Trouble at Messrs. Arrol & Sons, Limited, Brewery, Alloa (part 3)

Remember the start of this series? No, I can't either. Sometime way back in the past. We've finally got to Mr. Heslop's suggestions for cleaning up Arrol's brewery and making the beers drinkable.

Having read the long list of dirty equipment, sloppy methods and inadequate machinery, you can't help but assume that all Arrol's beer had been vinegar or worse. How could a brewery which, like other Scots brewers, depended mostly on free trade, have kept any customers with their beer in such a sorry state? Well, the fact that they brought in Mr. Heslop suggests that the poor beer quality was affecting sales.

Let's see what Mr. Heslop suggested:

"Mr Heslop's Solution

Having been asked by you to make a full report on the trouble at your brewery at Alloa, I have now pleasure in forwarding same. I have concentrated this as much as possible without in any way detracting from its value, and trust it will meet with your approval, and that better results may be obtained in the near future.

The cause of the trouble with your beers in my opinion arises from a combination of circumstances. The first, dirty plant, walls and cellars, also a certain percentage of casks which had been passed as clean, there having been no proper inspection lamp used. The second, too large a percentage of heavy malts in grists for hot weather. The third, badly cooked wort being boiled in too large bulk and by steam. The finings are being made at Brewery, but although higher in cost to buy it would be advisable to do so until such time as cellars where this produce is made are in a cleaner, sweeter smelling state.

Californian hops are being used for dry hopping meantime, but a blend of Mild English hops might improve the flavour of beer in cask.

Your stock of Indian and Californian malts is getting too small. I have told your brewer to start malting operations immediately as his stock of usable malts will be finished in about a month, and new malt must not be used till it is at least 5 to 6 weeks old. Your Indian barley is late in arriving and you will be compelled to buy this class of malt also Californian for a time to keep your Brewery going, as by blending American and Scotch malts, with above and Californian, except in very small percentages, can only lead to further trouble and fining difficulties. If possible to procure, a quantity of Tunisian light malt to be blended in pale ale grists would still give much better results.

Since seeing American barley to-day and ascertaining from your Maltster the difficulty he had in keeping it sound on the malting floor, I strongly advise you to sell both barley (400 qrs.) and malt (700 qrs.) even at a slight loss, as it will only give you further trouble with your beers if used, and I have told your Mr Church and Mr Hay this to-day. I also examined barley and malt cleaning machinery, and meantime you have merely roughing-out machines and an addition should be made to this plant later.

The mash and sparge heats are correct for type of malts used, and all other particulars and details of system I have gone into with your Brewer.

The Brewer should have full power in the management of Brewing and Malting Departments with no interference whatever from the Commercial Department, and the ordering and order books should be in his hands. When barley, malt and hops have to be bought and contracts have to be made, then one of your Directors should be consulted.

If my advice is carefully followed out without unnecessary delay, plant etc. kept thoroughly clean and sweet and with proper supervision of men, I see no reason why you should not turn out Ales of fairly good quality.

I asked Mr Robert Henderson to examine and report on well, as this was absolutely necessary.

I am. Gentlemen,

Yours faithfully

A. J. Heslop."
Journal of the Scottish Brewing Archive Vol. 3, 2001, pages 35 - 36.

His recommendations in a nutshell: clean the brewery and make sure all the casks are clean; change the malt used; buy in finings rather than making them in a filthy cellar.

This being 1916, getting hold of the foreign barley to malt wouldn't necessarily have been that simple. And the quality of barley available wasn't likely to be the best. Brewers had to learn to make use of what they could get hold of during the war. I've seen it mentioned elsewhere that malt shouldn't be used immediately. Not sure why that is exactly, but I'm not going to argue.

I'm shocked that they used American hops for dry-hopping. Normally only good English or Continental hops were used in the cask and American hops were reserved for early copper additions. Mostly because no-one much cared for the flavour of American hops and used them where this would be the least noticeable.

There's one recommendation that should be nailed up in every brewery: let the brewer run brewing operations and keep the money men out of it. It's a sad and depressing truth that once the brewer loses control of brewing, the beers turn to shit. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. It's happened everywhere from Bass to Guinness to Pilsner Urquell.

The UK and the USA

I meant to post a link to this earlier. A post that tells a little of the relationship between British and American brewing. Go and read it, then you'll understand what I'm on about.

I've been considering the topic for a while. (The kids complained about the clunking sounds, I was thinking so hard) How long it's been going. And how it swings from one direction to another. One type of connection to another.

