What is psuedo-Lager?

A short video looking at the fake Lagers brewed in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1975 Elgood Lager

We have here a really good example of the pseudo-Lagers brewed by smaller UK breweries in the 1960s and 1970s. Not having the equipment to brew a proper Lager, they simply brewed a very pale top-fermenting beer.

Which is exactly what we have here. The recipe is very simple: lager malt, flaked rice and a tiny bit of malt extract. I assume that rice has been chosen as the adjunct in order to keep the colour as pale as possible. There’s really not a lot more to say about the grist.

In reality, this is a Golden Ale, just artificially carbonated, stuck into kegs and served cold.

A typical underlet mashing process was employed. Nothing even vaguely resembling a decoction mash. Though much the same as the scheme used for their other beers.

There was a single type of English hop from the 1973 harvest. 

1975 Elgood Lager
lager malt	6.50 lb	87.60%
flaked rice	0.67 lb	9.03%
malt extract	0.25 lb	3.37%
Fuggles 95 min	0.50 oz
Fuggles 60 min	0.50 oz
Fuggles 30 min	0.50 oz
OG	1034
FG	1008
ABV	3.44
Apparent attenuation	76.47%
IBU	20
SRM	2.5
Mash at	151º F
Sparge at	170º F
Boil time	95 minutes
pitching temp	59º F
Yeast	WLP007 Dry English Ale

action	barrels	strike heat	initial heat	mins stood
mash	16	147º F	144º F	20
underlet	3	200º F	151º F	100
sparge 1	20	170º F
sparge 2	15	160º F

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1969 Elgood Brown Ale

Now here’s a rarity: a real Brown Ale recipe. Why a rarity? Because most brewers were simply tweaking their Dark Mild to create a Brown Ale. Meaning they don’t show up in brewing records.

The recipe is a fairly typical mix of base malt, flaked maize and sugar. With the latter providing most of the colour. There’s also some crystal malt which will also be doing some of the lifting with regards to the colour. The base malt was 100% mild malt. Which is no surprise.

The brewing record is rather vague as to the type of sugar being used, describing it simply as “invert”. I’ve guessed No. 3, but it could equally have been No. 1 or No. 3. Feel free to use another invert of your choice.

A fairly standard underlet mashing scheme was used.

action	barrels	strike heat	initial heat	mins stood
mash	20	147º F	140º F	20
underlet	4	198º F	149º F	100
sparge 1	20	168º F
sparge 2	6	164º F
sparge 3	22	158º F

Into the copper went a single type of English hops from the 1968 crop. 

1969 Elgood Brown Ale
mild malt	4.00 lb	64.00%
crystal malt 60 L	0.75 lb	12.00%
flaked maize	0.75 lb	12.00%
No. 3 invert	0.50 lb	8.00%
caramel 500 SRM	0.25 lb	4.00%
Fuggles 95 min	0.33 oz
Fuggles 60 min	0.33 oz
Fuggles 30 min	0.33 oz
OG	1030
FG	1007
ABV	3.04
Apparent attenuation	76.67%
IBU	13
SRM	16
Mash at	149º F
Sparge at	168º F
Boil time	95 minutes
pitching temp	60.5º F
Yeast	WLP007 Dry English Ale

Elgood’s beers in 1969

As the 1960s drew to a close, Elgood was still brewing quite a broad range of beers. Six in all. And every one with a gravity between 1030º and 1038º. Not exactly a great spread of strengths.

Six beers? I hear you say. There are seven in the table. Well, that’s because part of the way through the year X was replaced by MM. A beer with a slightly higher gravity. Though, as we’ll see later, there recipes of the two were quite similar.

I’m a bit surprised that they had a separate brew for Brown Ale. It’s incredibly similar to X Most brewers by this time were just tweaking their Dark Mild with perhaps different primings before bottling. Which is why they so rarely turn up in brewing records.

EB – Elgood Bitter – and PA have a slightly higher hopping rate than the other beers. But not by a huge amount: around 5 lbs per quarter (336 lbs) of malt compared to 4 lbs. It’s all fairly light. As you’ll see when we get to the recipes.

