How to interpret brewing records - part twelve: Scottish format page 2 dry hops, cleansings and remarks

We're going to finish off page 2 today. Starting with dry hops.

 Lbs.
2313 running annual total.
75 lbs dry hops in this brew.

Quality and Proportion
This is for the type of hops. It hasn't been filled in.

Cleansings
I don't know why it's called that as it shows racking details.

Date
Not filled in

Butts
Butts: 0.

Hhds
Hogsheads: 40.

Barrels
Barrels: 64.

1/2 barrels
Half barrels: 10.

1/2 Hhds
half Hogsheads: 0.

1/4 Hhds
quarter Hogsheads: 0.

Ale
Beer type: XXP.

What you can also glean from these columns is whether a beer was mostly bottled or draught. Beer for bottling mostly went into hogsheads and half hogsheads. Draught beer into barrels and half barrels.

Remarks

1st column
standard gallons
Running total: 140,856 gallons
This brew: 4,568 gallons

A standard gallon is a gallon of beer with an OG of 1055º. The tax was based on this number.

2nd column
Barrels racked
Running total: 38,285 barrels
This brew: 119 barrels 

Right. There's that done. Anyone still up for more?

How to interpret brewing records - part eleven: Scottish format page 2 pitching and attenuation

You must be getting so excited at the prospect of a second page of William Younger's brewing records. Well, I won't delay the fun any longer.

Pitching details first.

Heat of Tun Room
Pretty explanatory: 58º F.

Pitching Heat and Gravity
57º F and 1059º.

Now the really enthralling stuff - attenuations.

This is the fermentation record, with six columns, one for each day. And each day has in its turn columns for the morning and evening.

The two columns under morning and evening have the temperature of the wort, followed by the gravity. So:

1st day morning
59º F, 1056º.

!st day evening
61.5º F, 1051º.

On the evening of the second day, the worts in the two fermenters were combined into something called "9 Set".  I'm pretty sure they're being transferred to a union set. I know Holyrood had unions and the beer in question was an IPA/Pale Ale.

The fermentation is quite typical in that the temperature rises initially until around the middle of the fermentation and then is reduced, using attemperators. At the end of fermentation, the temperature is close to the pitching heat. The racking gravity was 1014º.

I'm not totally sure what the notes at the end mean. "off 10th" is I think when the beer was removed from the unions.

"Brill" I think just means bright.

"1 quart Condy" is, I think is Condy's Liquid. Something that sounds very much like a con. I need to investigate more.

"Bi" probably Bisulphate of lime.

"Good at cflow" good at counterflow, I think.

Not far to go now. Thankfully.

How to interpret brewing records - part ten: Scottish format page 2 overview

And here we are at page 2 of William Younger's brewing records. Where all the magic happens. Because this is mostly taken up with a record of the fermentation. Lots of handy information for me. Especially if you want to prove that Scottish beer wasn't fermented at near Lager temperatures.

Here's the full page:

It's divided into five sections: pitching, attenuation, dry hops, cleansings and remarks. Though the last contains proper information rather than just remarks.

As well as the fermentation record, there are also details of the containers into which it was racked. A piece of information which is way more useful than you might think. But we'll get to that in a while.

Let's Brew - 1904 Tetley X3

The people have spoken. Mild it is. And, as one person suggested Tetley's Mild, taht's what I've gone with.

Tetley brewed a lot of Milds. Which is why I love them so much. Parti-gyled with XX, X3 was Tetley’s second-strongest Mild. Why they brewed quite so many. I’m not sure.  Most breweries by this point only brewed two or three at most. Including the differently-coloured versions, Tetley had seven in their portfolio.

It's not a complicated recipe. Just base malt and sugar. Though there were two types of base malt. That makes the recipe a bit more exciting.

Oddly, as Mild generally got darker as the 20th century rolled along, the Tetley's Mild I loved was quite a bit paler. I now know exactly how much paler, as I've seen the brewery specifications. It was only around 13 SRM.

