A day in Bodegraven

"What the fuck are you doing here, Ron?"

"Nice to see you, too, Menno."

What a nice start to the day at De molen. Well, not quite the start. I'd already been hanging around the brewery for a good half hour before Menno spotted me. Why? I'll need to back up a little to explain.

Back in September I got an email from a contact in Phiadelphia: would I like to go along for the brew day of the Philly Beer Week raffle winner. Every year a lucky individual gets a free trip to Belgium to brew a collaborative beer. Except this year it wasn't at a Belgian brewery, but De Molen in Bodegraven. Would I like to hang around in a brewery for a day? Hell yes. I didn't asking twice. Nor know what to expect.

Like all those over from Philly, I was advised to be at De Molen by 8 AM. I almost managed it. I wouldn't have been more than 20 minutes late, if I hadn't missed my connection in the chaos that is Utrecht Centraal, surely one of the least user-friendly stations in the universe. They've helpfully removed the big departure board and almost all of the timetables. Evidently you're supposed to get train information from your phone. Fucking morons. When I did manage to discover which platform my train departed from, I got there just in time to see it leave. The train, I mean, not the platform. That wasn't going anywhere.

I know, use the 30 miuntes until the next Bodegraven train to have a wee. I followed the toilet signs all the way to the opposite end of the station without encountering any bogs. But did find a sign for toilets pointing back in the opposite direction. I was starting to feel good about my decision to get a coffee rather than a beer before boarding my train in Amsterdam Zuid.

Did I mention it was cold? Effing cold. Unnaturally cold. After two mild Dutch winters, I'm totally unused to cold weather. Last cold snap I encountered was in Denver in November 2014. That's why I was wearing an unusually large amount of clothing.

After a couple of minutes hanging around in the brewery yard, I kindly bearded brewer invited me in from the cold. "Are you here for the collaboration brew?" he asked in English. "I sure am."

I was relieved to see that I was one of the first to arrive. Only three of the Philly crew were inside: Clare, one of the organisers, raffle winner Adam and one other. Over a warming cup of coffee, I learned the others were on their way . . . down to reception in their hotels. Mmmm. . . I could have had another hour or two in bed. And missed the rush hour at Utrecht Centraal.

Kevin, our brewer for the day, talked us through the computer display for the brew. Which had a rather complicated mashing scheme, with rests at 52º C, 62º C and mash out at 72º C. Hang on, I've forgotten to tell you what the beer was. Something rather Dutch: a Porter with salty liquorice. We were having a nice chat about temperatures and rest times when Menno came in.

"What the fuck are you doing here, Ron?"

Next: we look around the brewery and some of us do some work. (Not me, thankfully. I was taking a day's holiday.)

Bronzed Brews

New beer books. They're ten a penny. New beer books offering something genuinely new. Now they're a rarity.

You might have noticed that I have a bit of an interest in beer history. All beer history from everywhere. But to keep things vaguely realistic, I've managed - with great difficulty - to limit my researcdh to a few key countries: the UK, Germany and USA. The rest? Well, others will need to take care of that. Not that there have been any takers. Until now.

In Bronzed Brews, Peter Symons takes a close look at the beer brewed in Australia from colonial times to the 1970's. Like my own work, his relies heavily on brewing records. A criminally underused resource, if you ask me. But he doesn't just examine Australian brews, he's also looked at the British beers from which they evolved*. Which makes the book doubly fascinating. And demonstrates one of my main points about beer styles: that they evolve and mutate when moved to a new environment.

The home brewers among you will be pleased to learn that the book includes 40-odd historic Australian recipes. I'm particularly keen on looking at those for Stout.

You can buy the book here:

http://prstemp.wix.com/tritun-books





Disclaimer: I've shared several beers with Peter and I wrote the foreword for the book.



* Peter has been kind enough to share some of his research of British brewing records with me.

The 1952 hop crop

1952 seems to have been a difficult year for the European hop industry. Particularly on the Continent.

As I’ve said many times, hops are a delicate crop, easily damaged by bad weather or disease. Which means that the harvest can vary enormously from one year to the next.

At the time, the price of British hops was set by a committee:

“MARKET INTELLIGENCE
HOPS
The Permanent Joint  Hops Committee states that the new price is a very satisfactory one. The price is founded on a definite relation to the costs of production, which was an agreed method of computation.

The costs this season were somewhat lower than in 1951 but the total crop of hops harvested showed a decrease of 13 per cent compared with last year. Thus, when the figure of increased costs was applied as a divisor to the reduced crop the result was an increase in the average price per cwt.”
"Brewer's Guardian 1953", 1953, February page 11.

See what I mean about the crop being variable? A drop of 13% is considerable. Let’s take a look at the prices for the different types of hops in 1952:

“Grade Prices
Grade prices for the 1952 crop have been fixed as follows, per cwt. :—

	Grade	£	s.
Goldings	1	33	0
	2	31	10
	3	28	0
	4	20	0
Goldings Varieties	1	30	15
	2	29	5
	3	27	5
Fuggles	1	29	15
	2	28	10
	3	26	0
	4	19	0
Brewer's Gold C9A	1	30	0
	2	28	0
	3	22	0
Bullion Q43	1	30	5
	2	29	5
Early Promise X35	1	26	10
	2	21	0
Key worth's Midseason OR55	1	29	0
	2	27	0
	3	17	0

With a maximum of 10s. above Grade 1 of all varieties.”
"Brewer's Guardian 1953", 1953, February page 11.

