Saturday 25 September 2021

Let's Brew - 1887 Fullers XX

If you were expecting XX to just be a scaled-up version of X Ale you’re going to be very disappointed. It’s very much its own man.

At least very different to the single-gyle X Ale. There was also an X Ale parti-gyled with this XX which obviously had the same recipe. But let’s not overcomplicate things.

This is a real oddball of a beer, with only a single base malt. And that base malt, most unusually, is amber. Which could make this a bit of a bugger to reproduce as I’m not sure if an amber malt with sufficient diastatic power is commercially available. I don’t think I’ve seen another Mild with a grist like this.

The result of using all amber malt is a far darker beer than was usual for Mild of the period. This is about at the start of when Mild, at least in some parts of the UK, began to darken. Usually, the colour was no more than a dark amber. Dark enough to be distinguished from Pale Ale, but not brown. Whereas this beer is a proper dark brown.

“Bright and of good colour and flavour” a note says in the brewing record. That’s good to know.

A lot of the hops were pretty old, East Kent from the 1883 harvest, with a rather smaller quantity of Worcester from 1886. The latter were also used as dry hops.
 

1887 Fullers XX
amber malt 11.00 lb 78.57%
No. 2 invert sugar 3.00 lb 21.43%
Fuggles 90 mins 1.25 oz
Goldings 60 mins 1.25 oz
Goldings 30 mins 1.25 oz
Fuggles dry hops 0.50 oz
OG 1065
FG 1023
ABV 5.56
Apparent attenuation 64.62%
IBU 42
SRM 22
Mash at 154º F
Sparge at 170º F
Boil time 90 minutes
pitching temp 57º F
Yeast WLP002 English Ale

 

 

1 comment:

Kimmo Valtonen said...

Imperial Malt is diastatic and would produce pretty much the same colour at 100%. I've used it as a substitute for historical amber malt successfully.