1904 Tetley X3
mild malt	5.50 lb	42.31%
pale malt	5.50 lb	42.31%
No. 3 invert sugar	2.00 lb	15.38%
Fuggles 90 mins	2.25 oz
Fuggles 30 mins	2.25 oz
OG	1062.9
FG	1014.7
ABV	6.38
Apparent attenuation	76.63%
IBU	51
SRM	14
Mash at	150º F
Sparge at	165º F
Boil time	90 minutes
pitching temp	60º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire Ale Timothy Taylor

 

How to interpret brewing records - part nine: Scottish format wort and yeast

We get to finish page 1 today. Hasn't this been fun? Probably not. I get the impression everyone got bored halfway through my explanation of the Barclay Perkins record.

Wort and yeast. Not the most exciting, but still important.

 Pretty simple.

Tuns
The fermenting vessels the wort was transferred to: tuns 19 and 20.

Barrels
Volume of the combined worts: 177 barrels.

Gravity
Gravity of the combined worts:1059º.

Now the yeast.

 Lbs.
Quantity of yeast: 110 lbs.

Where from.
The brews the yeast was harvested from: XXXX, XXP and XP. Not sure what the number is. I'd expect it to be a gyle number, but 3426 and 3438 are far too high.

Anyone interested in page 2? Anyone still reading?

 

How to interpret brewing records - part nine: Scottish format boiling

This cool. Or rather hot, as it refers to the boiling process. It's great because I'm totally confident about all the entries. For once.

No.
Number of the copper. In this case, coppers 1 and 2.

Hours Charging
Time it took to fill the coppers: 2.75 hours.

Barrels
Volome of the worts: 85 and 92 barrels.

Gravity
Gravity of the worts pre-boil: 1069º and 1025º.

Hops in lbs.
I think that's pretty explanatory.

Per Qr.
Pounds of hops per quarter of malt: 7.5 lbs.

The next columns list the different types of hops. The first row is the totals carried forward.

Amer. '94
American hops from the 1894 harvest. Zero used in this brew.

EK '93
East Kent hops from the 1893 harvest. 100 lbs this brew.

Pac. '93
Pacific, i.e. West Coast USA, hops from the 1893 harvest. 100 lbs this brew.

Amer. '93
American hops from the 1893 harvest. 110 lbs this brew.

Total
Total amount of hops in this brew: 310 lbs.

Hours Boiled
Boiling time of the two worts: 2.75 hours and 3.25 hours.

Barrels Cast
Number of barrels post-boil: 70 barrels and 74 barrels.

Gravity
Gravity of the worts post-boil: 1085º and 1031º.

That was all pretty simple, wasn't it? 

We're almost done with page 1. Just a couple of columns to go.

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1941 Barclay Perkins KK

Just for a bit of variation, today's recipe isn't a Stout. And not from the book I'm working on. Well, not working on currently, as it's just about finished. Maybe I'll get around to publishing it soon.

Not much seems to have changed since 1940. At least not in terms of strength. That could be because this was brewed fairly early in the year, in April. While the 1940 recipe above is from September.

The grist has seen one big change: the dropping of adjuncts. Leaving it malt and sugar only. Barclay Perkins hadn’t brewed like that since the 1880s. The percentage of mild malt has increased slightly at the expense of pale malt. And this time, it really was all mild malt in the original. The SA malt has been dropped.

There’s also been a change in process, with the boil time of the first wort being reduced by 15 minutes. Presumably to save fuel.

The hopping rate has remained around the same, though the quantity of dry hops was reduced from 3 oz. to 2 oz. per barrel. The hops themselves were Kent Goldings and Kent Fuggles both from the 1938 harvest and kept in a cold store. While the dry hops were Goldings from 1939.

1941 Barclay Perkins KK
pale malt	0.75 lb	6.45%
mild malt	9.25 lb	79.57%
crystal malt 60 L	0.75 lb	6.45%
No. 3 invert sugar	0.75 lb	6.45%
caramel 2000 SRM	0.125 lb	1.08%
Fuggles 105 mins	1.75 oz
Goldings 30 mins	1.75 oz
Goldings dry hops	0.25 oz
OG	1052.5
FG	1015
ABV	4.96
Apparent attenuation	71.43%
IBU	41
SRM	23
Mash at	146º F
After underlet	149º F
Sparge at	172º F
Boil time	105 minutes
pitching temp	60º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale

 

Where to in 2023?

