Shepherd Neame beers in 1947

I’ve worked my way through all Shepherd Neame’s beers in 1947. I suppose I should share the details with you.

The six beers are an exciting bunch. Unless you feel like getting tipsy, in which case they wouldn’t be a great deal of use. The strongest is just 3.74% ABV. In fact all of them qualify as genuine session beers, being below 4% ABV.

Having four beers at 1027º is something I’ve not seen before. And all are different styles: Mild, Stout, Light Ale and Light Bitter. I’m particularly impressed by a Stout of that gravity. How the world had changed since the 18th century.

Given the low OG, it’s surprising how high the rate of attenuation is. Quite often you’ll see the FG of low-gravity beers being left quite high, presumably to leave a little body. The AK, at just about 85% attenuation must have been pretty thin. But at least it was just about strong enough to get you intoxicated.

Other defining features: quite high pitching temperatures, though the low OGs partially explain that; quite longs boils at 2 hours; quite a low level of hopping.

To expand on the latter point, Whitbread PA, which had a gravity the same as BA, contained 50% more hops. While their XX Mild, also with an OG of 1027º, contained double the weight of hops that MB did. Whitbread’s beers had between 6 and 9 lbs of hops per quarter, while Shepherd Neame’s were all under 5 lbs.

Shepherd Neame beers in 1947
Date	Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	boil time (hours)			Pitch temp	max. fermen-tation temp
6th Jan	MB	Mild	1027.1	1005.5	2.86	79.74%	3.84	0.44	2	2		63º F	68º F
16th Jan	LDA	Pale Ale	1027.1	1007.2	2.64	73.47%	4.47	0.52	2	2		62.75º F	68º F
15th Jul	AK	Pale Ale	1027.1	1004.2	3.04	84.69%	4.80	0.53	2	2	2	62.5º F	68º F
6th Jan	BB	Pale Ale	1031.3	1006.6	3.26	78.76%	4.75	0.61	2	2		62.75º F	68º F
16th Jan	BA	Pale Ale	1034.3	1006.1	3.74	82.26%	4.70	0.65	2	2		63º F	70º F
10th Jan	SS	Stout	1027.1	1006.1	2.79	77.55%	4.09	0.49	2	1.83		62.75º F	68.25º F
Source:
Shepherd Neame brewing record held at the brewery.

Next we’ll move on to grists.

Shepherd Neame grists in 1947
Beer	Style	OG	pale malt	black malt	flaked barley	malted oats	no. 3 sugar	WCCS sugar	CD	JC	malt extract	hops
MB	Mild	1027.1	68.70%		9.16%		9.16%	3.05%			9.92%	English, Kent
LDA	Pale Ale	1027.1	74.42%		9.30%		15.50%				0.78%	English, Kent
AK	Pale Ale	1027.1	92.31%		6.29%						1.40%	English, Kent
BB	Pale Ale	1031.3	85.04%		14.17%						0.79%	English, Kent
BA	Pale Ale	1034.3	86.90%		12.41%						0.69%	English, Kent
SS	Stout	1027.1	60.94%	9.38%		9.38%			9.38%	7.81%	3.13%	English, Kent, 3lbs hopulon
Source:
Shepherd Neame brewing record held at the brewery.

They aren’t the most complicated of recipes. The Pale Ales, with the exception of LDA, were mostly pale malt with some flaked barley and a little malt extract. The other beers all included sugar, some No. 3 invert and some proprietary sugars.

The most complicated grist belongs to the Stout, which has two different types of sugar, the only coloured malt and malted oats replacing flaked barley.

It’s interesting that Shepherd Neame used no crystal malt. I’m not so surprised in the case of their Pale Ales, as it’s only really in the 1950’s that crystal became common in Bitters. But it’s definitely strange that there’s none in their Mild. Whitbread in this period used crystal malt in all of their Ales with the exception of Double Brown.

No surprise that the hops are all English. Shepherd Neame is located in the middle of hop country. Also the UK was self-sufficient in hops in this period. And short of foreign exchange which would have been needed to buy US hops.