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Monday, 16 July 2018

Scottish Pale Ale Grists 1948 - 1965

 Now the new book is almost done, it's time for a little preview. This is something I literally just finished writing five minutes ago. On the ever fescinating topic of Scottish Pale Ales.

Scottish brewers were, for the most part pretty dull when it came to recipes. Most only had the one.

I’ve only bothered with one of a brewery’s Pale Ale range, as all were parti-gyled together. Except at the ever contrary William Younger. Not only weren’t their Pale Ales parti-gyled together, they all had slightly different recipes. The crazy bastards.

Scottish Pale Ale grists 1948 - 1965: malts and adjuncts
Year Brewer Beer OG pale malt black malt enzymic malt flaked maize flaked barley
1958 Bernard Pale 1/1 1031 75.20% 0.82% 13.08%
1948 Drybrough P 60/- 1030 79.11% 0.78% 1.65% 10.55%
1954 Drybrough 60/- 1032 74.52% 2.40% 0.64% 6.01% 6.01%
1960 Drybrough 60/- 1031 74.95% 0.44% 12.49%
1965 Drybrough 60/- 1031 74.45% 0.06% 12.07%
1951 Maclay PA 6d 1030 86.33%
1956 Maclay PA 6d 1030 74.82% 11.51%
1965 Maclay PA 6d 1030 74.82% 11.51%
1962 Thomas Usher P 1/4 1036 69.23% 6.29%
1957 Younger, Robert 60/- 1030 77.03% 13.75%
1960 Younger, Robert 60/- 1030 71.39% 19.99%
1949 Younger, Wm. XXP Btg 1031 92.86% 7.14%
1949 Younger, Wm. XXP 1031.5 88.24% 11.76%
1949 Younger, Wm. Ext 1047 87.50% 12.50%
1958 Younger, Wm. XXPQ 1033 60.00% 26.67%
1958 Younger, Wm. XXPSL 1038 58.62% 27.59%
1958 Younger, Wm. EXT 1046 60.94% 29.69%
1958 Younger, Wm. XXPS Btg 1038 62.16% 32.43%
Sources:
T & J Bernard brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number TJB6/1/1/1.
Drybrough brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number D/6/1/1/6.
Drybrough brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number D/6/1/1/7.
Drybrough brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number D/6/1/1/8.
Maclay brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number M/6/1/1/28.
Maclay brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number M/6/1/1/35.
Maclay brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number M/6/1/1/44.
Thomas Usher brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number TU/6/9/1.
Robert Younger brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number RY/6/1/2.
Robert Younger brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number RY/6/1/3.
William Younger brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number WY/6/1/2/88.
William Younger brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number WY/6/1/3/112.


I’ve lumped the malts and adjuncts together because there aren’t many of either. Mostly it’s just pale malt and flaked maize or barley. A couple of examples have a small amount of black malt for colour. But there’s no crystal malt in sight.

William Younger loved to stuff their beers with adjuncts. Before WW II most of their beers were 40% grits. The beers above aren’t quite that bad, but those from the 1950s all still have over 25% flaked maize.

Two sugar tables for this set.

Scottish Pale Ale grists 1948 - 1965: sugars
Year Brewer Beer OG no. 1 sugar invert Avona Hydrol
1958 Bernard Pale 1/1 1031 6.54% 4.36%
1948 Drybrough P 60/- 1030 2.64%
1954 Drybrough 60/- 1032 3.21% 3.21%
1960 Drybrough 60/- 1031 6.81% 1.51%
1965 Drybrough 60/- 1031 7.38% 0.67%
1951 Maclay PA 6d 1030 9.59%
1956 Maclay PA 6d 1030 7.67%
1965 Maclay PA 6d 1030 7.67%
1962 Thomas Usher P 1/4 1036 17.48%
1957 Younger, Robert 60/- 1030 4.58% 3.67%
1960 Younger, Robert 60/- 1030 3.81% 3.81%
1949 Younger, Wm. XXP Btg 1031
1949 Younger, Wm. XXP 1031.5
1949 Younger, Wm. Ext 1047
1958 Younger, Wm. XXPQ 1033
1958 Younger, Wm. XXPSL 1038 2.30%
1958 Younger, Wm. EXT 1046 3.13%
1958 Younger, Wm. XXPS Btg 1038

Invert sugar is as popular as ever. No. 1 being what you’d expect in Pale Ales. The unspecific “invert” is most likely either No. 1 or No. 2 invert. Avona and Hydrol are enigmatic proprietary sugars.