For the first time in almost ten years, I enter a new year with no trips to the USA scheduled. That needs fixing.

In my vague plan to get around all the states, I like to cross  off at least one new one every year. Top of the list of states I'd like to visit is Alaska, Which has the advantage of being somewhere I'd dare visit in the summer. 

Other states I'd quite like to visit are Tennessee, New Hampshire and Maine. The last two would complete the East Coast for me. Arizona and New Mexico. Wouldn't mind getting to those, too.

If you'd like to make a collaborative brew or have me come and give a talk, get in touch. My rates are very reasonable.

How to interpret brewing records - part eight: Scottish format mashing

Today we're looking at the meat of the process, mashing.

Scottish mashing schemes were way simpler than those in London. With just a single infusion and a sparge. Or maybe two sparges.

Let's go through column by column.

Mashing Heat
"63" Strike heat: 163º F
"52" Initial heat: 152º F
".4" don't know what this is.

Hours stood
"2" Time mash left to rest: 2 hours
"19" Not sure what this is. Could be a vessel number.

Inches in Tun
An inch measurement is the distance from the brim of a vessel to the surface of the liquid in it. I think these are tap temperatures for the mash. So 157.6º F, 146º F, 144º F and 135º F.

Sparge heats
Pretty self explanatory: 163º F and 160º F.

Falling heats
Tap temperatures for the sparge: 149.1º F, 153º F, 155º F and 157º F.

Gravities
"94" Gravity of the first wort: 1094º.
"2" Gravity of the last wort: 1002º. 

We'll be looking at what happened in the copper next.

How to interpret brewing records - part seven: Scottish format general and malt

Here we are looking at a lovely Scottish brewing record. You've no idea how much time I've spent staring at William Younger records. I've still not managed to work everything out.

This particular record is from the Holyrood Brewery, which mostly brewed Pale Ales. While at the Abbey Brewery they produced Scotch Ales, Mild Ales, Stout and the odd Pale Ale.

Here we go with the general crap:

Date and Brewing
Friday 5th October, gyle number 66

Weather
dull, occasional showers.

Ale
XXP - Younger's IPA.

Qtrs.
923 quarters carried over from previous page.
33 quarters this brew.
8100 and 7688 lbs sugar carried over. (DM, sacc., candy.)

Extract
Gross: Gravity points this brew
P Qr. Extract per quarter (not filled in)

I've a better image for the malts themselves.

These are all types of pale malt. Let's go through them in order:

"C. Smy" not sure what the C means, but this is malt from Smyrna, i.e. Turkish.

"M.P. Cali" Californian barley.

"A Moldn." I think Moldovan barley.

"Kirky Chev" Cheviot, i.e. Scottish barley.

"H Hung" Hungarian barley.

"H. Ushak" Turksih barley again.

"H. Marmora" more Turkish barley.

"H. new Ushak" yet more Turkish barley.

See how only one of the eight malts was made from British barley. All the rest were imported, but malted in the UK. It's typical of Scottish beers of this period to use almost all imported ingredients. Often only the water and yeast were Scottish.

That's why Scottish brewers used so little malt. Because it all had to be imported from abroad. Unlike hops, which they could get from England. But was that really the case? We'll see in a later post.

How to interpret brewing records - part six: Scottish format page 1 overview

After the overwhelmingly tepid response to my series looking at a Barclay Perkins record, I've decided to plough ahead with another style of brewing record. What I call Scottish format because, well, it\s the type of record used by most Scottish brewers. And a few English ones, too. Such as Boddington, for example.

Really I just need a few posts I can bash out without interrupting my work on "Stout!" too much. I need to set my priorities. And number one at the moment is getting that book finished. I'm eighty recipes in and haven't got past the 1850s.

Getting back to the topic, Scottish format records gave their pros and cons. Biggest pro is that you get more beers per photo. This period of Younger's records have eight beers per double-page spread. Which means you get four beers per photo. Biggest con is that everything is rather cramped and often in tiny handwriting.

I'll kick off by going through the first page. Which looks like this:

You'll need to click on the image to be able to read anything.

Working from left to right, first is some general information:

I think that's pretty easy to understand.

