Let's Brew Wednesday - 1940 Youngs XXXX Ale

I’m lumping this in with the 1939 brews because . . well, I don’t have an example from 1939 and this was brewed barely into 1940, on January 19th.

Surprisingly, the gravity is a couple of degrees higher than in 1932, at a very impressive 1081º.  That’s very high for a draught beer, which is what I believe this was. The quantities brewed were also reasonably large: this batch, for example, was of 51 barrels.

Before WW I,  KK, a standard Burton Ale, was almost as strong as this. The versions from Whitbread and Barclay Perkins were both around 1075º. What a glorious time to have been alive. Little wonder they had so many problems with drunkenness.

No shock, on the other hand, that it was parti-gyled with XXX and X Though the recipe of this brew was slightly different from some others, in that the base malt was 100% mild malt. Rather than a mix of mild and pale malt.

There were two types of Kent hops, both from the 1938 harvest, one of which had been cold stored. 

1940 Youngs XXXX Ale
mild malt	13.75 lb	80.29%
crystal malt 120 L	1.375 lb	8.03%
malt extract	0.50 lb	2.92%
No. 3 invert sugar	1.375 lb	8.03%
caramel 1000 SRM	0.125 lb	0.73%
Fuggles 120 min	2.00 oz
Fuggles 30 min	2.00 oz
OG	1081
FG	1030
ABV	6.75
Apparent attenuation	62.96%
IBU	38
SRM	26
Mash at	153º F
Sparge at	170º F
Boil time	120 minutes
pitching temp	58º F
Yeast	WLP002 English Ale