Unsurprisingly, the top grade of Goldings was the most expensive. Though not that much more expensive. Goldings Varieties were only 6.8% cheaper, Fuggles Brewers’ Gold a little less than 10%. Only Early Promise, at nearly 20% cheaper, showed a significantly lower price.

How do those prices relate to the price of beer? In 1953, Whitbread IPA contained 1.31 lbs of hops per barrel. If they were all grade 1 Goldings, that works out to around  a third of a penny per pint. Given that it retailed for 21d per pint (it as a bottled beer), that isn’t so significant. Their Best Ale, with 0.71 lbs of hops per barrel had, assuming it used lower grade Fuggles, about an eighth of a penny’s worth of hops  per pint. While it sold for 14d a pint.

Next we’ll be looking at continental hops.

Random modern Dutch beers (part 92)

It's Sunday afternoon, dinner is in the oven and I've a chance to catch my breath. And pester you with another brace of random beer reviews.

I'm surprised at how popular these posts are. Just yesterday, someone urged me to continue: "Much better than all that boring history stuff." I've taken note. There will be loads more. I have to drink all the beers on the floor behind me. Dolores was very clear on that point. And quickly.

Speaking of Dolores, she picked this one up for me. In local supermarket, Deen. The chain is based in Noord Holland, and over Christmas they sold a surprising number of beers from the province.

Wispe is the old name for Weesp, where the brewery is located. It's a a bit East of Amsterdam, but still in Noord Holland. It seems they do have a working brewery in the town.

Wispe Tripel 8% ABV
A clear golden colour. Suspiciously clear, as I emptied in the whole contents. Not bottle-conditioned, as I'd expect a Tripel to be. (These tasting notes might be a bit dodgy. Dolores is frying bacon for Alexei's breakfast sandwich just a few feet away.) Smells spicy and orangey (and bacony). A loose head, despite my frantic defrothing. Light fruitiness, a murmur of hops, indistinct in the background, like the conversations of the kids next door. Except not in Dutch. On the positive side, it has no nasty off flavours. But it's rather bland for the style and strength. I rather like the brash and abrasive Westmalle take. This is more like a calmed-down Affligem. Undoubtedly drinkable.

Andrew has reminded me that I said I wouldn't blog beer reviews.

"They aren't reviews. They're word sketches, describing my impressions."

"That sounds like a review to me, Dad. You won't fool anyone."

"A review is a considered, coherent and structured appraisal of something. My word sketches clearly don't fall into that category."

"Have you ever looked at the reviews of BeerAdvocate and RateBeer, Dad?"

"They're by amateurs. I have higher standards."

"I don't see you earning a living from writing. Mum says it costs us money."

"Don't you have some games to play upstairs, Andrew? I'm just going to listen to some Hendrix on my headphones"

20% off my Lulu print books

until the end of tomorrow (21st January).

All you need to do is to use this code when you buy:

JANSAVE20

just think of those juicy Mega Book Series volumes -   Porter!, Mild! plus, Bitter! and Strong! could all be yours.


Barclay Perkins Bookstore

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1852 Barclay Perkins X

It’s a special day as Kristen returns with another 1850’s recipe. This time from everyone’s favourite, Barclay Perkins.

Mild. It certainly wasn’t always meek or mild-mannered. The Milds of the early 19th century were big, burly beers, simple, but robust. And very uncomplicated. Much like the people who would have drunk them. For Mild was the favourite both of the new industrial working classes and agricultural labourers.

And where would they have been drinking Mild Ale? Quite likely in an Ale House, the new class of pub created in 1830 that could only sell beer, not spirits. The licences weren’t issued by local magistrates, but by the Excise directly. And automatically, if a few basic conditions were met. Thousands of such pubs suddenly sprouted up. The authorities spent the next 100 plus years trying to eliminate them. The miserable bastards.

Beer Houses caused a surge in demand for Mild Ales. So much so, that all the big London Porter brewers started to brew Ales in the 1830’s. And whereas before they had only tied their pubs on Porter and Stout, now they also tied them for Ales. It was a big change in the London pub trade. And the start of a long, slow decline in Porter’s popularity.

Not much to say about the recipe. Except that the grist was all Hertfordshire white malt. The hops were all Mid Kents from the 1852 season (the original beer was brewed 28th December 1852).




Time to throw you over to Kristen . . . . .

Kristen’s Version:

Notes: New Years. Time to look forward, to all the good things this last harvest produced. Specifically tasty fresh hops and some nice chewy malt richness for balance…a little mild ale for your libating pleasure.

Malt: Two pale malts. Pick two. I threw chucked in some mild malt here because it’s delicious and doesn’t get used nearly as much as it should.

