The base malt is, in most cases, pale malt. Except sometimes the Pale Ales had mostly PA malt, a posher version of pale malt. And Saxon, which, unsurprisingly, went for lager malt.
Crystal malt only turns up in the three dark beers: Mild, Winter Warmer and Old Nick. Demonstrating once again that crystal malt was by no means universal in Pale Ales, even long after WW II.
One malt appears in every beer: enzymic. Which was used to adjust the pH of the mash.
Flaked maize, UK brewers’ adjunct of choice, shows up in every beer except for the Export Pale Ale parti-gyle.
| Young's grists in 1975 | ||||||||
| Beer | Style | pale malt | PA malt | lager malt | crystal malt | enzymic malt | total malt | flaked maize |
| BMA | Mild | 61.63% | 9.48% | 4.74% | 75.85% | 9.48% | ||
| PAB | Pale Ale | 81.63% | 3.22% | 84.85% | 8.59% | |||
| YPV | Pale Ale | 90.13% | 3.26% | 93.38% | ||||
| PA | Pale Ale | 27.95% | 53.75% | 3.22% | 84.92% | 8.60% | ||
| SPA | Pale Ale | 81.06% | 3.33% | 84.39% | 8.88% | |||
| SPA | Pale Ale | 81.67% | 3.22% | 84.89% | 8.60% | |||
| Ram Rod | Pale Ale | 80.38% | 1.09% | 3.26% | 84.73% | 8.69% | ||
| EXPA | Pale Ale | 92.12% | 3.33% | 95.45% | 0.00% | |||
| Winter Warmer | Strong Ale | 68.49% | 8.56% | 2.85% | 79.90% | 8.56% | ||
| Old Nick | Barley Wine | 64.29% | 9.18% | 3.06% | 76.53% | 9.18% | ||
| Saxon | Lager | 77.19% | 5.15% | 82.33% | 12.86% | |||
| Source: | ||||||||
| Young's brewing record held at Battersea Library, document number YO/RE/1/44. | ||||||||
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5 comments:
I find it amusing when homebrewers usually Americans on forums say that mild should not have crystal malt in it but bitter can.
Oscar
I think that's the first time I've read that enzymic malt was used to adjust ph, but then I did a search and it showed there were patents issued in the 1950s which look like they had a connection between enzymic and acidified malt.
I'm not a scientist so I can't make sense of how the chemistry works out, but it would make sense why those occasional small amounts of enzymic malt appeared in mashes.
YPV might have been Ram Keg Bitter, which was introduced in 1970 to replace Young’s Keg Bitter (whether the recipe changed as well as the name, I don’t know). I never tried it, though I recall seeing it (almost certainly in a free house, as it wasn’t sold in Young’s tied houses, as far as I remember).
As an American homebrewer I agree. It's absolutely hilarious. It's because of the recipe books that were ubiquitous in the 2000-2010s thay were based on winning contests as judged by other American palates.
I thought that enzymic malt extracts, that were quite common, for example in Boddingtons pale bitters, were there to adjust the fermentability of the wort following the lab results of a fast ferment test using current samples of the main malt, rather than the pH.
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