Barclay Perkins X Ale grists 1935 - 1936

As promised, here are the Barclay Perkins grists. Well, some of them.

I’ve decided to split them up to make the tables a bit more manageable, I’m kicking off with X Ale. Basically standing in for all of their Milds. Because X Ale was in all of the Mild parti-gyles and sometimes single-gyled.

When I started harvesting these records I was struck by how much the grists changed over a short period of time. Without there being external factor, like a war, forcing changes. I’m not really sure what to make of it. For example, why does one version randomly contain some lager malt?

Let’s take a look at the grains first. There are several ever-presents: pale, amber, crystal and mild malt, plus flaked maize. But only the pale and crystal malt percentages are reasonably constant at around 20% and 5%, respectively. While amber malt and flaked maize are all over the place, with a variation of over 100%.

Barclay Perkins X Ale grists 1935 - 1936 (malts)
Year	Beer	Style	OG	pale malt	amber malt	crystal malt	MA malt	SA malt	lager malt	flaked maize
1935	X	Mild	1034.8	23.55%	9.42%	6.28%	37.68%			17.27%
1935	X	Mild	1034.8	18.37%	7.65%	5.36%	43.62%			15.31%
1936	X	Mild	1034.7	18.66%	7.11%	5.33%	29.32%	14.22%		14.22%
1936	X	Mild	1034.7	19.03%	3.81%	5.71%	41.86%		5.71%	13.32%
1936	X	Mild	1034.8	19.23%	4.05%	5.06%	32.40%	16.20%		7.09%
1936	X	Mild	1034.8	19.42%	3.88%	5.18%	33.02%	16.19%		7.12%
Sources:
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number ACC/2305/01/620.

There’s a similar story with the sugar:

Barclay Perkins X Ale grists 1935 - 1936 (sugar and hops)
Year	Beer	Style	OG	no. 2 sugar	no. 3 sugar	caramel	Martineau BS	hops
1935	X	Mild	1034.8	5.23%		0.58%		MK Fuggles, Kent Fuggles
1935	X	Mild	1034.8	9.18%		0.51%		MK Fuggles, Kent Fuggles
1936	X	Mild	1034.7			0.48%	10.66%	MK Fuggles, Kent Fuggles
1936	X	Mild	1034.7		10.15%	0.41%		Kent, MK Goldings
1936	X	Mild	1034.8		15.52%	0.45%		MK Fuggles, MK Goldings
1936	X	Mild	1034.8		14.68%	0.50%		MK Fuggles
Sources:
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number ACC/2305/01/620.

The only sugar used in every grist was caramel, which was used for colour. I would have expected No. 3 invert to be in all the grists. That’s the usual Mild sugar. It seems odd to find No. 2 invert, which was usually used in cheaper Pale Ales.

All of the hops were English and from Kent. Mostly Fuggles, but with some Goldings, too. Nothing unusual there, though a lot of brewers would have been using North American hops in the 1930’s.