Hops: Quite the dose of hops for a beer with a moderate gravity. That being said, let them shine and pick some beauties from this last harvest. You can really use anything you’d like. Pick your favorite or choose one you haven’t played around with much. The most important thing is to have the bang on fresh. There is no dry hop in this beer at all but if you wanted to want around, its damn near spot on number-wise for a proper IPA. Chuck in maybe 0.5-1lb/bbl (~2-4g/L) while she’s just about finished fermenting to make this baby extra juicy. Just make sure you use fresh ones. Fresh.

Yeast: Really your choice. Pick something pleasant or something you have around or something you want to try. It wont be hard to get this beer to finish.

Cask: Standard procedure:
1) let the beer ferment until finished and then give it another day or so. For me right around 5-7 days.
2) Rack the beer to your vessel of choice (firkin, polypin, cornie, whatever).
3) Add primings at ~3.5g/L
4) Add prepared isinglass at 1ml/L
5) ONLY add dry hops at 0.25g/l – 1g/L.
6) Bung it up and roll it around to mix. Condition at 55F or so for 4-5 days and its ready to go. Spile/vent. Tap. Settle. Serve at 55F.

The 1950’s pub (part two)

Time to take a look at the beers on sale in an early 1950’s London pub.

These wouldn’t have been exactly the same everywhere in the country. Burton, for example, was very much a London thing. And in Scotland the beers available would have been quite different.

“the different brews
Bottled beers are easy: light ale, brown ale, Guinness, Bass, Worthington, and so on: you order them by the names on the labels and they usually come in half-pint bottles. But the draught kinds are more tricky. If you simply ask for "beer" or "ale," for instance, you will get half a pint of mild ale, which is also called "wallop" and is the cheapest and weakest beer and maybe not what you expected. The three main kinds of draught beer are bitter beer, pale coloured and generally the strongest ; mild ale, a darker, sweeter, cheaper drink; and Burton (sometimes called " old "), very dark and sweet and often quite strong. You order them by asking simply for a bitter, a mild or a Burton and you will be given a half-pint. If you want a pint you must say so. The interesting point is the mixtures of these beers: the gent beside you may ask for a mild-and-bitter, a bitter-and-Burton or an old-and-mild (Burton and mild). They are all exactly what they sound like though for some reason a mild-and-bitter always seems to contain more mild than bitter. It's because the mild is cheaper perhaps. In addition to beer, all but pure beer-houses sell sherries and ports (measures, qualities and prices varying from house to house) and spirits, which present no problem: you simply order "singles" (which Maurice Gorham describes as "the smallest amount of drink yet known to man") or "doubles," depending on your thirst.”
"London Night & Day" edited by Sam Lambert.

Forty years earlier, ordering “beer” wouldn’t have got you a half of Mild, but a pint of Porter. While an order of “ale” would have resulted in a pint of Mild sliding over the bar towards you.

The half pint thing was a huge shock to me. I was surprised enough that a half was the norm in 1930’s Bolton. When did people default to drinking pints again? In my earliest recollections of the inside of a pub (The Mermaid on our caravan site in Mablethorpe) I’m sure all the men were drinking pints. That must have been in 1966 or 1967. Or had they always drunk pints in some parts of the country? But when was the switch to pints in London? I’d love to know.

By the 1970’s, Guinness Extra Stout was the only universally available bottled beer. I can’t remember ever seeing White Shield in another brewer’s pub. Though that doesn’t mean it wasn’t still continuing. Bass Red Triangle was discontinued sometime in the 1970’s after it was revealed it was identical to White Shield.

Odd how there was always more of the cheaper beer in the mix. You couldn’t have done that in the pubs of my youth, as they all had metred electric pumps that always dispensed exactly a half pint. Mind you, that also meant you couldn’t have a half pint of mixed.

Now for some other terms for beer:

“That, of course, isn't the half of it but it's enough to start you off on the right foot. You'll pick up the rest as you go along. What, for instance, is a Pig's Ear, a Dog's Nose, a Drop, a Collar — you'll find out.”
"London Night & Day" edited by Sam Lambert.

I wish they’d bothered to explain them, because I’ve no idea what all of them mean.

Next we’ll be looking at the different types of pub.

Guinness’s Park Royal Brewery in 1949 – the hop stores

We’re finishing our look at the first of the five blocks in Guinness’s Park Royal brewery. Featuring the other main raw material, hops.

“The Hop Stores.—There are six hop stores with a total storage capacity of 950 tons. Each is a steel-framed, brick-pannelled building, the steel staunchions being encased in concrete with chamfered corners to prevent damage to the hop bales, the floors of the stores being covered in hard-wood blocks laid on the concrete. These stores were designed to provide conditions necessary for satisfactory storage of hops, i.e. cool and dark buildings with a minimum movement of air. Each store is about 23 ft. high by 130 ft. long by 60 ft. wide, and each floor is designed for a load of 2.5 cwts. per sq. ft. ”
Journal of the Institute of Brewing Volume 55, Issue 5, 1949, page 281.

950 tons is an Imperial shitload, over 2 million pounds. Guinness was relatively heavily hopped, but I doubt at more than 2 lbs per barrel. Meaning they had the capacity to store sufficient hops to brew more than 1 million barrels, i.e. more than a whole year’s output.