Next we come to information about the malts:

Here's one of the first challenges: reading the tiny handwriting describing each type of malt. We'll be getting back to this in a later post.

The mashing details follow, logically enough.

Quite a large section follows with everything connected to the copper.

Just two short sections left. First the wort.

And finally, the yeast.

Next time we'll start looking at these sections in detail.

Let's Brew - 1835 Truman Imperial Stout

Oh, look! Truman have come out with a new Stout. The grandaddy of them all – Imperial Stout.

Though Barclay Perkins were best known for their Imperial Stout, they weren’t the only London brewer to produce one. And not just in London. Imperial Stout was a well-known name throughout the UK. Bass and Worthington, for example, both produced an Imperial Stout.

A very similar grist was employed as in Double Stout. Except there’s a tiny bit more brown malt. Nothing really to write home about.

Just two mashes, both at some squiggle temperature.

Lots of hops. A crazy amount of hops. Just one type though: English from the 1835 harvest. They leave the beer with an insane (calculated) 230 IBU. 

1835 Truman Imperial Stout
pale malt	16.50 lb	69.33%
brown malt	6.75 lb	28.36%
black malt	0.55 lb	2.31%
Goldings 120 min	8.00 oz
Goldings 60 min	8.00 oz
Goldings 30 min	8.00 oz
Goldings dry hops	1.00 oz
OG	1099
FG	1021
ABV	10.32
Apparent attenuation	78.79%
IBU	230
SRM	37
Mash at	148º F
Sparge at	170º F
Boil time	120 minutes
pitching temp	58º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale

The nearly men

When I used to regularly visit the London metropolitan Archives, as well as brewing records, I used to order up other brewery documents. Often without really knowing what their contents were. Some have turned out to be dead handy.

Like Truman document B/THB/C/256A. Which contains the output of a long list of London brewers. It kicks off with 1758 and 1760, then jumps to 1802. It's the 1758 list that really caught my eye. Dating as it does from the beginnings of the Porter boom.

The names you would expect are there: Whitbread, the two Calverts, Truman and, of course, Thrale (later to become Barclay Perkins). Sixteen brewers were knocking out more than 20,000 barrels annually. I was shocked to see that Thrale was only halfway down the list.

Even more surprising was the number of breweries in the list I'd never heard of. Including a couple - Hucks and Hope - who brewed more than Thrale. What happened to these breweries? Why did Whitbread, Truman, Barclay Perkins, Reid and Combe prosper and others sink without trace?

Largest London brewers in 1758
Brewer	barrels
Whitbread	64,588.75
Calvert & Seward	61,830.75
Truman	55,506.50
Sir Wm. Calvert	55,008
Hope	50,140.50
Gyfford	41,371.50
Hucks	35,672.50
Thrale	32,622.25
Parsons	31,698
Harman	30,776
Dickinson	28,433.50
Collinson	23,867.50
Harwood	21,235.50
Chase	20,323
Godfrey	20,174.50
Hare	20,170.50
Source:
Truman document held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number B/THB/C/256A.

Brown malt again

More on brown malt. More specifically: the different types of it.

Having downloaded a copy of William Loftus's "The Brewer" I'm going to make use of it. He writes a little about the different types of brown malt.

First de describes what he calls Porter malt  or brown malt:

"Porter malt, to be proper, should be made from good barley thoroughly malted, and exhibit a sound interior, of a uniform dark chocolate colour; each corn should be separate, and as near as possible of its original size and shape. In this state it contains a large quantity of soluble colouring matter of a superior kind, composed of burnt saccharine and mucilage, which impart an agree able flavour and odour, as well as colour, to the beer with which it is mixed.

Brown malt differs in its preparation from Pale only in the drying on the kiln , which operation is finished at a brisk heat, obtained from beech, or birch, or some other wood, while the grain is laid an even thickness of about two inches, and occasionally sprinkled with water."
"The Brewer" by William Loftus, London, 1856, pages 18 - 19.

That sounds like the type of brown malt not made in Hertfordshire. Which we saw in my earlier post gave an extract not much worse than the best pale malt.

Then there's the Hertfordshire type. Of which Loftus clearly disapproves.

