Let's Brew Wednesday - 1898 William Younger XX

As I’ve given you the recipe for the bottled version, 80/-, I thought I may as well provide draught XX, too.

There are similarities between the beers, but also some differences. The OG is identical at 1061. The FG, on the other hand varies considerably. For XX it’s 1016º, 80/- 1027º. Amongst all Younger’s beers with crappy levels of attenuation, this one stands out because it looks so normal.

Younger was an enthusiastic dry hopper of their draught beers and XX is no exception, despite being a Mild. It’s frustrating that many brewers didn’t bother to include dry hops in their brewing records. Meaning in lots of cases I’ve no idea if beers were dry-hopped or not. Barclay Perkins thankfully did include the information in their 20th –century logs and I know they didn’t dry hop Milds. Though they did add loads of priming at racking time.

The big difference between the grists is the inclusion of grits and invert sugar in XX. My guess is that was intended to make the wort more fermentable. Sadly, the type of invert isn’t specified. Which would have a big impact on the colour of the beer. No. 3 invert would darken the colour quite a bit. I’ll leave the selection of invert up to you. At this late point in the 19th century, it could have been a dark invert that they used.

1898 William Younger XX
pale malt	8.50 lb	69.39%
grits	1.50 lb	12.24%
invert sugar	2.25 lb	18.37%
Cluster 90 min	2.00 oz
Fuggles 30 min	1.00 oz
Goldings dry hops	0.50 oz
OG	1061
FG	1016
ABV	5.95
Apparent attenuation	73.77%
IBU	51
SRM	4
Mash at	154º F
Sparge at	160º F
Boil time	90 minutes
pitching temp	58.5º F
Yeast	WLP028 Edinburgh Ale