Buying more hops than you needed in years when they were cheap was common practice amongst British brewers in the 19th century.  Hops are an extremely delicate crop, with the harvest, and accordingly the price, varying greatly from year to year. So I don’t find it odd that Guinness had such a large hop store.

This is how they packed the hops into the silos:

“The hop bales, handled into and out of the store by bale elevators, are stacked up to 18 ft. high with 18-in. walk-ways between, which brings them within about 2 ft. of the top of the store. Stacking is carried out by means of an "iron man," an electrically-operated lifting jib on a travelling platform. Although this has proved satisfactory, in future we would probably be favourably inclined towards an overhead travelling crane with the lifting carriage "nested" inside the crane frame to reduce head clearance. Experience up to the time of designing Park Royal indicated that there was no marked economic advantage in artificially cooled hop storage, as the risk of possible deterioration of the hops due to temperature rise in a hot summer was more than outweighed by the heavy capital cost of the cooling plant. Consideration of the problem to-day and the relative costs might well decide in favour of the artificially cooled store.”
Journal of the Institute of Brewing Volume 55, Issue 5, 1949, page 281.

I’m surprised that they hadn’t considered artificial cooling of the hop stores necessary. The cooler you keep hops, the slower they deteriorate. I suppose it all depends on how cool the stores were naturally.

Loads of excitement next as we peer inside the brewhouse.

How modern breweries differ

From older ones. It's really striking. And I'm surprised no-one else has mentioned it.

Or maybe it's just obvious to me. Because of my odd background.

I've spent many hours poring over Barnard's "Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland", paying particular attention to the brewing kit he describes. Why? Because he visited many of the breweries whose brewing records I have. It provides context for the numbers.

You may have noticed that I've travelled a bit recently. And dropped by a stackload of breweries. Not just that, I'm a nosy bastard. And interested in - frankly pretty dull stuff - like the size and configuration of brewing kit. There are some advantages to being a sad, sad, obsessive.

A classic tower brewery and a modern one are configured in a totally different way. It's all to do with the relationship between the size of the mash tun and the fermenters. Old breweries had a mash tun with a capacity way larger than their fermenters. One mash was distributed over dozens of fermenting vessels. New breweries have a brewing kit with the same capacity as a fermenter at best. More common is to have fermenters double the size of the brew length. It's a huge change.

Mind, if these youngsters parti-gyled they wouldn't have to piss around this way.

Why is this? In the old days breweries churned out large volumes of just a couple of beers. Modern breweries tend to produce loads and loads of beers, each in realtively small quantities.

A Victorian brewer would find a modern brewhouse totally crazy. As I do. But I'm still living in 1913, at least in my head.

Guinness’s Park Royal Brewery in 1949 – the malt store (part two)

I bet you’ve been eagerly awaiting this second part on the malt store in Park Royal. I’ve barely been able to sleep, myself.

This all sounds rather modern, though I guess today it would all be computer-controlled. This must have been some sort of electro-mechanical system.

“The whole system is automatically sequence controlled through a control board on which the operator plugs in the particular screening system he wishes to use and the inter-connecting elevators and belts. The two delivery belts from the malt store to the brewhouse have a capacity of about 200 quarters per hour each, which allows a day's malt to be transferred in three to four hours on one belt. Briefly, the malt is received in sacks either by road or rail, emptied into the intake hoppers on the ground floor from which it is elevated to the receiver at the top of the system on the sixth floor and weighed. The bottom hopper of the weigher is arranged to divide the malt automatically into two equal streams which then pass over the magnetic separators to the malt screening cylinders below. Each intake unit has two banks of wire-mesh screens through which the grain passes in series.”
Journal of the Institute of Brewing Volume 55, Issue 5, 1949, page 280.

Now isn’t that handy? They’ve pretty much told me how much they brewed each day. They were using 600-800 quarters a day and we know that they brewed about 5.25 barrels per quarter of malt. Which means they brewed between 3,100 and 4,200 barrels per day. Brewing 6 days a week, that adds up to around a million barrels annually.

I’m surprised that malt was still arriving in sacks rather than in bulk. It seems an inefficient way of delivering such large quantities.

Screening malt before it got to the mill was vital. It always seems to have been delivered with some crap in it: stones, nails and all sorts of crap. Some breweries had magnets for removing metal objects. But you can see that screening wasn’t just about removing foreign objects, but also about removing grains of the wrong size.

“The first bank is located on the fourth floor of the malt store and consists of twin screens separating out culms and large and small grains, the overtails being stones and large foreign material. The second bank arranged on the third floor separates out any culms which have passed the first screen and small and broken grains, the overtails being the large grains. It is necessary to separate the small grains which will pass an 86 mesh (0-091 in.) as they require a special setting of the mill rolls to give the required grist. Large malt is overtaxed and passed through an aspirator connected to a suction fan which draws off light and diseased grain.”
Journal of the Institute of Brewing Volume 55, Issue 5, 1949, page 280.

