William Younger (Holyrood) processes in 1884

We're now moving onto some of the processes at William Yoinger. Namely boiling and fermentation. Why not mashing? Because it's too difficult to record in my spreadsheet.

The boiling times are very consistent two hours for the first wort and 2.5 hours for the second. Except for some of the stronger beers, where it was 2.5 hours and 3 hours. Oh, and the Pils. But, in that case, it was because it was parti-gyled with XXX.

Is that particularly long? The boil that supposedly reduced the first wort to a syrup? Well, no. Long boils were common at the time. For example, in 1883, in Truman's Burton brewery, every wort was boiled for three hours. Between 1.5 and 2 hours was more common, but there were plenty that were longer. What's odd is that earlier in the century Younger's boil times were very short. Sometimes an hour or even less. It's only in the 1860s that they became longer.

All of the pitching temperatures are under 60º F. Which is a little on the cool side. Though that's probably explained by the reasonably high gravity of the beers. You'll see that, in general, the stronger the beer, the lower the pitching temperature. On average, the maximum temperature was around 12º F higher. Hitting somewhere in the low 70sº F. 

The exception, quite logically, being the Pils. Starting at just 42º F and only rising a couple of degrees. As this seemed to be brewed on their standard equipment, were they achieving this just with attemperators? I suppose it would be possible if the wort had been cooled to 42º F before being transferred to the fermenter.

Around a week was pretty typical for primary fermentation. Nothing unusual there. Obviously, the cool fermentation of the Pils took much longer.
 

William Younger (Holyrood) processes in 1884
Beer	Style	boil time (hours)		Pitch temp	max. fermen-tation temp	length of fermen-tation (days)
S XP	IPA	2	2.5	58.5º F	70º F	7
XP	IPA	2	2.5	58.5º F	69º F	7
XXP	IPA	2	2.5	58.5º F	70º F	6
XXX	Mild	2.5	3	58.5º F	69º F	6
XXXX	Mild	2.5	3	59º F	72º F	7
XXXX / 3	Mild	2	2.5	56º F	72º F	6
Ext	Pale Ale	2	2.5	57º F	72º F	7
S Ext	Pale Ale	2	2.5	59º F	69.5º F	7
PX	Pils	2.5	3	42º F	45º F	16
1	Strong Ale	2	2.5	56º F	72.5º F	7
3	Strong Ale	2.5	3	57º F	73º F	7
Average		2.18	2.68	56.4º F	68.5º F	7.5
Source:
William Younger brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number WY/6/1/3/11.