Saturday, 6 December 2025

Let's Brew - 1893 Cannon X

A Cannon Brewery Brown Ale label featuring a drawing of a cannon. I know it's the wrong Cannon Brewery.
Like some other brewers in Kent, Cannon only brewed one Mild Ale. In this case, with the logical designation X.

This beer is a great demonstration of how much the timing of Mild becoming darker varied. At the nearby W.E. & J. Rigden brewery Mild was already semi-dark in 1884. Here, Mild is still pale a decade later.

There really is nothing to the grist. Well, as near to nothing as you can get. A single type of pale malt. Leaving a pretty pale colour.

The rate of attenuation isn’t great. It must have had a fairly full body with that finishing gravity of 1016º. Which I assume was deliberate. As it was pretty much exactly the same for every batch of X.

Equal amounts of two types of hops, Californian and East Kent, both from the 1891 harvest.

To complicate matters, six barrels of KK were mixed with the 50 barrels of X at racking time. 

1893 Cannon X
pale malt 11.50 lb 100.00%
Cluster 90 min 1.25 oz
Goldings 30 min 1.25 oz
OG 1050
FG 1016
ABV 4.50
Apparent attenuation 68.00%
IBU 38
SRM 4.5
Mash at 153º F
Sparge at 165º F
Boil time 90 minutes
pitching temp 58º F
Yeast Wyeast 1099 Whitbread ale

 

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