The blades of the malt mill were set precisely. Brewers wanted their grains crushed, but not reduced to flour. (Well, most brewers didn’t. Those with a mash filter rather than a mash tun needed it ground very fine.) Which meant the grains all needed to be of a similar size.

I’ve no idea what “overtaxed” means in this context. Though blowing away light grains is quite clever.

“Large malt from the final screening section passes to a weigher and afterwards to an elevator which takes it to the top of the house and to the system of eight transfer conveyors arranged above the silos from where it is discharged from travelling carriages to any silo. The small grain plant removes any remaining culms after which the malt passes through an aspirator which draws off light and diseased grain. There are no overtails from this machine as all large impurities have already been removed. The thin malt from the aspirator is delivered by belt conveyor to two Carter disc separators which remove small round seeds, half grains, etc., from the malt, sound malt passing to the weigher and elevator for delivery to silo. The malt is drawn off from the silo bottom through valves and chutes to a system of 16 cross-belt conveyors below, and thence to transfer conveyors and to large automatic weighing machines, elevators and transfer belts to the brew house.”
Journal of the Institute of Brewing Volume 55, Issue 5, 1949, page 280.

They certainly took screening seriously. Is that two or three times they screened the malt?

Next we’ll be entering the hop store.

The 1950’s pub

Pubs may seem timeless, but pub culture has changed significantly over the last 60 years.  Often in subtle ways.

But the problem in researching this is that people rarely bothered to document pub life. It was too everyday to be considered worthy of comment. Which is why sources like “London Night & Day” (edited by Sam Lambert) are so important. Intended to instruct the visitor about the capital and its customs, it assumes no prior knowledge. Perfect.

The section on pubs is quite brief, but still holds some surprising information.

“PUBS
Many books have been written about pubs* In a paragraph, all we can do is to invite you to distinguish between the various sorts of pub, the various sorts of bar and the various sorts of beer. If you don't know the local customs of London pubs and want to be sure of asking for the right kind of drink in the right kind of bar, the following will be useful.

* Read back to the local by Maurice Corham and Edward Ardizzone. (Percival Marshall, 8s. 6d.) and inside the pub by Maurice Gorham and H. McG. Dunnett. (Architectural Press, 18s.)”
"London Night & Day" edited by Sam Lambert, 1951.

There’s a reason why I haven’t included the page number. The book doesn’t have any.

I’d certainly want to know where to drink and what beer to order, if I were a foreigner. Actually, I know what I’d order: a pint of draught Burton in the public bar.

Here’s a handy guide to the different rooms in a pub:

“types of bar
Nearly all pubs have at least two bars: the public bar where the beer and decorations are cheapest, and the saloon bar, the superior end of the house, where you pay a penny or two more ; you will probably be using the saloon bar although in certain pubs it is "smarter" to use the public bar. In between these two there are mysterious doors marked private bar, which aren't private at all except in the sense that they aren't public—they are inbetweeners, so if you are an in-betweener walk right in. There may also be a jug-and-bottle bar where you can buy bottled beer or, have a jug filled with draught beer to take home. All pubs keep several kinds of bottled and draught beers.”
"London Night & Day" edited by Sam Lambert, 1951.

In early 1970’s Newark, where I started my drinking career, all the pubs had at least a public bar and a lounge. Even the ones that had only been built in the 1960’s. Now I’m not sure there a single genuinely multi-roomed one left. I think the Woolpack was the last. I don’t think any had a jug and bottle counter in the pub, but the Turk’s Head, a pub demolished and rebuilt in the 1960s, did have an attached off licence.

Leeds pubs in the late 1970’s were pretty well all still multi-roomed. A public bar at the front with the bar counter between it and the corridor, off which there were several other rooms. I know some – like the Adelphi – still retain this layout. But it’s sadly been swept away in others.

Next we’ll be looking at the beers on sale.

Guinness’s Park Royal Brewery in 1949 – the malt store

We’re back inside Park Royal, poking around its buildings, seeing what we can find. Oh look – it’s where they store the malt.

“The malt store.—As constructed, the malt store can hold some 125,000 quarters, using both the main and auxiliary silos, the latter being in the inter-spaces between the main circular silos.”
Journal of the Institute of Brewing Volume 55, Issue 5, 1949, page 279.

125,000 quarters? That’s a huge amount of malt. Want to know how much Guinness Extra Stout you could brew with that? An awful lot. It just so happens that I know the OG of Extra Stout in this period:

Guinness bottled Stout 1948 - 1951
Year	Beer	Price per pint d	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	colour
1948	Extra Stout	15.5	1047.2	1012	4.57	74.58%	1 + 6.5
1948	Export Stout		1072	1019.1	6.89	73.47%	1 + 10
1948	Extra Stout	24	1045.2	1012.6	4.23	72.12%	1 + 9
1950	Extra Stout	23	1048.6	1008.6	5.21	82.30%	1 + 8
1951	Extra Stout	30	1049.1	1007.5	5.43	84.73%	1 + 8
1951	Extra Stout	30.5	1047.7	1008.1	5.16	83.02%	1 + 8.5
Source:
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/002.

