Friday, 31 July 2026

Scottish Export/80/- boiling and fermentation in the 1950s

A Drybrough Export Ale label featuring nothing.
You won't have to put up with this much longer. I'll be back from my Canada trip in a couple of days. Then you'll be blasted with travel posts for a couple of weeks.

Processes today. Starting with boiling.

Unfortunately, most of the breweries couldn't be arsed to record the boiling time. Which is really annoying. The William Younger's records have a column for the boiling time. They just haven't filled it in.

The two breweries that didt bother don't reveal anything particularly unusual.90 to 120 minutes is pretty typical. The only thing that I find slightly surprising is that there were three boils at Robert Younger. And that all were of the same length. That's about all I have to say on the topic of boiling.

On to fermentation. Lots more details there, thankfully.

There's not too much variation in pitching temperatures: 60º F to 62.5º F. Averaging just under 61º F. Which is pretty normal stuff. I consider 60º F to be the "standard" pitching temperature.

Maximum temperatures are another matter. They're all over the place. From 65.5º F to 74.5º F. Drybrough Export only increased by 4º F, while Bernard's rose 14.5 º F. Quite a difference.

Oddly enough, those two were also the beers with the shortest fermentation times, just five days. I would have expected the fermentation that ran hotter to be quicker. All the other beers took seven days. 

Scottish Export/80/- boiling and fermentation in the 1950s
Year Brewer Beer boil time (hours) Pitch temp max. fermen-tation temp length of fermen-tation (days)
1957 Robert Younger 80/- 2 2 2 60º F 68º F 7
1958 Wm Younger Export       60º F 73.5º F 7
1958 Bernard Pale 1/4 1.75     60.5º F 74.5º F 5
1957 Maclay Export       62.5º F 70º F 7
1956 Drybrough Export       61.5º F 65.5º F 5
  Average         60.9º F 70.3º F 6.20
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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