Let's Brew Wednesday - 1958 Lees Best Mild

This is strange. It's Wednesday and here's a Let's Brew Wednesday post. I'll try not to let it happen again.

The 1950's. What an exotic decade. Teddy boys, CND and Best Mild. I'd happily spend a fortnight there.Just looking at the bare bones of Lees beers - OG, FG, ABV - nothing much changed in the 1950's. But take a close look at the ingredients they were using and you'll see a dramatic transformation. I'm not sure of the exact date when it happened. Late 1955 or early 1956. Out go all the dark malts, in comes a lorryload of sugars.

Getting hold of long runs of brewing records is dead useful. For Lees, I've a complete set for the years 1930 to 1963. They reveal the erratic nature of change. Long periods where the beers remain identical, then sudden recipe changes. It's a fascinating process. Where often an external event - a rise in beer duty, wartime rationing of ingredients, technological advances -prompts the change. Maybe one day I'll write my thesis on the topic.

Anyway, back to the specific beer in question: Lees Best Mild. In the late 1950's Lees were brewing two Milds. One, with the inspired name of Mild, had been kicking around for quite a while. It appears, under its older name of K, in the earliest Lees log I've seen, from 1884. Its strength was gradually whittled away by the two world wars and the gravity was down to 1028º in 1948. Which is the year Best Mild was introduced, with a gravity of 1032º. Not a great difference in gravity. But a big differnce in the recipe and the colour. Mild was 35 EBC, Best Mild 100.

During the 1950's the gravities edged up a little, settling down at 1032º for Mild and 1035º for Best Mild. A minimal difference in strength, but still pretty different in terms of recipe and colour. Best Mild was dark and must have been pretty sweet, with all the lactose and other sugars. The oats are a nice touch. I wonder what they brought to the party?

One general point about Lees beers. They were all pretty different from each other. The London brewers tended to brew different-strength versions of the same recipe. Lees didn't. Their two Milds are a good example of this. As are their Bitter and strong bottled Pale Ale, Export. The recipes are very different. Just thought you might like to know that.



I think that's me done. Time for Kristen and his recipe . . . .



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JW Lees - 1958 - Best Mild
General info: Best Mild, the later years. The previous version we have seen has a ton of tasty dark malts and just a little bit of sugar. Here, 6 years post-hence, things have changed tremendously. The pale malt is split between 3 different types of English malt, a touch of American 6-row making this beer only 45% malt! SUGAR! At 34% this is the highest I've seen. 5 different types including invert, treacle, lactose and cane sugar. All giving a good enough body to finish definitely higher than the former version. Leave out the caramel and its still 80 EBC!
Beer Specifics			Recipe by percentages
Gravity (OG)	1.039		45% English 2 Row			6% treacle
Gravity (FG)	1.012		11.2% American 6 Row			3% lactose
ABV	3.60%		4.5% Flaked Maize			3% cane sugar
Apparent attenuation	69.37%		5.8% Flaked Oats			0.5% caramel colorant
Real attenuation	56.83%		21% Invert no1			0%
IBU	24.2		Mash	90min@149°F		0.94qt/lb
SRM	51			90min@65°C		1.96L/kg
EBC	100.5
			Boil	1.75 hours
	Homebrew @ 70%				Craft @ 80%
Grist	5gal		19L		10bbl		10hl
English 2 Row	3.21	lb	1.461	kg	174.12	lb	67.27	kg
American 6 Row	0.80	lb	0.365	kg	43.53	lb	16.82	kg
Flaked Maize	0.32	lb	0.146	kg	17.41	lb	6.73	kg
Flaked Oats	0.41	lb	0.188	kg	22.39	lb	8.65	kg
Invert no1	1.50	lb	0.682	kg	81.26	lb	31.39	kg
treacle	0.43	lb	0.195	kg	23.22	lb	8.97	kg
lactose	0.21	lb	0.097	kg	11.61	lb	4.48	kg
cane sugar	0.21	lb	0.097	kg	11.61	lb	4.48	kg
caramel colorant	0.04	lb	0.017	kg	2.07	lb	0.80	kg
Hops
Fuggle 5.5% 90min	0.74	oz	20.8	g	45.59	oz	1.101	kg
Fuggle 5.5% 30min	0.35	oz	9.9	g	21.71	oz	0.524	kg
Fermentation	63°F /17.2°C
Yeast	Manchester ale
	1318 London Ale Yeast III   -
Tasting Notes: No biscuits, no chocolate, no really malt of any sort. Nearly all dark fruits and that deep,  mouth coating feeling you get from proper milk stouts. Much more reminiscent of Harvey's Nut Brown that anything. Not as sweet but you can dose it up on the back end if need be.

Barleywine

Barleywine. Until about 3 hours ago the word pissed me off big time. No more:

"Anchor also started a subtle bit of label nomenclature here. Look closely at a bottle of Old Foghorn. It says "barleywine." One word. When Maytag first sought label approval for his barley wine from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, it balked at the use of the word "wine" on something not made from grapes. Recalling a bit of legal arcana, Maytag knew that if the beer was sold only in California, the state would allow him to use a label that hadn't been approved by the feds. To increase his chances with Sacramento regulators, Maytag called his brew "barleywine," running the two words together to hide the offending term. The label read: "Old Foghorn Barleywine Style Ale."

"They bought it," says Maytag. "It worked."

 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/arti ... 3TIBF1.DTL

Cool.

Hollands Gin

A totally random article today. Not even about beer. This one is about jenever. I've posted it because, well, there's so little in English about jenever out there. Enjoy.

A few months ago, during our inquiries into the margarine question in Holland we took occasion to examine Hollands gin as drunk in Holland, extending our investigations into it as distilled, as flavoured for the English market, the American market, and the Cape. In our issue of Dec. 16th we gave some of the results to our readers as follows :

"HOLLANDS GIN.