The OG averages out to 1047.6º, or 17.1 lbs per barrel. Assuming 90 lbs extract per quarter, I make that 5.26 barrels per quarter of malt. Meaning the whole malt store held enough to brew 657,590 barrels.  Remember the expected “normal” annual production was 650,000 barrels. It looks to me like they deliberately built the store big enough to hold a year’s supply of malt.

It was also a huge weight. At 336 lbs per quarter, the store could hold 18,750 tons of malt. No wonder it was built like a brick shithouse. As we’ll now see:

“The malt store building is about 100 ft. high, the silos being of reinforced concrete masked by brickwork panelling. There are 127 silos each 12 ft. diameter by 65 ft. deep and holding approximately 760 quarters each, and there are 105 inter-space silos, with capacity varying from 130 to 165 quarters. Particular interest attaches to the construction of the reinforced concrete silos in the malt store, as they were among the first to be built in this country on the moving form principle with the concrete being continuously poured. The complete structure was erected in 13 days, the average speed of the erection being 5 ft. per day. In this method of construction, timber formers are built to the size and shape of the silos and lifted slowly by jacks as the concrete is continuously poured. It ensures not only rapidity of erection, but also a continuous smooth surface free from any joints which might arise from different setting consistencies of concrete inevitable in the fixed shuttering and batch pouring system.”
Journal of the Institute of Brewing Volume 55, Issue 5, 1949, pages 279 - 280.

Not sure what to say about that. But it sounds very modern in construction with all that concrete. You have to be very careful about how you store malt, as the dust form it can explode when exposed to a naked flame. Which is one reason you might want to avoid making silos from metal.

“The intake system had to be designed to receive by road or rail five different grades of malt simultaneously from different sources of supply, and to keep them separate through the screens and ultimately to the storage silos. To allow of this being done, the intake system was arranged in five separate units, each having a capacity of 250 quarters per hour and consisting of:—intake elevators; weighing machines before and after screening; magnetic separators; wire cylinder screens for cleaning and grading; suction filter dust collecting plant; and delivery elevators. Malt can be taken in at any unit, to be cleaned, screened and weighed, after which it is delivered to any one of the storage silos by means of the bucket elevators and the belt conveyor system. The stored malt can be turned over or recleaned whenever necessary. Similarly, malt can be drawn from any silo, to be weighed and passed over to the brewhouse mills.”
Journal of the Institute of Brewing Volume 55, Issue 5, 1949, page 280.

Five different grades of malt? I’m pretty sure Guinness at this period used no more than two types of malt: pale malt and black malt or roasted barley. The system described sounds very efficient and automated. Which I guess is the advantage to building the brewery from scratch.

Next we’ll be looking at the intake system in more detail.

Let's Brew Wednesday – 1959 Whitbread PA

It seems like an age since I last did a Whitbread recipe. Probably because it was ages ago.

Whitbread PA, the brewery’s main Bitter, had been around for a long time. It first appeared in 1865 and was brewed continuously until Chiswell Street closed in the mid 1970’s. Though it changed quite a bit over the years. Initially it was 6.5% ABV, though obviously a couple of world wars whittled that down. And there was a name change after WW II, at least at the point of sale, where it became known as Tankard. Or perhaps that was just the keg version.

In the 1950’s, Whitbread brewed two Bitters: PA at 1039º and IPA/WPA at 1035º. So I suppose Best Bitter and Bitter. IPA eventually transformed itself into Trophy. I would tell you more about that, but I’m saving it for when I publish a recipe.

There is a beautiful simplicity to this recipe. It’s just pale malt, crystal malt and No. 1 invert sugar. So simple I’m struggling for something to say. Er, note how Whitbread didn’t use any adjuncts (sugar is a malt substitute, not an adjunct). Which was good of them. Except during WW II, when they were obliged to use flaked barley, flaked rye and flaked oats.

One fact worth noting is that this beer was brewed from 100% British ingredients. British malt and Kent hops. This would have been unusual, other than in wartime, at any point in the previous century. But a huge increase in barley production during the war and a fall in the quantity of hops needed left the UK self-sufficient in brewing materials. Other than the occasional continental hop, it’s rare to see any imported raw materials in the 1950’s.

You’re going to have to make do with that as I’m ausgebollocksed. Just the recipe left.

1959 Whitbread PA
PA malt	6.25 lb	75.76%
crystal malt 60L	0.50 lb	6.06%
no. 1 sugar	1.50 lb	18.18%
Whitbread Golding Varieties 75 min	1.00 oz
Fuggles 60 min	0.50 oz
Goldings 15 min	0.50 oz
OG	1039.3
FG	1011
ABV	3.74
Apparent attenuation	72.01%
IBU	28
SRM	12
Mash at	148º F
Sparge at	165º F
Boil time	75 minutes
pitching temp	62º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread ale

How to brew Watney’s Red Barrel

Had you told me 30 years ago that I’d be writing in detail about how to brew Red Barrel, I’d have called you a twat. After I’d finished laughing.

