Young's beers in 1975

Let’s take a look Young’s beers in the middle of the grooviest of all decades.

There are quite a lot of them. Though a couple are just variants off other beers. SPA (Special Bitter) appears twice because there was an increase in its gravity in 1975. A change which then made it identical to Ram Rod.

I’m not sure what YPV was. It was a slightly weaker version of PA (Ordinary Bitter) that was occasionally made in small quantities. EXPA is Export Pale Ale or Special London Ale. Usually parti-gyled with a couple of other Pale Ales. PAB is bottling Pale Ale, which was probably marketed as Light Ale.

The rates of attenuation are all pretty high. I haven’t taken the highest or lowest but a median value for the FGs. I never realised just how strong Special was. Mostly over 5% ABV.

Rather unexpectedly, Saxon is level most hopped beer, along with Export Pale Ale, with over 7 lbs per quarter (336 lbs) of malt. The other Pale Ales were all hopped at around 5.5 lbs per quarter of malt. And the Mild and Winter Warmer, which were parti-gyled together,

It’s always nice to have colours listed. In this case, EBC. Which shows that the Pale Ales were on the pale side. With the Light Ale barely darker than the Lager.

Young's beers in 1975
Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	colour
BMA	Mild	1030.5	1005.5	3.30	81.82%	3.40	0.44	76
PAB	Pale Ale	1030.5	1005.0	3.37	83.64%	5.49	0.67	14
YPV	Pale Ale	1035.5	1007.2	3.74	79.69%	5.49	0.74	18
PA	Pale Ale	1036.6	1005.5	4.10	84.85%	5.87	0.88	14
SPA	Pale Ale	1044.9	1006.6	5.06	85.19%	5.50	1.00
SPA	Pale Ale	1047.6	1007.2	5.35	84.88%	5.99	1.20	22
Ram Rod	Pale Ale	1047.6	1009.4	5.06	80.23%	5.53	1.08	23
EXPA	Pale Ale	1062.6	1017.2	6.01	72.57%	7.38	1.83	27
Winter Warmer	Strong Ale	1055.4	1011.6	5.79	79.00%	3.48	0.72	68
Old Nick	Barley Wine	1084.2	1023.8	7.99	71.71%	5.26	1.87	51
Saxon	Lager	1032.7	1005.0	3.66	84.75%	7.29	1.00	12
Source:
Young's brewing record held at Battersea Library, document number YO/RE/1/44.