archive, document number D/6/1/1/4

Drybrough grists in 1934
Beer	Style	OG	pale malt	black malt	enzymic malt	flaked maize	Fison	Avona	Invert	Candy sugar	malt extract	hops
54/-	Pale Ale	1029.0	72.02%	0.80%	1.80%	14.40%	2.06%	5.49%	2.74%		0.69%	English
60/-	Pale Ale	1035.0	72.18%	0.39%	1.91%	15.31%	2.19%	4.37%	2.92%		0.73%	English
80/-	Pale Ale	1049.0	72.18%	0.39%	1.91%	15.31%	2.19%	4.37%	2.92%		0.73%	English
Burns	Strong Ale	1084.0	74.55%	1.45%		12.85%		6.86%		3.43%	0.86%	Oregon and English
Source:
Drybrough brewing record held at the Scottish Brewin Archive, document number D/6/1/1/4

* Brewers' Almanack 1955, p. 50.