This is Sixty Shilling part two

Another of my little videos. In this one, I discuss my recipe for 1940 Drybrough P 60/. It's one I recently published on the blog.

 

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1960 Drybrough 60/-

As you can see, we’re still stuck on 60/-. Why? Don’t ask me. I’ve started so I’ll finish. Isn’t that reason enough?

This looks very much like 60 Bob as I knew it in my youth. As watery as a Mild and pretty much the same colour. In this case, not even quite 3% ABV. But what about the colour? The recipe says just 10 SRM. Isn’t that much paler than a Mild? Well, this is a Scottish beer, remember? It would have been coloured up with caramel at racking to various colours. Often to around 20 SRM.

There was another version called Keg Light, which was identical to this beer with one exception: it received no dry hops.

The grist is pretty simple: pale malt, flaked maize and a tiny amount of black malt. The latter presumably purely for colour. In addition, there were quite a few sugars: Colour, invert, Avona and CME. For those, I’ve substituted No. 2 and No. 3 invert.

Three types of English copper hops and one of English dry hops. With no indication of vintage or region. I’ve gone with Goldings and Fuggles. 

1960 Drybrough 60/-
pale malt	5.00 lb	75.36%
black malt	0.01 lb	0.15%
flaked maize	0.75 lb	11.30%
No. 2 invert sugar	0.75 lb	11.30%
No. 3 invert sugar	0.13 lb	1.88%
Fuggles 90 min	0.50 oz
Fuggles 60 min	0.50 oz
Goldings 30 min	0.25 oz
Goldings dry hops	0.50 oz
OG	1031
FG	1010
ABV	2.78
Apparent attenuation	67.74%
IBU	17
SRM	10
Mash at	144 / 159º F
Sparge at	165º F
Boil time	90 minutes
pitching temp	61.5º F
Yeast	WLP028 Edinburgh Ale

 

Let's Brew - 1940 Drybrough P 60/-

Continuing my look at modern Shilling Ales, here’s a 60/- recipe from the start of WW II.

Being brewed early on in the conflict, the gravity hasn’t been reduced yet from its interwar strength. By the end of the war, the gravity was reduced to not much over 1030º. Or about as weak as beer got. Though a shitty level of attenuation leaves this beer not much over 3% ABV.

You’ve probably heard me bang on about how Scottish beers usually had no coloured malts in them at all. This beer is an exception, as there’s a tiny quantity of black malt. I assume just for colour. Other than that, it’s just base malt and sugar.

There were three types of sugar: Fison, Avona and invert. I’ve substituted No. 1 invert for all three. Perhaps No. 2 invert would be a better choice. I’ll leave that decision up to you.

Just one type of hops: English from the 1938 season. Not all that many of them, either. Leaving the finished beer at a mere 20 IBU.

It’s quite likely that this beer was coloured to several different shades through the addition of caramel at racking time.

1940 Drybrough P 60/-
pale malt	7.00 lb	89.06%
black malt	0.04 lb	0.51%
No. 1 invert sugar	0.75 lb	9.54%
malt extract	0.07 lb	0.89%
Fuggles 135 min	0.50 oz
Fuggles 60 min	0.50 oz
Goldings 30 min	0.50 oz
Goldings dry hops	0.25 oz
OG	1036
FG	1013
ABV	3.04
Apparent attenuation	63.89%
IBU	20
SRM	7
Mash at	151º F
Sparge at	170º F
Boil time	135 minutes
pitching temp	60º F
Yeast	WLP028 Edinburgh Ale

 

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

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. 

 

 

Scottish Export/80/- hops in the 1950s

Still on my holidays. Unless I've dropped dead from the stress of travel. You never know at my age.

And still pumping out stuff about Eighty Bob. It's a style I drank a reasonable amount of. Mostly in the form of Younger's/McEwans. Which I believe were the same beer. Decent enough stuff, when in cask form. I must have had Maclay's, too. I can't really remember it, though. I'd usually go for their 60/-, if it was an option.

Back to the topic in hand. Hops. Lots of English hops. Which is what you would expect. In the 1950s the UK was about self-sufficient in hops. Meaning not that many were imported.