Scottish Pale Ale grists 1948 - 1965: sugars again
Year Brewer Beer OG cane candy caramel malt extract other sugar
1958 Bernard Pale 1/1 1031
1948 Drybrough P 60/- 1030 0.88% 4.39%
1954 Drybrough 60/- 1032 0.80% 3.21%
1960 Drybrough 60/- 1031 1.51% 0.76% 1.51%
1965 Drybrough 60/- 1031 2.68% 2.68%
1951 Maclay PA 6d 1030 0.24% 3.84%
1956 Maclay PA 6d 1030 0.24% 1.92% 3.84%
1965 Maclay PA 6d 1030 0.24% 1.92% 3.84%
1962 Thomas Usher P 1/4 1036 0.00% 2.10% 4.90%
1957 Younger, Robert 60/- 1030 0.05% 0.92%
1960 Younger, Robert 60/- 1030 0.05% 0.95%
1949 Younger, Wm. XXP Btg 1031
1949 Younger, Wm. XXP 1031.5
1949 Younger, Wm. Ext 1047
1958 Younger, Wm. XXPQ 1033 8.89% 4.44%
1958 Younger, Wm. XXPSL 1038 6.90% 4.60%
1958 Younger, Wm. EXT 1046 6.25%
1958 Younger, Wm. XXPS Btg 1038 5.41%

A more normal lot of sugars. Though exactly what is meant by cane and candy isn’t 100% clear. I assume that cane refers to some partially refined cane sugar. There’s lots of malt extract again, always in tiny quantities. The largest amount used is under 3% of the total grist.

Pale malt, flaked adjunct and sugar. That’s all there is to Scottish Pale Ale grists.

6 comments:

  1. Mike in NSW16 July 2018 at 06:14

    I also have Boddingtons recipes from the era that also include very small quantities of malt extract, which I dutifully add at the end of the boil in the form of light dried malt extract.

    Would the malt extract have been a fine tuning mechanism, to smooth out small differences in potential extract of the base malts from year to year, after each annual batch of malt from the maltsters had been tested in the brewery labs?

    I'd guess that if you were going to fine tune to maintain a consistent O.G. , then it would be much easier to have some malt extract as always part of the standard recipe and just tweak that from batch to batch rather then go to the bother of manipulating the actual base malt quantities?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ron Pattinson16 July 2018 at 08:32

    Mike in NSW,

    no. It's for the enzynes and was added to the mash.

    When you're parti-gyling - as most Scottish breweries were - you can always hit the target OGs no matter what the extract from the malt. Plus the amount of malt extract is always the same. If they were adjusting for OG it would be different every time.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mike in NSW17 July 2018 at 06:24

    Aha, so that would have been diastatic malt extract. Is that still available?
    I believe that EDME of home brew fame stood for the Essex Diastatic Malt Extract company, so it would have been a fair sized industry?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ron Pattinson18 July 2018 at 00:55

    Mike in NSW,

    it often specifially says EDME in the brewing records.

    ReplyDelete
  5. EJ18 July 2018 at 13:12

    Hydrol is the left-over liquid in the commercial production of dextrose from starches. It's the supernatant when the sugar is crystallized out. It contains some of the dextrose and other sugars. Here's a technical paper from the International Starch Institute that mentions it
    http://www.starch.dk/isi/glucose/img/TM32-2e%20Dextrose.pdf
    Cheers,
    Eric

    ReplyDelete
  6. qq19 July 2018 at 06:28

    In South Africa, at least, Hydrol is a trademark of Tongaat Hulett, the big name in corn starch there. They've been going since colonial times, so I don't know if it was theirs originally or whether it was once of those cases where it was licenced from a UK company that has since demised whilst the local company survived.

    http://www.tongaathulettstarch.co.za/prods-enzyme-conv-syrup.asp
    Hydrol® Glucose Syrup (Hydrol®)
    The supernatant by-product formed in the production of dextrose monohydrate. It is used in the manufacture of caramel colour and yeast.

    Quick Google finds a reference by you to (an advert in?) the JIB of 1940 which talks of Avona as "superlative copper sugar".

    ReplyDelete