Scottish brewers had long been bringing in grain from England to malt – pretty much every brewery of any size had its own maltings – but barley continued to be grown in Scotland. Though judging by some brewing records, in woefully inadequate quantities to feed the industry.
A glance at Thomas Usher’s brewing records from 1912 shows how diverse the origin of their barley was. There’s malt described as Hungarian, Danish, Calcutta, Smyrna (Turkey), Ouchak (also Turkey), Polish, Karachi, Danubian, Roumanian, Tunis, Californian, Oregon, Bulgarian, Spanish, Canadian and finally, three pages in, the first mention of Scotch . (Remember that this is the source of the barley, not where the malt was made. The malting would have been performed mostly in Scotland, perhaps some in England.) Malt from locally-grown barley was always less than 50% of the grist.
The situation was the same at other Scottish brewers, such as Drybrough and William Younger. Each brew had at least three different types of pale malt and sometimes as many as six . Using multiple kinds of pale malt in a beer was standard practice across the UK. It helped to iron out differences between individual batches of malt. But there was one constant factor: malt from Scottish barley was a minority of the grist.
Scottish brewers used very little coloured malt at this time. Stouts usually contained black malt and sometimes brown and crystal malt as well. In the 1890’s William Younger included amber malt in their Stout grists and just before WW I chocolate malt.
Most other styles had nothing but pale malt in the grist. Though Thomas Usher did use some crystal malt in their Shilling Ales. In general, very little crystal appears in grists.
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