In London, a beer of this gravity would have barely even counted as an Ordinary Bitter and was well short of the strength of a Best Bitter. It doesn’t make being a Scottish drinker seem very attractive. The beers local breweries supplied were both weaker and more expensive than elsewhere.
I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the colour I list for any Maclay beer. With their penchant for colouring beers with caramel at racking time, Scottish brewers regularly sold the same beer in as many as six or seven colour variations. Depending on which city you were drinking in, PA 7d could have varied in colour from the 7.5 SRM as brewed to 20 or even 25 SRM.
Based on how often it turns up in the brewing records, PA 7d was being brewed in considerably smaller quantities than PA 5d and PA 6d.
| 1939 Maclay PA 7d | ||
| pale malt | 6.75 lb | 77.14% |
| flaked maize | 0.50 lb | 5.71% |
| No. 2 invert sugar | 1.50 lb | 17.14% |
| Styrian Goldings 90 min | 0.75 oz | |
| Fuggles 60 min | 1.00 oz | |
| Goldings 30 min | 1.00 oz | |
| Goldings dry hops | 0.75 oz | |
| OG | 1042 | |
| FG | 1014.5 | |
| ABV | 3.64 | |
| Apparent attenuation | 65.48% | |
| IBU | 32 | |
| SRM | 7.5 | |
| Mash at | 149º F | |
| After underlet | 156º F | |
| Sparge at | 170º F | |
| Boil time | 90 minutes | |
| pitching temp | 60º F | |
| Yeast | WLP028 Edinburgh Ale | |
This recipe is from my recently-released Blitzkrieg!, the definitive book on brewing during WW II.
The second volume contains the recipes. But not just that. There are also overviews of some of the breweries covered, showing their beers at the start and the end of the conflict.
Buy one now and be the envy of your friends!
Ron, how long would that first rest have been at 65°C before the underlet?
ReplyDeleteIt always amazes me how the attenuation is so low on some of these beers despite fairly innocuous looking initial mash temps. Unless, perhaps, the underlet was performed very soon after the goods went in the mash? Or would this have attenuated further when it was sat in the pub cellar?