Ignoring the obvious colonial links, you've got ingredients. Hops and barley from the USA flowed into Britain from 1850 onwards. English farmers couldn't keep up with the population growth and ceased to be able to grow enough ingredients for the demands of the brewing industry.

Then there are the techniques. The method of making "chilled and carbonated" bottled beers in the late 19th century was developed in the USA then adopted in Britain.

Equipment, too. In the 1890's Allsopp bought a shiny new Lager brewery from the USA. It was a big deal. They compared at Continental and Amercan brewhouses and chose the latter. I've been meaning to post about the Western Brewery article about it.

OK. It's really an enamelly brewery, but you get the idea. Ultra-modern. Love the poses those blokes are striking. Why's the one on the right all by himself? And why is the chav in the middle staring at him? The longer you look at it, the more disturbing it becomes.

Almost forgot a really basic piece of beer equipment. The crown cork. First produced in the USA.

And there's been plenty of traffic in the other direction. But that's not for me to write about.

Remeber I said the Lager brewery was a big deal. This is how they celebrated its arrival:

Special train. That's what I call making a fuss. It's the private jet of the steam age.

I remember now why I hadn't written yet about that fascinating Lager brewery. Page 504 of the Western Brewer article is missing in the scans I have. Did I lose it?

Low-nitrogen barleys in WW II

We're back with the Wallenstein Laboratories Communications article about brewing in wartime Britain.

This section explains why British barley was mostly low in nitrogen and why Californian 6-row barley had been so popular before the war.

Low-nitrogen barleys

This yeast trouble has been increasingly aggravated in recent decades by the tendency to use barley of very low nitrogen content. The new hybrid barleys which command by far the greater part of the British brewing market — Plumage-Archer and Spratt-Archer — have been selected, propagated, grown and manured with the object, among others, of reducing the nitrogen content of the grain. The reasons for this procedure are to be found in the brewers' fear of bacterial and of protein instability arising from the use of malt of high nitrogen content. Under the British system of brewing, a nitrogen content of upwards of 1.6 to 1.7 per cent of the moisture-free grain would be regarded as high in many quarters. Barleys as low as 1.2 to 1.3 per cent are commonly obtainable. Furthermore the low-nitrogen barleys normally have a better appearance and yield more extract, for which reasons they are more highly valued.

The result has been that farmers have been aiming over a period of years at producing a low-nitrogen barley in order to compete successfully for the high competitive prices obtainable for such barley. Very much of the malting barley grown here today is of this type, but the conditions of brewing are not always such that malt made from low-nitrogen barley is the right type to use. In some breweries and for some beers the grists, type of yeast and fermentation technique used may be ideally suited for these malts; in others, malt of higher nitrogen content might better be employed.

In normal times almost all British brewers use flaked corn or sugar as a malt adjunct. The former helps to give a paler and brighter beer; the latter aids clarification. Both adjuncts, however, reduce the proportion of yeast nutrients such as nitrogen, "bios" and minerals in the wort. The disappearance of the corn and reduction of sugar, and their replacement by malt extracts improved yeast nutrition until the effect of lowered gravities came into operation. The net result in most breweries has probably been that the one effect just counterbalanced the other.

In general, undernourishment of the yeast has not appeared in those breweries where it was not experienced before the war. Tolerably good yeast crops can be skimmed from worts of even the lowest original gravity, 1030 and slightly less. But in a few breweries yeast weakness is worse than ever. Lower gravities mean proportionally less nutriment per cc, but the yeast increase (including that which ultimately settles to the bottom of the fermenting vessel), is not proportionately less. Taken by itself, a very low original gravity leads to a markedly reduced top crop available for skimming, and to slight undernourishment of the yeast. In time the latter effect is cumulative.

While this trouble was widespread even before the war, there were means for overcoming it then that are not available now. For example, when yeast trouble was aggravated by a season's home barley which gave poor modification, resort could be had to certain imported barleys, notably Bohemian, which are normally rich in nitrogen yet modify easily. The blending of malts made from California six-rowed barleys was almost invariably practiced as it helped to mask the seasonal fluctuations in homegrown barleys. Admittedly many British brewers have discovered as a result of wartime conditions, that they can brew successfully without California malt, a practice which they would not have followed otherwise. Their philosophy generally is not to risk experiments where results are already satisfactory. Nevertheless, this degree of latitude in the freedom to reject an unsuitable homegrown barley after a bad season and purchase an imported barley in its place enabled the brewer to steer a successful course before the war. Now this is denied him.