Most of the beers contain two types of hops. Other than Drybrough Export, which has five. Including two foreign hops, Saaz and Styrian. Interestingly, both from Central Europe.

Not many of the brewing records mention the vitage of the hops. Only William Younger and Bernard bothered. Both were using hops mostly from the most recent season. With just one of William Younger's hops a year older than that.

Scottish Export/80/- hops in the 1950s
Year	Brewer	Beer	hop 1	hop 2	hop 3	hop 4	hop 5
1957	Robert Younger	80/-	English	English
1958	Wm Younger	Export	Kent 1956	Kent 1957
1958	Bernard	Pale 1/4	English 1957	English 1957
1957	Maclay	Export	English	English	English	Saaz	Styrian
1956	Drybrough	Export	English	English
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.

 

 

Scottish Export/80/- sugars in the 1950s

There's nop end to the 80/- fun. I'll be away in Canada when this is published. That's why I've been spinning so many posts from Eighty Bob. I think it's theown up some interesting stuff, mind.

Today we're looking at the sugars in 80/-. And there are way more of them than malts. Ten, in total. Seven of them just in Drybrough Export. Though, proportionally, Maclay's had the greatest quantity, at almost 19%.

Let's work left to right. Three of the beers contain malt extract. This was pretty common at the time. Usually, it was a way of getting some extra enzymes into the mash. Unlike the other sugars, which were added to the copper, while malt extract went into the mash tun.

All the beers contain invert of some sort. It's just not specified which type, in most cases. The stuff just called "invert" is probably No. 1 or No. 2 invert. Cane sugar is, I assume, unrefined cane sugar.

NExt we have a whole bunch of proprietary sugars: Hydrol, Avona, DSS, Fison and CWE. No real idea what that lot are. I'm surprised that a couple, Hydrol and Avona, appear in more than one beer.

The average sugar content is 15%. Though there's quite a bit of variation across the different breweries. 

Scottish Export/80/- sugars in the 1950s
Year	Brewer	Beer	malt extract	no. 1 sugar	invert	cane sugar	Hydrol	Avona	DSS	Fison	CWE	caramel	total sugar
1957	Robert Younger	80/-	1.39%		6.94%		5.55%					0.07%	13.95%
1958	Wm Younger	Export			4.48%	8.96%							13.43%
1958	Bernard	Pale 1/4			7.27%			4.85%					12.12%
1957	Maclay	Export	2.70%	10.81%					5.41%				18.92%
1956	Drybrough	Export	2.16%		4.31%		2.16%	3.23%		2.16%	2.16%		16.17%
	Average												14.92%
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.

Take a look at my recent Youtube video on Eighty Shilling. 

 

Scottish Export/80/- in the 1950s

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. 

 

George Thompson interview part two

George Thompson continues to talk about continuous fermentation, including details of cleaning and maintenance. With a couple of disturbing accounts of industrial accidents. And a discussion of Watney's yeast and yeast harvesting. 

Continuous fermentation (part two)

I’d always laboured under the assumption that the main reason for dropping continuous fermentation was that it produced beer that tasted shit. I’m now beginning to doubt this. At least as the main cause of the system being ditched.

According to taste tests carried out by Bishop, continuously fermented beer only scored marginally worse than that produced by batch fermentation. Though with just six tests, the sample size was pretty small.  As further proof, Bishop comments that continuous fermentation beer wasn’t blended with batch fermented, as would have been the case if there were significant flavour differences. And none of the customers complained.  (The least ringing endorsement that you can imagine – no-one complained.)

According to George Thompson, who ran the system at Drybrough, even the quality control people in London couldn’t tell the difference between batch and continuously fermented Heavy. 

Yet, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, UK brewers abandoned the system. If the beer quality was acceptable, why was this the case? You can probably guess: economics.

Continuous fermentation systems were good at producing large volumes of a single beer, but rather inflexible. Switching from one beer to another could be a complicated and lengthy process. Running the systems proved more difficult than expected, requiring constant monitoring by highly skilled personnel. Making them more expensive to run than batch systems. 

In addition, there were big advances in cylindroconical technology, speeding up batch fermentation and providing a more flexible method of fermentation. 