The Lager is a typical pseudo-Lager of the type produced by many smaller breweries in the 1960s and 1970s. Lacking the equipment to ferment cold or lager, brewers simply made a very pale top-fermenting beer and the served it cold. The first time it was chilled was almost certainly in the pub cellar. The fermentation temperature profile is exactly the same as for their other beers.

Elgood was still brewing a little Stout. At the not very “stout” gravity of 1030º. With a fairly poor rate of attenuation leaving it under 3% ABV.

Speaking of which, the rate of attenuation is all over the place. Ranging from 67% to 83%. And even more so than it appears from the table, as the attenuation of different brews varied quite a bit. 

Elgood beers in 1969
Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	Pitch temp	max. fermen-tation temp
BA	Brown Ale	1030.0	1007.2	3.02	75.99%	4.13	0.44	60.5º F	65º F
MM	Mild	1032.7	1008.9	3.15	72.88%	3.70	0.47	60º F	64º F
X	Mild	1030.0	1007.2	3.02	75.99%	3.88	0.43	60º F	65º F
Lager	Lager	1034.3	1010.0	3.22	70.97%	3.64	0.63	60º F	68º F
EB	Pale Ale	1038.8	1008.9	3.96	77.14%	4.76	0.66	60º F	66º F
PA	Pale Ale	1030.0	1005.0	3.31	83.38%	5.00	0.52	60º F	67º F
Stout	Stout	1030.0	1009.4	2.72	68.61%	4.17	0.48	60º F	64º F
Source:
Brewing record held at the brewery

Researching

Perhaps it's because I've just published a couple of books. Or, more likely, because I've just started another. Whatever. The last few days I've mostly spent on research rather than writing.

Most of it dedicated to extracting information from those Elgood's records I photographed five years ago. Lots of quite modern ones. Which is the main reason they had lain untouched.

I've a lot of photographs of brewing records. (Just did a quick check: 30,704.) It takes a while to work through all that. Which is why I've been operating on a "when needed" basis for a while. I only fully transcribe brewing records when I need them for something I'm working on. Usually, a book.

My Elgood's collection is a bit odd. I don't have much older stuff, but a full set 1975 to 1986. Dead handy for the book I'm working on about the 1970s. I don't have a huge number of brewing records from the 1970s. "Keg!" won't be a book with 500 recipes. Thank god. I was going crazy writing all those recipes for "Blitzkrieg!".

There are few laughs in this sort of work. And rarely any revelations in recent records. It's just a matter of slogging my way through. The reward comes later when I get to use the material.

I'm just about to dive into Frank Baillie's Beer Drinker's Companion. As I noticed it lists the number of tied houses each brewer owned. I'm definitely extracting that. It also names the beers each brewery produced, cask, keg and bottled. I'm sorely tempted to pull that out as well. Lots of work, though.

Can I be arsed? You tell me.

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1975 Elgood Lager

Keg!, my book on beer in the 1970s will contain a few recipes. This is the first one I've written

We have here a really good example of the pseudo-Lagers brewed by smaller UK breweries in the 1960s and 1970s. Not having the equipment to brew a proper Lager, they simply brewed a very pale top-fermenting beer.

Which is exactly what we have here. The recipe is very simple: lager malt, flaked rice and a tiny bit of malt extract. I assume that rice has been chosen as the adjunct in order to keep the colour as pale as possible. There’s really not a lot more to say about the grist.

In reality, this is a Golden Ale, just artificially carbonated, stuck into kegs and served cold.

A typical underlet mashing process was employed. Nothing even vaguely resembling a decoction mash. Though much the same as the scheme used for their other beers.

action	barrels	strike heat	initial heat	mins stood
mash	16	147º F	144º F	20
underlet	3	200º F	151º F	100
sparge 1	20	170º F
sparge 2	15	160º F

There was a single type of English hop from the 1973 harvest. 

