Barclay Perkins Pale Ale grists 1935 – 1936

Time to take a look at Barclay Perkins Pale Ale grists in 1956 and 1836.

If you can remember as far back as last week, you’ll recall that there was a large degree of variation in Barclay’s Mild Ale grists. Are we going to find the same with their Pale Ales? In a word, no.

Whereas there was quite a bit of variation with the sugar and the base malt for X Ale, there’s none of that for the Pale Ales. Not only are the malts and sugars used the same for all brews, the percentages are pretty much identical, too. The only tiny difference is in the hopping, where not all examples contained Golding varieties. Other than that, everything is the same.

Interesting that there should be such a contract between Bitter and Mild. I’m not sure why that might be, Other than that they were more reluctant to play around with the recipe of the pricier beers but were prepared to use whatever was to hand for Mild.

Note that the sugar percentage is higher than for X Ale. It was often the case that Pale Ales would contain more sugar than Mild. Especially stronger Pale Ales. It was a hangover from the 19th century when brewers wanted to keep the body and colour as light as possible.

Barclay Perkins Pale Ale grists 1935 - 1936
Year	Beer	OG	pale malt	PA malt	flaked maize	no. 2 sugar	caramel	hops
1935	PA	1052.7	29.15%	43.09%	8.87%	18.59%	0.30%	MK Fuggles, MK Golding varieties, Saaz dry hops
1935	PA	1052.7	29.15%	43.09%	8.87%	18.59%	0.30%	MK Fuggles, MK Golding varieties, Saaz dry hops
1936	PA	1052.7	29.17%	44.73%	7.78%	18.15%	0.16%	MK Fuggles, Saaz dry hops
1935	XLK (bottling)	1039	29.15%	43.09%	8.87%	18.59%	0.30%	MK Fuggles, MK Golding varieties
1935	XLK (trade)	1045.7	29.15%	43.09%	8.87%	18.59%	0.30%	MK Fuggles, MK Golding varieties
1935	XLK (trade)	1045.5	29.15%	43.09%	8.87%	18.59%	0.30%	MK Fuggles, MK Golding varieties
1936	XLK (trade)	1045.9	29.17%	44.73%	7.78%	18.15%	0.16%	MK Fuggles
Sources:
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number ACC/2305/01/620.