At Drybrough, it was probably the need to monitor the system 24/7 and the cost of employing shifts of workers for the task, which the conical fermenters didn’t require. 

I was most intrigued by the impact of the system on yeast. In the early days, Drybrough’s system was run for very long periods – more than six months. But it was found that the yeast began to change at certain point, leading to a different flavour profile in the beer. To prevent this, the system was brought down twice a year: midsummer and midwinter. 

Yeast harvested from the continuous fermenter was more vigorous than that from conicals and at Drybrough was used to ferment stronger beers. 

This is an excerpt from my book on 1970s brewing, "Keg!". Get your copy of "Keg!" now!

Listen to George Thompson, who ran the last continuous fermentation system in the northern hemisphere, talk about the process.

Continuous fermentation

A dream of some large brewers was continuous fermentation. Where fresh wort was continuously added to fermenters as finished beer was taken out. A process way more efficient that traditional fermentation. 

Briggs described the potential benefits:

there was real hope for the commercial success of continuous systems with the advantages comprising:

• lower capital cost
• lower working capital because of less beer in process, as a result of faster throughput
• lower product cost as a result of lower beer losses, more ethanol and less yeast
• lower fixed costs because of less manpower as a result of less cleaning and automatic
• fermenter control. 

The first attempts were made in the late 19th century and several different systems were tried in the years leading up to WW I. None proved successful in practice. One system involving beer moving from one open tank to another was revived in the 1950s, with experiments in the UK, Canada and New Zealand. It was in the latter two that these trials were put into practice in the 1960s. 

In the UK, the process was championed by L.R. Bishop, who worked at the Watney brewery in Mortlake. He seems to have dedicated a good chunk of his career to developing the process, starting in 1925 when he was a post-graduate student. But it was only after WW II that his interest was able to take practical form, in the shape of a 1,000-gallon pilot plant. When this proved a success, a 1,000-barrel plant was constructed. 

By the early 1970s, Watney had the system installed in four of their breweries: Mortlake, Mile End, Drybrough and Murphy. Between them, they were capable of producing 20,000 barrels a week. Or around a million barrels a year.  Which was around 22% of their total output.  The bulk of this capacity – 13,000 barrels per week - was at Mortlake. 

At its peak in the early 1970s, around 4% of UK beer was brewed using one of the continuous fermentation systems.  Though much of that seems to have been at Watney. With their capacity equivalent to 2.7% of UK production.  

This is an excerpt from my book on 1970s brewing, "Keg!". Get your copy of "Keg!" now!

Listen to George Thompson, who ran the last continuous fermentation system in the northern hemisphere, talk about the process. 

George Thompson interview part one

George Thompson, talks about his time at the Drybrough in Edinburgh, including continuous fermentation and brewing with raw barley.  

Let's Brew - 1906 Drybrough XXX Stout

Finally, a Stout worthy of the name. With a gravity well north of 1070º. Which is Double Stout strength. At least in London.

Recipe details you can find above in the X Stout entry.

This batch of XXX was packaged into 24 hogsheads, 15 kilderkins and 15 firkins. Quite an odd mix of cask sizes there. With nothing going into barrels, just larger and smaller sizes. Not sure what that tells us. But I thought I’d share it with you.

Given the strength, at least some of it might have been aged. For maybe 12 2to 18 months. That might explain why some was racked into hogsheads.
 

1906 Drybrough XXX Stout
pale malt	11.50 lb	69.38%
black malt	0.40 lb	2.41%
flaked rice	1.25 lb	7.54%
flaked maize	0.875 lb	5.28%
No. 1 invert sugar	0.40 lb	2.41%
No. 2 invert sugar	0.50 lb	3.02%
No. 4 invert sugar	0.40 lb	2.41%
honey	0.50 lb	3.02%
caramel 500 SRM	0.75 lb	4.52%
Fuggles 120 mins	0.75 oz
Cluster 120 mins	1.25 oz
Fuggles 90 mins	2.00 oz
Goldings 30 mins	2.00 oz
OG	1077
FG	1015
ABV	8.20
Apparent attenuation	80.52%
IBU	72
SRM	37
Mash at	148º F
Sparge at	167º F
Boil time	120 minutes
pitching temp	61º F
Yeast	WLP028 Edinburgh Ale

 

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1906 Drybrough XX Stout

Next branch on the strength tree is, logically enough, XX Stout. That’s assuming they were all marketed as Stout. Given the low strength of X and XX, they could have been presented as Porters. Except the style was stone dead in Scotland. And Scottish brewers were already making feeble Stouts, something they would take to extremes after WW II.