How times, and, more importantly, people, change over the years. I’m certainly much mellower than I was. And I’ve learned not to blindly dismiss things, just because they aren’t to my personal taste. Though whether Red Barrel was or not, I’ll never know. Because I never tried the stuff. Just like Double Diamond, Courage Tavern and Youngers Tartan. Which keg beers did I try? Not many. I can remember accidentally drinking keg Bass in Cornwall. Bastards were using fake handpulls.

Apologies for wandering off topic. Back to Red Barrel. I’m fortunate enough to have come into possession of a pdf of the Watney Mann Quality Control Manual (thanks to Boak and Bailey). It has wonderfully detailed instructions in how to brew all their beers. Including Red Barrel.

Such a document is dead handy. In some ways better than a brewing record. As it documents many things usually left out of brewing logs. Things like the timing of hop additions.  Though it’s for one specific brewery, it still provides an insight into London brewing in general.

Despite its dreadful reputation as absolute dross, there’s nothing particularly different about Red Barrel’s ingredients or production methods. It looks much like other London Pale Ales. In fact the grist has a higher percentage of malt than most. Of course, the damage was done at the end of the process, when Red Barrel was killed then kegged.

I’m not sure what the date of the Quality Control Manual is. But as it says “Watney Mann” on the cover, it can’t be earlier than 1958. There’s a table of amendments at the front with two entries, dated January and February 1965. So it must date from between 1958 and 1964.

Right, let’s crack on with the details. Starting with the grist:

Watney's Red Barrel grist
Ingredient	Percentage	notes
Pale malt	89
Dixons Enzymic Malt	1
Crystal malt	4.5	(Maximum)
Malt Extract (Paines, Edme or Diamalt)	3	added to the mash tun during mashing.
No. 3 Invert (Manbre, Albion or Clark)	2.5	added to the copper.
Total	100

94.5% malt is a very high percentage. Around 80% was more typical. And the sugar content is very low. Between 10 and 15% was usual.

Let’s do a bit of comparing and contrasting. Starting with a classy London brewer, Whitbread:

1959 Whitbread PA
Ingredient	Percentage
PA malt	75.47%
crystal malt	5.66%
no. 1 invert sugar	18.87%
Source:
Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/01/126

Whitbread had some of the most expensive-looking grists, yet the malt content of their Bitter was just 81%, far less than Red Barrel. Whitbread only ever used unmalted grains when forced to during the war.

Now a more typical grist from Fullers:

1958 Fullers SPA grist
Ingredient	Percentage
pale malt	81.90%
flaked maize	14.66%
no. 2 invert sugar	2.30%
glucose	1.15%
PEX	2.30%
CDM	0.48%
total sugar	6.23%
Source:
Fullers brewing record held the brewery.

The malt percentage is similar to Whitbread PA, but the bulk of the rest is made up of flaked maize rather than sugar.

And finally a Bitter from the North:

1950 Lees Bitter grist
Ingredient	Percentage
pale malt	87.07%
black malt	0.09%
enzymic malt	1.43%
invert sugar	1.90%
C.W.A.	7.61%
Proteinex	1.90%
total sugar	11.42%
Source:
Lees brewing record held the brewery.

The malt percentage is higher here at 89%. While the remainder of the grist is all sugar. Note that Lees also used enzymic malt. It was dead popular in the 1950’s.

Next we’ll be looking at water treatment and mashing.

Guinness’s Park Royal Brewery in 1949 – general layout

The brewery at Park Royal had a rather unusual layout. Which is probably worth mentioning.

Park Royal in 1950

http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/image/eaw031549

In contrast to a classic Victorian tower brewery, each of the departments was housed in its own block. The blocks being arranged in a row.

“The buildings are generally designed and constructed in five large monolithic blocks on a line running roughly north to south, the front of the buildings presenting an attractive prospect from Western Avenue. The main buildings are supported on reinforced concrete piles 14 in. square varying in length from 35 ft. to 45 ft., each pile carrying a load of about 45 tons. The plant and machinery are carried on a braced steel-framed structure on the outside of which is a second framing anchored to the main frame supports and carrying the wall and brickwork panelling.”
Journal of the Institute of Brewing Volume 55, Issue 5, 1949, page 279.

Here’s a diagram of the layout:

It was indeed an attractive set of buildings, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott. It’s a disgrace that they were simply demolished.

"Park Royal Guinness Brewery during demolition December 2005". Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Park_Royal_Guinness_Brewery_during_demolition_December_2005.jpg#/media/File:Park_Royal_Guinness_Brewery_during_demolition_December_2005.jpg

Bottled beer in the 1950’s – Bright Bottled Beers (part four)

This is so exciting. We’re actually getting to fill the conditioning tank.

This first bit seems pretty obvious:

“When a conditioning tank is filled with beer it is important to see that it is filled to the top. It is essential that no air remains, and in order to make sure that such is the case some of the top pressure should be blown off as soon as it reaches about 2 lb. Hopping-down hops, priming, or any other additional ingredients must, of course, be added to the tank before it is filled.”
"Brewing Theory and Practice" by E. J. Jeffery, 1956, page 334.