1975 Elgood Lager
lager malt	6.50 lb	87.60%
flaked rice	0.67 lb	9.03%
malt extract	0.25 lb	3.37%
Fuggles 95 min	0.50 oz
Fuggles 60 min	0.50 oz
Fuggles 30 min	0.50 oz
OG	1034
FG	1008
ABV	3.44
Apparent attenuation	76.47%
IBU	20
SRM	2.5
Mash at	151º F
Sparge at	170º F
Boil time	90 minutes
pitching temp	59º F
Yeast	WLP007 Dry English Ale

Let's Brew - 1964 Elgood Stout

The Stouts from regional breweries are an odd lot. Lots of them have the winning combination of very low OG and high FG.

Pretty sure what you get is a beer that’s watery and sweet at the same time. This falls into that category. Though it isn’t as insanely under-attenuated as some Scottish Sweet Stouts. The weakest as were under 2% ABV.

A simple recipe, where black malt does the heavy lifting for the stout character. While the base is a mix of pale and mild malt. While a lot of the colour derives from a big slug of caramel.

I wonder who drank Stouts like this? Grannies are what comes to my mind. But is that just because when I saw people drinking this type of stuff in the 1970s, they’d been drinking it for decades? Sweet Stout was trendy once. There wouldn’t be so many examples, otherwise.

1964 Elgood Stout
mild malt	2.00 lb	28.25%
pale malt	3.50 lb	49.44%
black malt	0.33 lb	4.66%
No. 3 invert sugar	0.50 lb	7.06%
caramel 1000 SRM	0.75 lb	10.59%
Fuggles 95 mins	0.75 oz
Fuggles 30 mins	0.50 oz
OG	1030
FG	1013
ABV	2.25
Apparent attenuation	56.67%
IBU	19
SRM	44
Mash at	150º F
Sparge at	168º F
Boil time	95 minutes
pitching temp	60º F
Yeast	WLP025 Southwold

This recipe appears in my book about UK beer after WW II. You can buy it here:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/austerity/23181344

Let's Brew - 1953 Elgood X

I've decided to make May Watery Mild Month here on the blog. I'm sure you're all pretty excited.

They certainly liked their Mild watery in the 1950s. Or rather, drinkers had no choice as that’s just the way it came.

Elgood’s Mild, X, makes their Light Ale look headily alcoholic. Which is quite an achievement. X was brewed at around the effective minimum gravity. No matter how watery your beer was, you paid the tax for a beer of 1027º. So there was no real economic point in brewing anything much weaker than that.

The grist is, er, interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen flaked barley and flaked rice used in the same beer before. Obviously, there’s the malt extract Elgood threw in all their beers. Then there’s a sugar just described as invert. And another called carmose. I’ll go out a limb here and guess that’s some sort of caramel.

The hops were all English and all quite old. This beer was brewed in October 1953 and the hops were all from the 1950 harvest.

1953 Elgood X
Mild malt	4.50 lb	76.14%
flaked rice	0.25 lb	4.23%
flaked barley	0.33 lb	5.58%
No. 3 invert sugar	0.33 lb	5.58%
malt extract	0.25 lb	4.23%
caramel 1000 SRM	0.25 lb	4.23%
Fuggles 95 mins	1.00 oz
Fuggles 30 mins	0.25 oz
OG	1026
FG	1006.5
ABV	2.58
Apparent attenuation	75.00%
IBU	20
SRM	20
Mash at	153º F
Sparge at	176º F
Boil time	95 minutes
pitching temp	61º F
Yeast	WLP025 Southwold

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1949 Elgood XK

It’s good to look at breweries of different sizes. As well as the big urban ones like Whitbread and Courage, small rural breweries like Elgood.

This is a good example of an Ordinary Bitter in times of austerity. 1949 was a difficult year. Average OG had increased a little since its nadir in 1947, but only by one point, hitting the dizzying heights of  1033.43º. Which meant there had to be plenty of beer below 1030º. You weren’t going to get plastered on XK, not even with grim determination.

There aren’t any real surprises in the grist, other than that it has a base of mild malt rather than pale malt. Their stronger Bitter, PA, had a base of mostly pale malt with a little mild malt. It’s the classic English combination of malt, flaked maize and sugar. With a little malt extract on the side. That seems to be very common in 1950’s recipes. I think it’s for enzymes, but I’m not sure.

