Obviously, the grist is identical to that of Ordinary. As the two were parti-gyled together. What do I have to say? Not a huge amount, really.
The grist of mostly pale malt leaves a pretty pale colour. At the very bottom end of the scale for a Bitter of this gravity. Looking at a 1967 analysis from the Whitbread Gravity Book, the colour seems to have become a little paler, around 1º SRM. Maybe that was as a result of switching to all malt.
It's a little more bitter than Ordinary, but still very much at the low end for the style, Though the relatively high degree of attenuation probably accentuated what bitterness there was.
| 2006 Youngs Special | ||
| pale malt | 9.75 lb | 93.57% |
| crystal malt 20 L | 0.67 lb | 6.43% |
| Fuggles 75 min | 1.00 oz | |
| Goldings 30 min | 0.50 oz | |
| OG | 1045 | |
| FG | 1009.5 | |
| ABV | 4.70 | |
| Apparent attenuation | 78.89% | |
| IBU | 20 | |
| SRM | 5 | |
| Mash at | 152º F | |
| Sparge at | 165º F | |
| Boil time | 75 minutes | |
| pitching temp | 64º F | |
| Yeast | Wyeast 1968 London ESB (Fullers) | |
Young's is supposedly the source of Wyeast 1768-PC English Special Bitter and White Labs WLP033 Klassic Ale yeasts, although neither are core strains so you have to catch them when they come out. Supposedly WLP033 came to White Labs via BrewTek CL-170 Classic British Ale.
ReplyDeleteI have a pre-Covid bottle of Spesh with the old branding that is bottle-conditioned, I'm not sure the bottle conditioning has survived all Marston's messing about?
Hi Ron,
ReplyDeletejust to give the same details from the Real Almanac from 1992 that I gave for the Ordinary. This one is described with 23-27 EBC and again 30-34 IBU.
I think the colour would have come from their proprietary sugar back then, but the low bitterness in your recipe really puzzles me. Is it calculated? I found that standard IBU calculators did not work for Fuller's parti-gyle, so there might be a similar issue here.
The Almanac states that this one was dry-hopped with Target, any notes on that? They might have dropped it in the 14 years in-between.
How do you scale the Crystal Malt, since it is not the same as for the Ordinary? Do you try to take the effect of the parti-gyle into account?
The pre all malt Young’s special was quite special according to my grandfather.
ReplyDeleteOscar
Thanks Ron, much appreciated. I look forward to some other Young's recipes at a future date of your choosing.
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