Wednesday 15 May 2019

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1916 Whitbread X

The first couple of years of WW I weren’t that cruel to beer. Gravities of the more popular beers had a few points shaved off their gravity, but for the most part beers were unscathed. That would all change when 1917 rolled around.

The grist hasn’t really changed a great deal since 1914. It’s still a simple combination of pale malt and invert sugar. I’m assuming again the latter was No. 3 invert, though the type isn’t specified in the brewing record.

The malt is rather more complicated than it at first appears. There were no fewer than six types of pale malt: three from UK-grown barley, plus one each from Smyrna, Indian and Californian.

One change is in the hopping. The rate has fallen from 6 lbs per quarter (336 lbs) of malt to 5 lbs. In addition, the hops used are all older. They’re all Mid-Kent from the year 1914. The combined effect is to reduce the (calculated) IBUs from 32 to 18. Drinkers must have noticed such a big change, especially as in took place over a short period.

A higher rate of attenuation means that the ABV has increased from 5.03% in 1914 to 5.4%. Which is pretty beefy for a Mild.


1916 Whitbread X
pale malt 10.25 lb 93.18%
No. 3 invert sugar 0.75 lb 6.82%
Fuggles 105 mins 0.50 oz
Fuggles 60 mins 0.50 oz
Fuggles 30 mins 0.50 oz
OG 1051
FG 1010
ABV 5.42
Apparent attenuation 80.39%
IBU 18
SRM 9
Mash at 150º F
Sparge at 168º F
Boil time 105 minutes
pitching temp 60º F
Yeast Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale

This is one of the dozens of recipes in my book Mild! plus. Which is avaiable in both paperback:





and hardback formats:

4 comments:

Bacon said...

This is the same post as last Saturday.

Ron Pattinson said...

Bacon,

look more closely: this id for the 1916 version of X Ale.

Bacon said...

Now I'm thoroughly confused. I am 100% confident that the posts were identical when I posted that comment, at least that's what showed up in my browser. The only thing that differed was the illustration.

Now I see two different posts.

The reason I'm confident it was the same post was that when I started reading it, I thought to myself "I've read this text before", so I went back to Saturday's post and checked, and sure enough, it was the exact same content. I know I noted that there should probably have been a "couldn't" between "just" and "always" in the sentence "They just always be bothered to note it down". I triple-checked before posting the comment, just to make sure not to make a fool of myself.

Maybe it's just my browser's cache acting up. Or could Blogger be playing tricks on us?

Ron Pattinson said...

Bacon,

just me joshing. I originally put up the wrong post.