Let’s brew Wednesday - 1935 Barclay Perkins X

The middle Mild of the three parti-gyled together.

Though the story is a little more complicated than that. As brewed, X Ale was around 11 SRM. But some of the brew was coloured darker and called X Sp., with a colour of 20 SRM. Though,  strangely enough, I’ve not been able to find any material on the semi-dark and dark versions being marketed differently.

My guess would be that no pub would sell two differently-coloured versions of X. Which has me thinking, did the colour of Barclay Perkins Mild depend on where it was sold? That was certainly the case of different-coloured versions of Scottish beers. It would make sense, as truly Dark Mild seems to have appeared earlier in London than in some other parts of the country. And Barclay Perkins had pubs both in and outside the capital. Was the paler version for the sticks?

That’s just about everything interesting I have to say about this beer. Obviously, the recipe is exactly the same as for XX, just there’s a little less of everything. Oh, almost forgot. There’s the priming. That raises the effective OG to 1038º.

I can remember being very confused a few years ago by analyses in the Whitbread Gravity Book of Barclay Perkins X Ale. They showed OG’s of 1037º to 1039º. Which didn’t match the gravity of either X or XX. I wondered if it was either due to XX being watered down or slops of stronger beers being thrown into X. Now I realise that it was the primings added at racking.

1935 Barclay Perkins X
pale malt	1.25 lb	16.78%
mild malt	3.25 lb	43.62%
crystal malt 60 L	0.50 lb	6.71%
amber malt	0.66 lb	8.86%
flaked maize	1.00 lb	13.42%
No. 2 invert sugar	0.75 lb	10.07%
caramel	0.04 lb	0.54%
Fuggles 150 mins	0.50 oz
Fuggles 60 mins	0.50 oz
Fuggles 30 mins	0.50 oz
OG	1035
FG	1007
ABV	3.70
Apparent attenuation	80.00%
IBU	20
SRM	11
Mash at	155º F
Sparge at	170º F
Boil time	150 minutes
pitching temp	62º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale