Saturday 23 September 2023

Let's Brew - 1959 Watney Dairy Maid Sweet Stout

A bit of an odd one, this. It’s a Watney beer, but it wasn’t brewed in London. This is a beer that was brewed there, but I have none of those brewing records. Luckily for me, Usher in Trowbridge also brewed some Watney beers. And I have some of their records.

A typical watery postwar Stout, you might say. But, being a Watney beer, it wasn’t as simple as that. 680 barrels were brewed. But then another 108 barrels of various shit were added at raking time. Bottoms, returned beer – all the crap brewers were so keen on not wasting.

In addition, there were also 2.25 gallons per barrel of candy sugar added. The net result being a rise in the effective OG by 3.6º to 1034.º. I’ve added a half pound of candy to account for this.

The base recipe looks normal enough. There’s a mild malt base with black malt for colour. The sugar is split between granules, which I assume is just plain white sugar and CDM (Caramelised Dextro-Maltose). For the latter, I’ve substituted mostly No. 3 invert, along with a little caramel.

Odd is what’s missing: lactose. The names “Dairy Maid” and “Sweet Stout” imply its presence. But I’m pretty sure it contained none, as it’s not mentioned the Whitbread Gravity Book analyses. Which usually made a point of doing so.

Weirdest ingredient is ginger, 26 oz of which were added to the 680 barrels. Which for this size of batch works out to bugger all.

A fairly typical underlet mash process was employed.

action barrels strike heat tap heat
mash 85 154º F 146º F
underlet 10 154º F 149º F
sparge 1   170º F 152º F
sparge 2   160º F 156º F

A single type of East Kent hops from the 1958 harvest was used. 

1959 Watney Dairy Maid Sweet Stout
mild malt 5.00 lb 67.80%
black malt 0.67 lb 9.08%
flaked maize 0.25 lb 3.39%
No. 3 invert sugar 0.50 lb 6.78%
cane sugar 0.33 lb 4.47%
candy sugar 0.50 lb 6.78%
caramel 2000 SRM 0.125 lb 1.69%
ginger pinch  
Goldings 45 mins 0.75 oz
Goldings 15 mins 0.50 oz
OG 1034
FG 1012
ABV 2.91
Apparent attenuation 64.71%
IBU 14
SRM 33
Mash at 150º F
Sparge at 170º F
Boil time 45 minutes
pitching temp 60º F
Yeast WLP023 Burton Ale

This is one of the 277 recipes in my new book on London Stout. Get your copy now!




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do brewer still reuse returns, or have regulations stopped that?

The mention here got me looking through your archives, and I found a mention here of one beer that was over 50% second hand stuff. I'm a bit surprised that was legal.

https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2009/08/confusing-youngers-part-two.html

Ron Pattinson said...

Anonymous,

when the tax system was changed to brewery gate, there was no point in using retursn, as you'd have to pay tax on them when they left the brewery again.