Shepherd Neame sugars in 1971

Next, we’re taking look at the sugars.

You can see that Shepherd Neame was one of the brewers who threw some malt extract into the mash tun. Presumably, to add extra diastatic power. I’m not sure it was really necessary. It seems to have been a sort of safety net for nervous brewers.

It’s odd to see No. 3 invert turning up in beers like Light Ale. Beers you would expect to be quite pale. Whereas you would expect to, and do, find it in the Mild and Brown Ale. Here, it appears in everything except the one Pale Ale parti-gyle.

And that’s about where my understanding of the sugars ends. Everything other than the Brown Ale/Mild parti-gyle included something called Wortex. What was it? I don’t rightly know. But, given the beers it appears in, I doubt it had much colour.

Whereas the UKCS in the dark beers probably was quite dark. My guess is that the “CS” stands for caramel syrup. And, certainly, that assumption helps to give the finished beers the expected colour.

WSI? Possibly some sort of Special Invert? That’s about the best guess I can come up with.

I won’t bother with a table for the hops. All the beers contained the same two types, both from the brewery’s own hop gardens, one from the 1968 harvest and the other from 1970. 

Shepherd Neame sugars in 1971
Beer	Style	malt extract	no. 3 sugar	Wortex	UKCS	WSI	caramel	total sugar
Brown Ale	Brown Ale	0.80%	9.61%		9.61%	6.41%	1.49%	27.92%
Mild	Mild	0.80%	9.61%		9.61%	6.41%	1.49%	27.92%
Light Ale	Pale Ale	0.92%	11.01%	5.50%				17.43%
Bitter	Pale Ale	0.99%		6.93%				7.92%
Best Bitter	Pale Ale	1.10%		6.59%				7.69%
Abbey Ale	Pale Ale	0.64%	12.74%	6.37%				19.75%
Old English Stock Ale	Pale Ale	0.92%	11.01%	5.50%				17.43%
Bishop's Finger	Strong Ale	0.71%	11.35%	7.09%				19.15%
Stout	Stout		6.12%				2.04%	8.16%
Source:
Shepherd Neame brewing book held at the brewery, document number H-5O5.