There is normally less home-grown barley of good malting quality than is needed to meet the demand, so that some less satisfactory material is malted and used. In England most malt is not made by the brewer himself, but by a maltster who sells it. The latter naturally tries to buy barley of low nitrogen content which will malt easily. The brewer whose yeast is liable to undernourishment is more than ever in trouble today under these conditions. To brew the low-gravity beers he needs barleys of higher nitrogen content, but which modify well, and he cannot always get such as there is not enough to go around.
"Wallenstein Laboratories Communications, December 1943, Volume VI, number 19" pages 154 - 155.

I'd never realised that Plumage-Archer and Spratt-Archer had been deliberately manipulated to give them a low nitrogen content. (Plumage-Archer is the variety Fullers used in Past Masters XX.) I suppose it makes sense, if you expected to have Californian and other foreign barley available. If you knew cheap, high nitrogen barley could be found, it was logical to keep the nitrogen content of British barley low.

Another strange effect of the war was the increase in the proportion of malt in the grist. The flaked maize used in brewing had been imported. When the war began, the supply was cut off. The amount of sugar available for brewing was also reduced as it was diverted for other uses.

"In normal times almost all British brewers use flaked corn or sugar as a malt adjunct." This is often ignored by those trying to impose on the past their own ideas of what it should have been. Sugar in particular has been an integral part of British brewing since the 1860's. I've recently been collating information from Whitbread's brewing records of the late 19th century. This is a good one. Guess which of these beers contained sugar and which didn't: X Ale, PaAle Ale, KK (Stock Ale) , KKK, Porter, SS (stout) and SSS? The two cheapest beers - X Ale and Porter - were the only two that were all-malt. The sugar was in the more expensive beers.

It's funny what is reflected in the brewing records and what not. I knew all about the changes in ingredients. But the problems with yeast health I'd been totally unaware of. That's what makes this article so useful. It adds an extra layer of detail.

A pure beer brewery in Sheffield (1a)

More from the Departmental committee on beer materials. The interviews are fascinating. Hearing brewers describe their trade fleshes out the brewing records a treat. The passage below provides an insight into how ingredients were selected.

I've seen Bavarian hops many times in brewing logs. But never known exactly why they were being used. I do now.

5946. You say that it is your rule "to purchase all " English malt of fine to finest quality, and selected from  three distinct districts." Why have you specially selected three districts?  —I was advised by a friend of mine, who is a large brewer, when I first took the management of the brewery, to get them from two or three distinct districts; he said : " What you may be deficient in one district, you may gain in another" ; and we now buy our barleys as far as possible from three distinct barley-growing districts.

5947. Have you any objection to specify those districts? —Oh, no ; at the present time we have a contract for malt with a Mr. Haynes, of Ratcliffe-on-Trent, near Nottingham.

5948. A maltster ? —Yes; and we have one with Sandars and Company, of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire.

5949. Also maltsters ? —Large maltsters. Then we buy another portion from Mr. Milnthorpe, maltster, of Barnby-Don, near Doncaster. These are the three districts that we get our malt from.

5950. You buy your malt ready made ? —That is so.

5951. You do not buy the grain and malt it yourselves ? —No.

5952. (Professor Odling.) You do not actually know where the barley itself is grown ? —Well, it always comes out of those districts.

5953. In which the maltsters' places are ? —Yes; of course, it would hardly pay them to get it out of another district.

5954. (Chairman.) It is from information which they give you that you know that a certain proportion of foreign malt is blended with it ? —We buy the foreign malt independently.

5955. And blend it yourselves ? —We blend the malts ourselves.

5956. Where do you get your foreign malt from ? —We buy the foreign malt from Sandars, of Gainsborough, chiefly; we buy California and Smyrna malt, as a rule.

5957. But you do not blend it until it comes to your brewery ?—That is so.

5958. You say you use a certain proportion of what you call choice Bavarian hops ?—Yes.

5959. Do you consider that that is a hop which is conducive to the brewing of better beer than English hops, or is it a matter of economy ?—No, they are fully as dear ; the price is fully as high as that of the best English hops.

5960. You think it adds to the flavour of your beer ? — And to the keeping qualities.

5961. A certain admixture of Bavarian hops adds to the keeping quality of the beer?— We think so; that is our experience.
"Minutes of evidence taken before the Departmental committee on beer materials", 1899, page 227.
Evidence given by George Harston, Managing Director of the Anchor Brewery, Sheffield.

Using a blend of several malts was pretty much standard practice by this point. I'd always assumed that this was to even out the differences in any specific batch of malt,. And it seems I was right. Hooray for me!