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Tuesday, 21 July 2026

Scottish Export/80/- in the 1950s

A McEwan's Export India Pale Ale label featuring a globe.
Have you been enjoying my stuff about Eighty Shillings? Whether you have or not, there's lots more coming. I seem to have got sidetracked into it. Oh, well.

In this post, we'll be looking at 60/- in the 1950s. Which is when the modern form of the style crystallised. When brewers were finally freed from the last restrictions of WW II. 

I've examples from five breweries, which I hope is pretty representative. All of the breweries were based in Edinburgh, other than Maclay which was in Alloa.

Only one of the beers was called 80/- in the brew house, that from Robert Younger. I'm guessing that all of them would have called Export in the pub, mind. Though that might not have been the name on the pump.

The gravities vary from 1040º to 1046º. Averaging 1044º. Which is about where I'd expect a post-WW II 80/-. There's almost as much varition in the finishing gravities, going from 1009.5º to 1015º.

On Account of the greatly varying rates of attenuation, from 63% to 79%, the ABVs are all over the place. There's a difference of 1.5% ABV between the weakest, Maclay's, and the strongest, William Younger's.

Most of the examples were hopped at around 4 lbs per quarter (336 lbs) of malt. The outlier being Maclay's at 6 lbs. In England, the hopping would have been more like at Maclay. At the other breweries, it's quite light, by UK standards. 

Scottish Export/80/- in the 1950s
Year Brewer Beer OG FG ABV App. Atten-uation lbs hops/ qtr hops lb/brl
1957 Robert Younger 80/- 1043 1012 4.10 72.09% 4.93 0.83
1958 Wm Younger Export 1046 1009.5 4.83 79.35% 4.39 0.77
1958 Bernard Pale 1/4 1046 1013.3 4.33 71.20% 3.97 0.76
1957 Maclay Export 1040 1015 3.31 62.50% 6.05 1.00
1956 Drybrough Export 1045 1013.5 4.17 70.00% 4.35 0.80
  Average   1044.0 1012.7 4.15 71.03% 4.74 0.83
Sources:
Robert Younger brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number RY/6/1/2.
William Younger brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number WY/6/1/3/112.
T & J Bernard brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number TJB6/1/1/1.
Maclay brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number M/6/1/1/35.
Drybrough brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number D/6/1/1/7.

Here's a short YouTube video I made about Eighty Shilling. 

 

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