Whitbread Double Brown grists 1939 - 1945

One of the features of the war was a rapid change in recipes to cope with government restrictions and the availability of ingredients. The six years of the war saw more changes than would usually have taken place over a couple of decades.

Whitbread Double Brown is a good example of constant recipe tinkering. There’s not a single type of malt which was in every wartime version. Admittedly, pale malt and PA malt were very similar. But I find the chopping and changing between chocolate and crystal malt rather more surprising.

The explanation of the presence of mild malt in the 1941 version is that it was parti-gyled with XX Mild. Before the war, Double Brown was always brewed single-gyle. During the early war years, it was first parti-gyled with 33, Whitbread’s Burton, then with XX Ale.

I can think of no simple explanation for the presence of wheat malt. Except, again, that it was on account of the parti-gyling with XX. In 1940 and 1941 XX suddenly acquired a small percentage of wheat malt. Perhaps for head retention.

Whitbread Double Brown grists 1939 - 1945
Date	Year	OG	pale malt	PA malt	chocolate Malt	crystal malt	mild malt	wheat malt
21st Sep	1939	1054.5	25.27%	52.17%		2.45%
11th Apr	1940	1054.1	6.35%	85.71%	3.17%
14th Aug	1940	1049.3	5.92%	79.93%	2.96%
20th Nov	1940	1047.3	81.42%			11.63%
31st Jan	1941	1046.1	20.17%			12.10%	58.49%	2.02%
13th Oct	1944	1044.2		74.80%	3.25%
24th Aug	1945	1043.3		66.49%	3.17%
Sources:
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers LMA/4453/D/01/107, LMA/4453/D/01/108, LMA/4453/D/01/111 and LMA/4453/D/01/112.