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!
Do brewer still reuse returns, or have regulations stopped that?
ReplyDeleteThe 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
Anonymous,
ReplyDeletewhen 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.