Let's Brew - 1885 Kirkstall X

Back into rhythm with the recipe posts. I just couldn't be arsed to write one for Wednesday. I'm sure you managed to survive one week without a Wednesday recipe.

Up in Yorkshire, Leeds to be precise, brewers were still producing a selection of Milds at different strengths.

Confusingly, at Kirkstall, these didn’t run X to XXXX. No. They had to make things more complicated than that. In this brewery’s case, X was the middle-strength beer. It’s weaker than the X Ales from larger London breweries like Barclay Perkins and Whitbread, but around the same as the one from Fullers.

The grist isn’t complicated. Just pale malt and a little black malt. Though the latter didn’t really make up part of the grist as it was added in the hop back. Were they worrying about the resale values of the spent grains in not adding it to the mash tun? There’s also a wee touch of caramel, added in the copper.

Three of the four types of hops were English, two from the 1884 harvest and one from 1883. The others are simply described as “foreign” and were from the 1884 crop.

1885 Kirkstall X
pale malt	12.00 lb	98.60%
black malt	0.15 lb	1.23%
caramel 1000 SRM	0.02 lb	0.16%
Cluster 150 mins	0.50 oz
Fuggles 150 mins	0.50 oz
Fuggles 60 mins	1.00 oz
Goldings 30 mins	1.00 oz
Goldings dry hops	0.25 oz
OG	1052.5
FG	1013
ABV	5.23
Apparent attenuation	75.24%
IBU	41
SRM	11
Mash at	152º F
Sparge at	170º F
Boil time	150 minutes
pitching temp	58º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire Ale Timothy Taylor