Having CO2 in any headspace would cut the risk of infection during maturation. As would the dry hops. Which is what they mean by “hopping-down hops”. Adding dry hops and primings is exactly what would have happened when beer was racked into casks. So up to this point bottled beer was being handled much the same as cask beer. Except rather than in a trade cask, the conditioning was occurring in bulk.

Here’s a little more detail on dry hopping:

“Dry hop rates vary according to the original gravity of the beer. For the lighter pale ales of O.G. 1030-1035 from 2 to 3 ounces per barrel are used and up to about half a pound per barrel for a strong ale. Only the most delicately flavoured hops are used for this purpose; Goldings are the most flavoured. Hop oil can be used as an alternative, being prepared as explained in Chapter 4. It is of particular importance to insure that if hop oil is used it is very thoroughly roused in so that there is no danger of uneven distribution.”
"Brewing Theory and Practice" by E. J. Jeffery, 1956, page 334.

Great. Some numbers that I can check. At least in some cases. Not all brewers could be arsed to note the dry hops in their brewing records. Let’s take a look at low-gravity Pale Ales first:

Dry hopping of low-gravity Pale Ales 1946 - 1959
Date	Year	Brewer	Beer	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	dry hops (oz / barrel)
25th Jan	1946	Barclay Perkins	IPA	1031.5	1009.0	2.98	71.43%	4.00
25th Jan	1946	Barclay Perkins	XLK	1035.3	1010.0	3.35	71.67%	4.00
20th May	1952	Strong	GA	1033.5	1007.5	3.44	77.69%	8
1st Sep	1959	Ushers Trowbridge	KK	1036.8	1010.8	3.44	70.68%	0.66
1st Sep	1959	Ushers Trowbridge	BPA	1031.9	1008.6	3.08	73.04%	1.50
1st Sep	1959	Ushers Trowbridge	LB	1030.7	1009.4	2.82	69.37%	1.54
7th Jun	1949	Wm. Younger	Pale XXPS	1037.0	1011.0	3.44	70.27%	2.03
7th Jun	1949	Wm. Younger	XXP	1031.5	1011.0	2.71	65.08%	0.99
Sources:
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number ACC/2305/01/626.
Strong brewing record, document number 79A01-A3-3-27.
Ushers brewing record held at the Wiltshire archives at Chippenham, document number 1075-275-6.
William Younger brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number WY/6/1/2/88.

It’s not the most enormous sample, but you can see that there’s considerable variation between breweries. Barclay Perkins and Strong used more than Jeffery suggests, while Ushers and William Younger used less. Not all of these were necessarily bottled beers, though Barclay Perkins IPA definitely was.

When the type of dry hops is recorded, it’s mostly EK Goldings. Though occasionally Saaz were used. Along with Hallertau they were the only foreign hops to be routinely used for dry hopping.

As promised, more about the rousing process:

“As soon as the tank has been filled it should be subjected to a vigorous rousing for at least an hour. The beer may then be left for 24 hours,  during which time internal pressure should steadily develop. At this stage it becomes necessary to map out a programme of rousing times followed by intervals of rest. This programme will depend mainly for its arrangement upon the aptitude of the beer for developing condition. Other governing factors will be the gravity of the beer and its age.”
"Brewing Theory and Practice" by E. J. Jeffery, 1956, pages 334 - 335.

Rousing, i.e. agitating the beer, seems to have been an essential part of the process for getting beer into condition. We’ll see later just how minutely planned conditioning was, especially rousing.

This details how frequent rousing was:

“It will generally be found sufficient for rousing to take place for one hour in every three hours. This procedure should continue until the maximum pressure desired has been attained. If pressure is slow in developing it may be necessary, on the other hand, to rouse the beer every alternate hour. In cases of extreme stubbornness it may be necessary to resort to krausening as well. (Krausening is the addition of a small quantity (not more than 5%) of briskly fermenting wort taken from a fermenting vessel about 24 hours after pitching. This practice is common in lager beer fermentations, but is not much used in top fermentation brewing.) Sometimes the beer proves to be exceptionally lively, and pressure develops rapidly to its full amount. In that case some gas should be blown off and the figure reduced by 5 lb. This release may have to be repeated, because the final maximum of 22 or 23 lb. is sufficiently high for beers of ordinary gravity (16 to 20 lb.). Strong ales may be allowed to run up to 28 lb. We have mentioned that conditioning takes place as a rule in metal tanks. In spite of efforts made to preserve a normal average outside temperature, extremes of temperature in summer and winter are bound to have some effect upon the contents. Constant attention is therefore necessary.”
"Brewing Theory and Practice" by E. J. Jeffery, 1956, page 335.

One hour in three sounds like a lot to me.

Fascinating that kräusening was only employed when all else had failed. It doesn’t ever seem to have been very popular amongst British brewers other than Guinness. In the 19th century and early 20th century all their beers contained three elements: young beer, aged beer and “heading”. The latter being a sort of Kräusen.

This is a point of difference with American Ale-brewing practice. What most intrigued me about the records of Amsdell (of Albany, New York) from around 1900 is how almost all their Ales were kräusened. To me it’s a sure sign of the influence of German brewers.

Next we’ll be looking at a detailed record of tank-conditioning.