Much as with 60/-, Drybrough 80/- was starting to look very similar to post-war versions. With a gravity in the low-1040ºs, it’s the very image of a modern Export.
Around the strength of a post-ear English Best Bitter, the main difference with beers from south of the border is the level of hopping. Which in this case is very low. Much lower, for example, than even a Mild brewed in London.
As with all Drybrough’s beers, other than 60/-, it was brewed in tiny quantities. 50/- made up about 85% of output, with the other beers sharing the remaining 15% between them.
The grist is the same as all their other beers with one exception: there was no enzymic malt. No idea why that should be. I wouldn’t like to guess. Otherwise, it’s the standard pale malt and flaked barley combination providing most of the fermentable material. Backed up by tiny amounts of chocolate malt and malt extract. Along with three sugars: Fison, Avona and Martineau. Which I’ve replaced with No.2 invert.
The hops were all English from the 1942 harvest.
In a reverse from normal practice, Drybrough pitched their stronger beers at a higher temperature than their weaker ones. Very odd, that.
| 1944 Drybrough 80/- | ||
| pale malt | 7.75 lb | 82.71% |
| chocolate malt | 0.04 lb | 0.43% |
| flaked barley | 0.75 lb | 8.00% |
| malt extract | 0.08 lb | 0.85% |
| No. 2 invert sugar | 0.75 lb | 8.00% |
| Fuggles 135 mins | 0.50 oz | |
| Fuggles 90 mins | 0.50 oz | |
| Goldings 30 mins | 0.25 oz | |
| Goldings dry hops | 0.50 oz | |
| OG | 1041 | |
| FG | 1015 | |
| ABV | 3.44 | |
| Apparent attenuation | 63.41% | |
| IBU | 17 | |
| SRM | 7 | |
| Mash at | 149º F | |
| Sparge at | 165º F | |
| Boil time | 145 minutes | |
| pitching temp | 61º F | |
| Yeast | WLP028 Edinburgh Ale | |
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4 comments:
An 80/- at 3.4%?
Must admit, up to this moment I'd been under the impression that the shilling beers more or less parallelled English bitter strengths, back when darker generally meant stronger - the B/BB/SB/OA scale. Was it just a matter of colour?
Why was attenuation so low? Even as an all grain home brewer using modern malts I would expect a beer with an OG of around 1.041 to yield a beer of around 4% ABV.
"Strike it rich with Drybrough's keg heavy, the heavy that's Scotland's own" was an ad that got played a lot on Tyne Tees TV, must have been around 1980. But the only place in the Tyne Tees area I ever came across Drybrough's was around Alston, where they seemed to have a concentration of pubs for some reason. I was on the Pennine Way, so this was 1983.
The beer was pleasant enough, but nothing memorable. The PW was an excellent pub crawl though.
Bribie G,
the real OG was probably a few points lower as that's the racking gravity.
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