Let's Brew - 1944 Drybrough Burns Ale

By 1944, beers as strong as Burns Ale were extremely rare. And probably not very easy to find, give the small quantities of it which were brewed. Just 64 barrels, in this case. But some parti-gyled batches were much smaller, sometimes fewer than 10 barrels.

The gravity has held up remarkably well, being just 8 points lower than at the start of the war. You wouldn’t be able to get many pints of it down before your legs went. Especially if you had become accustomed to watery wartime beer.

Though it wasn’t parti-gyled, the recipe is still basically the same as their Pale Ales. Drybrough, like many Scottish breweries, didn’t believe in having multiple recipes. Why bother, when one could work for any beer?

The one small difference with the Pale Ale recipe was that the percentage of sugar was a little lower: 5% rather than 8%. But the sugar types were identical, as were the proportions used: one third of each.

I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the colour value in the recipe below. Burns Ale would have been coloured up with caramel at racking time to 20-25 SRM.

1944 Drybrough Burns Ale
pale malt	13.50 lb	77.34%
enzymic malt	0.33 lb	1.89%
chocolate malt	0.25 lb	1.43%
flaked barley	2.50 lb	14.32%
malt extract	0.125 lb	0.72%
No. 2 invert sugar	0.75 lb	4.30%
Fuggles 135 mins	1.00 oz
Fuggles 90 mins	1.00 oz
Goldings 30 mins	1.00 oz
Goldings dry hops	1.00 oz
OG	1076
FG	1025
ABV	6.75
Apparent attenuation	67.11%
IBU	32
SRM	14
Mash at	149º F
Sparge at	165º F
Boil time	135 minutes
pitching temp	61º F
Yeast	WLP028 Edinburgh Ale