Whitbread’s X Ale started the war on the weak side for a standard London Mild. Obviously after a few years of war, it wasn’t going to have got any stronger.
Though the gravity of, what by then, was called XX Ale stabilised from 1942 onwards at just a shade under 1030º. I wish I had more analyses of the finished beer as I suspect that it was primed at racking time. One stray analysis I have from 1945 has an OG that is about 1.5º higher than the gravity shown in a brewing record from the same month.
Whitbread didn’t go in much for complicated recipes and this iteration of XX Ale is no exception. The grist consists of just three elements: mild malt, crystal malt and flaked barley. The latter being a government imposition on all breweries.
In addition there are two types of sugar: No. 3 invert and something simply described as “Hay”. From what I’ve seen in other Whitbread records, I’m guessing that this means Hay’s M, which was a type of proprietary caramel.
There were four types of hops used. Whitbread from the 1944 harvest, Kent from 1943, Worcester from 1943 and Oregon from 1942. Though the quantities of Whitbread and Oregon hops were pretty small: 57 and 86 lbs, respectively, out of a total of 570 lbs.
| 1944 Whitbread XX | ||
| mild malt | 4.50 lb | 70.64% |
| crystal malt 60 L | 0.50 lb | 7.85% |
| flaked barley | 1.00 lb | 15.70% |
| No. 3 invert sugar | 0.25 lb | 3.92% |
| caramel 1000 SRM | 0.12 lb | 1.88% |
| Fuggles 60 mins | 0.50 oz | |
| Cluster 60 mins | 0.125 oz | |
| Fuggles 30 mins | 0.75 oz | |
| OG | 1028.5 | |
| FG | 1007 | |
| ABV | 2.84 | |
| Apparent attenuation | 75.44% | |
| IBU | 18 | |
| SRM | 14 | |
| Mash at | 148º F | |
| Sparge at | 168º F | |
| Boil time | 60 minutes | |
| pitching temp | 65º F | |
| Yeast | Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale | |
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