The sugar is described as simply “invert” and “Silcose”. I’ve chosen to interpret that as all No. 2 invert. Other guesses are possible.

I’ve no idea what the hops are, other than that they’re English. Fuggles seems a fair enough guess, but Goldings would be equally valid. You can take your pick.

The original mashing scheme was 15 minutes at 147º F, followed by an underlet that raised the mash temperature to 155º F where it was held for 1.75 hours.

1949 Elgood XK
mild malt	4.75 lb	83.92%
crystal malt 60 L	0.33 lb	5.83%
malt extract	0.25 lb	4.42%
No. 2 invert sugar	0.33 lb	5.83%
Fuggles 145 mins	0.75 oz
Fuggles 60 mins	0.75 oz
OG	1026.5
FG	1006
ABV	2.71
Apparent attenuation	77.36%
IBU	23
SRM	6
Mash at	155º F
Sparge at	167º F
Boil time	145 minutes
pitching temp	62º F
Yeast	WLP025 Southwold

Let's Brew - 1953 Elgood BPA

One of the most popular styles of the 1950’s was Light Ale, a low-gravity, bottled Pale ale. It was often mixed with draught Bitter, usually in the hope of livening up cask beer in poor condition.

At 1031º, BPA (presumably standing for Bottled Pale Ale) was pretty typical for a Light Ale of the time. Not exactly heady stuff.

The recipe isn’t exactly what you’d call complicated. Just malt, a bit of sugar and a dash of malt extract. And a single, unspecified type of hop. Fuggles are just my guess. What isn’t a guess this time are the hop additions, which are handily noted in the log. The vast majority were added at the start of the boil.

The original mashing scheme was 20 minutes at 149º F, followed by an underlet and 1 hour 40 minutes at 152º F.

1953 Elgood BPA
pale malt	6.00 lb	88.89%
No. 2 invert sugar	0.50 lb	7.41%
malt extract	0.25 lb	3.70%
Fuggles 95 mins	1.50 oz
Fuggles 30 mins	0.25 oz
Fuggles hop back	0.125 oz
OG	1031
FG	1006.5
ABV	3.24
Apparent attenuation	79.03%
IBU	27
SRM	5
Mash at	152º F
Sparge at	167º F
Boil time	95 minutes
pitching temp	62º F
Yeast	WLP025 Southwold

Let's Brew - 1953 Elgood Strong Ale

I make a point of trying to collect new brewing records whenever I’m in the UK. On my last trip I managed to pick ones up from a couple of sources. One being Elgood.

I first asked the brewery if I could drop by a couple of years ago. The reason I hadn’t made it there until now is purely a question of the practicalities. Wisbech has no train station. Even though it isn’t that far from Newark, getting there by public transport is a nightmare. Luckily my mate Henry has a van and he drove me down.

Before we go any further, I’ll point out the problems that I had with this recipe. Basically, the numbers don’t add up. The grist consisted of 14 quarters, 93 barrels of water were used in mashing and sparging and there were 80 barrels of wort in the copper. But there were just 19.5 barrels in the fermenter. Where did the other 60 barrels of wort go? I can’t imagine it was thrown away.

To take this discrepancy into account, I’ve divided the hopping rate by four. And then reduced them some more because they were from the 1950 season. I know nothing else about them, other than that they were English. 5 of the 85 lbs really were added in the hop back.

The grist is almost as simple as it appears. There really just is a single base malt. The sugar in the original, however, is half invert and half something called Muntona.

The mashing scheme is an infusion stood at 149º F for 20 minutes followed by an underlet held at 152º F for 100 minutes. Then sparging, obviously.

1953 Elgood Strong Ale
pale malt	9.00 lb	90.00%
No. 2 invert sugar	1.00 lb	10.00%
Fuggles 95 mins	0.75 oz
Fuggles 60 mins	0.75 oz
Fuggles hop back	0.13 oz
OG	1047
FG	1017
ABV	3.97
Apparent attenuation	63.83%
IBU	20
SRM	7
Mash at	152º F
Sparge at	167º F
Boil time	95 minutes
pitching temp	61º F
Yeast	WLP025 Southwold