"Blown malt is another variety of Brown. The vegetated is laid in a moist condition about half an inch thick upon a wire kiln, and kept constantly turned, while exposed to an ardent heat produced from fern, straw, or wood. The grain by this process suddenly expands its husk, and acquires an unnatural size, which gives to it its name of Blown malt.

This fictitious malt was, on the introduction of the Saccharometer, found to yield a deficient produce, as compared with Pale, of from 18 to 25 per cent., and the best Brown of from 15 to 20 per cent."
"The Brewer" by William Loftus, London, 1856, pages 19 - 20.

It's interesting that both types of malt were finished with a direct flame.The big difference seems to be how thickly the malt was laid: 2 inches as opposed to half an inch. It also sounds like the heat was more intense.

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1831 Truman Stout

The London brewing scene was very dynamic in the early 19th century. Especially with Stout, where there were more malts in the grist to play around with.

Headline change in the grist is a quadrupling of the black malt content. At the expense of brown malt. Upping the black malt seems to have been a common thread amongst London brewers. As elsewhere, the object seems to have been to darken the colour.

Truman were playing silly buggers again with mashing temperatures, noting them all in a code of squiggles. Thanks a lot. Four mashes is all I know.

While we’re talking of missing details, there was nothing about the length of the boils. They didn’t bother noting them down until the 1890s. The boil times I give before then are just my guess.

All English hops, as you’d expect at this date. Three types, from the 1828, 1829 and 1830 harvests.

As it was transferred to vat 63 at the end of primary, it must have been aged a little. I doubt for more than six months. 

1831 Truman Stout
pale malt	13.00 lb	78.79%
brown malt	3.00 lb	18.18%
black malt	0.50 lb	3.03%
Goldings 120 min	3.00 oz
Goldings 60 min	3.00 oz
Goldings 30 min	3.00 oz
Goldings dry hops	0.50 oz
OG	1069
FG	1017
ABV	6.88
Apparent attenuation	75.36%
IBU	105
SRM	27
Mash at	148º F
Sparge at	170º F
Boil time	120 minutes
pitching temp	63º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale

Porter grists suggested by Loftus

"The Brewer" by William Loftus is a dead handy little book. One which, for some reason, I'd lost my digital copy of. No problem, easy enough to pick up another one from the internet.

There was one particular table I was after. One showing  a variety of different Porter grists.I was reminded of it when looking at Lovibond's records. Because they used a very unusual Stout grist for a London brewer. In that it contained neither pale nor brown malt.

Instead it gores for an amber and black malt combination. It struck a chord the first time I saw it. Because it reminded me of one of my home brews. In fact, my first home brew in Amsterdam, almost 30 years ago now.

Because of a misunderstanding when I bought the malt, I used amber rather than pale as the base for a Mild recipe. Along with some black malt, that left me with a Porter rather than a Mild.

If you've been paying attention, you'll have noticed that in London, Porter and Stout recipes were variations on grist 1. Though, in the 1850s, it was more likely to have been 75% pale, 21% brown and 4% black malt.

Most brewers outside London, however, used something like grist 2, with just pale and black malt.

Porter grists suggested by Loftus
grist	pale	brown	amber	black	total
1	60%	35%	0%	5%	100%
2	90%	0%	0%	10%	100%
3	0%	0%	95%	5%	100%
4	45%	25%	25%	5%	100%
5	58%	30%	10%	3%	100%
Source:
"The Brewer" by William Loftus, London, 1856, page 62.

Output of the largest London Porter brewers 1817 - 1840

Brewing in London was being performed on an ever-increasing scale. Already in 1817 there were six breweries producing over 100,000 barrels a year. By 1840, my favourite, Barclay Perkins, was bashing out over 400,000 barrels annually.

Before 1830, this was all Black Beer. It’s only in the 1830s that Porter brewers also turned their hands to Ales. Even then, they were only producing tiny quantities of them.  The figures in the table, then, are almost all Porter and Stout.

The largest breweries, for example Barclay Perkins, were so impressive that they became tourist attractions, with visitors fascinated by their enormous size.

