Sugar and adjuncts in Scotland 1880 - 1914

Sugar had been allowed since 1847 but, after an initial period of experimentation with this new ingredient, most breweries dropped it again and returned to brewing all-malt. After 1880, the vast majority of breweries in England embraced sugar and it usually made up 10-15% of the grist, depending on the style of beer being brewed.

The Scots were more reluctant to adopt sugar. William Younger, for example, only used it in around half of their beers in the 1880’s . In the same period, some of Thomas Usher’s Mild Ales contained sugar, but none of their Pale Ales or Stock Ales . It’s odd that they didn’t use it in Pale Ales as in England even the classiest Pale Ales often had grists with 20% sugar. The reason was simple: sugar helped keep the body and colour light.

Adjuncts
Brewers both sided of the border immediately began to experiment with unmalted grains. In England, flaked rice was initially popular, but soon replaced by cheaper flaked maize. In Scotland maize was the most popular adjunct, but, in contrast to English practice it was mostly used in the form of grits.

While flaked maize can just be thrown into the mash tun with the malt, grits require an extra step to gelatinise them. To brew with grits breweries needed to install an extra piece of equipment, a cereal cooker, in which this gelatinisation was performed.

Some breweries, Drybrough for example, used rice either instead of or in addition to, maize . This was always in form of flakes which could be added directly to the mash tun. The practice gradually petered out, presumably on cost grounds.

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