I can’t recall seeing an English Stout as weak as this before WW I.

I’ll not repeat a discussion of the recipe. Consult the entry for X, XX’s parti-gyle, chum, above.

XX was mostly racked into relatively small casks. In this case: 4 butts, 3 barrels, 74 kilderkins and 24 firkins. In contrast, PI 60/-, a Pale Ale of similar strength, mostly went into larger casks. For example: 35 hogsheads, 60 barrels, 11 kilderkins and 6 firkins.

My guess is that the 4 butts were for bottling. Which is why some was putt into such a large cask.  Smaller casks tended to be preferred by private customers. Families who bought casks to drink at home. At least in England. Not sure if that was the case in Scotland, too.
 

1906 Drybrough XX Stout
pale malt	6.00 lb	66.23%
black malt	0.25 lb	2.76%
flaked rice	0.75 lb	8.28%
flaked maize	0.50 lb	5.52%
No. 1 invert sugar	0.25 lb	2.76%
No. 2 invert sugar	0.33 lb	3.64%
No. 4 invert sugar	0.25 lb	2.76%
honey	0.33 lb	3.64%
caramel 500 SRM	0.40 lb	4.42%
Fuggles 120 mins	0.33 oz
Cluster 120 mins	0.67 oz
Fuggles 90 mins	1.00 oz
Goldings 30 mins	1.00 oz
OG	1042
FG	1012
ABV	3.97
Apparent attenuation	71.43%
IBU	45
SRM	27
Mash at	148º F
Sparge at	167º F
Boil time	120 minutes
pitching temp	61º F
Yeast	WLP028 Edinburgh Ale

 

Let's Brew - 1906 Drybrough X Stout

Drybrough’s records from this period are a nightmare. There’s some weird gyling and blending going on. The only brews I can make any sense of are some Pale Ale parti-gyles and a couple of X Ale parti-gyles.

I’ll be honest, I’m not sure that there wasn’t some sort of blending going on here. I’m just assuming the three gyles were left as fermented.

Usually, I’d assume X meant Mild. Not sure that’s the case here. For a start, the hopping rate is higher than for the Pale Ales. 7.5 lbs per quarter (336 lbs) of malt compared to just 5 lbs. Then I noticed the No. 4 invert and black malt. These are clearly Stouts.

The first thing that strikes me is how weak this beer is. Weaker even than Table Beer.  Not really “stout” at all.

It’s a pretty complicated recipe. Especially in the sugars. Where there are three inverts, caramel and hone.  The latter is an unusual one. You see it in recipes for domestic brewers, but not for commercial brewers.

There were four types of hops. Three English, two from the 1905 harvest and one from 1903. The fourth type was Californian from 1906.
 

1906 Drybrough X
pale malt	4.25 lb	66.88%
black malt	0.15 lb	2.36%
flaked rice	0.50 lb	7.87%
flaked maize	0.33 lb	5.19%
No. 1 invert sugar	0.1875 lb	2.95%
No. 2 invert sugar	0.25 lb	3.93%
No. 4 invert sugar	0.1875 lb	2.95%
honey	0.25 lb	3.93%
caramel 500 SRM	0.25 lb	3.93%
Fuggles 120 mins	0.25 oz
Cluster 120 mins	0.50 oz
Fuggles 90 mins	0.75 oz
Goldings 30 mins	0.75 oz
OG	1030
FG	1011
ABV	2.51
Apparent attenuation	63.33%
IBU	37
SRM	19
Mash at	148º F
Sparge at	167º F
Boil time	120 minutes
pitching temp	61º F
Yeast	WLP028 Edinburgh Ale