"A VISIT TO BARCLAY, PERKINS, AND CO.
On the southern banks of the Thames, between Southwark and London bridges, lies the hugest brewery in the world—the chief of those establishments which have made this great city the headquarters of malt liquor as well as civilisation. Ask any of the "fellowship porters" the way to BARCLAY, PERKINS, AND Co.'s, and there, from any one of these unaffected lovers of "heavy wet," you will get a direct direction. "There, Sir, right down afore ye!" and truly it would be difficult to miss a sight of the brewery, the buildings of which cover eleven acres of ground. But how to find out the entrance is the puzzle; you must thread your way through narrow lanes, thronged with drays, while a rumbling sound reminds one of barrels and hogsheads, and the olfactory organs testify that a brewery is not only near, but round about - for communication between the buildings is maintained by suspension bridges over the lanes. At last we arrive at the gateway; don't you see the ANCHOR, Sir, the symbol of Barclay, Perkins, and Co.? All brewers have their sign - their symbol - their emblem; and the anchor of Barclay, Perkins, and Co., is stamped, twisted, and interwoven on or in everything appertaining to the brewery - the very lamp-posts are propped up by the anchor."
"The London Saturday Journal" 1839, page 268.  

Output of the largest London Porter brewers 1817 - 1840 (barrels)
brewer	1817	1819	1825	1828	1830	1833	1835	1837	1840
Barclay Perkins	281,484	320,090	357,446	305,937	262,306	315,784	382,063	354,360	400,838
Whitbread	151,888	181,344	203,842	180,843	144,104	187,070	186,206	180,512	191,980
Truman	168,757	210,967	223,766	205,655	167,542	226,924	280,075	303,590	338,773
John Calvert	98,301	99,286	105,206	90,992	61,236
Reid	157,131	183,673	190,253	170,432	127,220	150,865	181,187	162,840	195,169
Combe -Delafield	110,776	133,008	146,743	114,795	104,722
Hoare	60,307	63,377	63,883	68,381	57,073
H. Meux	124,823	111,138	108,768	90,239	60,087
Sources:
“The British Brewing Industry 1830-1980”. T R Gourvish & R G Wilson, 1994, pages 610-612.
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers LMA/4453/D/09/010, LMA/4453/D/09/012, LMA/4453/D/09/016, LMA/4453/D/09/021 and LMA/4453/D/09/023.

Whitbread Stout grist, colour and bitterness 1816 - 1860

Another chance to show my chart making prowess with some more Whitbread Stout numbers.

This set shows how Whitbread Stout developed in the first half of the 19th century. After the introduction of black malt in 1817, the percentage steadily increased year on year. With the effect of darkening the finished beer considerably.

When black malt showed up, there was initially a big drop in the amount of brown malt used.Though it increased again in the late 1840s and almost got back to pre-black malt levels.

Bitterness levels were mostly on the rise, too. Ignore the one for 1860 as that was an Export Stout, which would obviously be more heavily hopped than a Stout intended for domestic consumption.

Whitbread Single Stout 1816 - 1860
year	OG	IBU	SRM	pale malt	brown malt	black malt	amber malt
1816	1064.3	72	23	50.56%	28.76%		20.67%
1817	1066.2	71	17	83.33%	16.25%	0.42%
1825	1063.7	61	16	93.59%	4.85%	1.56%
1830	1069	82	16	97.97%		2.03%
1835	1071.7	91	22	83.33%	14.81%	1.85%
1840	1072.3	66	24	84.75%	12.71%	2.54%
1846	1069.3	92	29	76.53%	20.41%	3.06%
1850	1075.1	81	31	76.53%	20.41%	3.06%
1854	1072.6	82	32	74.92%	21.25%	3.83%
1860	1072.9	163	32	74.92%	21.25%	3.83%
Sources:
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers LMA/4453/D/09/010, LMA/4453/D/09/011, LMA/4453/D/09/019, LMA/4453/D/09/024, LMA/4453/D/09/029, LMA/4453/D/09/034.LMA/4453/D/09/034, LMA/4453/D/09/040, LMA/4453/D/09/044, LMA/4453/D/09/048 and LMA/4453/D/09/054.
IBU and SRM my calculation.

And here are those grists in chart form.