The reason why this spirit has not advanced more rapidly into public favour has been in a great degree owing to the fact that really high-class Geneva has, until recently, not been obtainable. The spirit commonly sold as Hollands gin in England is of a kind which a Dutchman would regard as an interesting curiosity, but would decline to run the experiment of drinking. It is becoming increasingly difficult to secure a pure spirit. If we take, as an example, whisky, we find that the enormous increase in the sale of this spirit during the past few years has (ed to the flooding of the market with so many blends of malt grain and potato spirit, that the whisky drinker is bewildered. If he be not wise enough to strictly confine himself to what is guaranteed to be a genuine article, such as John Jameson's and Old Bushmill's in Irish whiskies, or Lennox's pure malt whisky in Scotch whiskies, he pays the penalty of his trustfulness by headache and nausea. But high-class whiskies afford the owner of a number of * tied houses,' or the individual publican, far less profit than the 1 faked' ones, and it is usually only in the best hotels that genuine whisky is to be bought retailed, the ordinary public-house being the medium by which the blends of malt, grain and potato spirit are disposed of. Slowly, but yet perceptibly, there is a turning from whisky as there was from brandy, and for the same reason, viz., the difficulty of obtaining a genuine spirit. There has thus come about a gradually growing demand for Hollands gin, which many medical men now recommend to spirit drinkers in preference to suspicious whiskies. For this reason the makers of high-class Geneva are giving more attention to English requirements than they have hitherto done, and at last the real Geneva loved by the Dutchman is obtainable in this country. We have recently compared a dozen well-known Hollands gins of various makers, consisting of those mainly drunk in England, and of gins drunk exclusively in Holland hitherto unobtainable in this country. We find that those having the largest sale in England are not the product of one distillery, but blends of spirit purchased from a number of petty distillers of varying character and quality, and which are, as is the case with so many Scotch and Irish whiskies, ' faked ' for the English market. The growing demand in England for Hollands gin, however, has led the largest of the Dutch distillers—' the John Jameson of Holland '—Mr. H. C. Jansen, to offer his 'Goldfinch ' brand of Hollands gin to the trade in the United Kingdom. What John Jameson is in Ireland, Mr. Jansen is in Holland—his own maltster, and unapproached as a distiller. The connoisseur in Schiedam drinking asks in Holland for the ' Goldfinch,' aa the Irish whisky judge asks for his John Jameson. The ' ten year old Goldfinch' Schiedam, in particular, ia a spirit devoid of what to many is the obnoxious character of the commonly known Genevas, of admirable flavour, and the perfection of a pure spirit."

In the interests of a section of its advertisers Ridley's Wine and Spirit Trade Circular characterises our statements as " a libel of the grossest kind, which is not modified by the inference that a comparative parvenu is the only genuine purveyor." The suggestion is further offered that we ought to be " brought within the criminal code." It is only by an accident that we came across this specimen of what trade journalism can descend to, and we doubt if the few dozens it circulates make it worthy of our notice, but it has not been our custom to permit any journal, however insignificant, to accuse us of mis-statement, and in this case we must even give Mr. Ridley a well-merited correction. In the first place, as to the flooding of our markets with blends of potato spirit, malt, and grain whisky, we have before us a letter from a German house asking us if we can buy potato spirit, and informing us that they can show us many recommendations from leading firms who are using it.

This is the class of spirit of which Dr. Woodside wrote in our issue of December 30th :—

" Two kinds of whisky are known in the bond, one, the old sort made from home grown grain. Corn, rye, and barley, is not ' ripe' for drinking, till it has 'matured,' for which purpose it should be kept from five to seven years in wood. It is known by the name of pot-still whisky, seven-tenths of the whole of the whisky in the land belongs to the other kind, and is known as new patent whisky, and is produced in this country from yellow Indian corn, but may be made from almost anything under the sun.

It is hot, vile rubbish, burning the throat, and poisoning the brain, and does not improve by keeping. Indeed it is often swallowed at the public-house bar inside thirty-six hours from the time it left the still. And the producers are glad to have it so, for I believe if kept for over two years, it will undergo a process of rotting, as mariners know their casks of water do on board-ship,"

How this trash and the vile rubbish we commented upon ia doctored for the market, is referred to in a recent number of The Wine Trade Review, which

"Understands that another method of rapidly ageing or maturing whiskies haul been developed by Mr. J. A. Nettleton of Belfast. His methods are preferably applied during the distilling operation, but are also said to be applicable in dealers stock to finished whiskies.''

In recommending, therefore, to our readers to avoid such " faked " spirits, and stating which spirits our examinations have shown to be of unquestionable quality, we do a necessary duty whioh, however objectionable it may be to journals of the " reptile" press order, we shall not swerve from. As to Holland's Gin, to which our critic takes exception, our advice to the writer in Ridley's is to do as we did, make personal examinations in Holland. He will then find hie statements a tissue of falsehoods from start to finish. He will find that the Holland's most commonly drunk in England is, as we have stated, a blend made from the product of any number of small distilleries, that Mr. Jansen the distiller, whom he calls " a comparative parvenu," and whose Holland's we recommended, actually distills annually three-fifths of the whole Geneva distilled by 302 distilleries in Holland, that he is in addition his own maltster, and can thus guarantee quality and purity of his spirit, which those who are merely blenders, buying small quantities here, there, or anywhere, cannot do. Ridley's give a list of a number of firms, who, it says, sell genuine Geneva. We do not say they do not. We merely give the results of our own examinations. We might go further, and say that the Hollands in question, is not only of the highest quality, but that it is some sixty per cent. cheaper than those hitherto offered to the trade in this country. The moral, however, of this is obvious—there is no paper so consistently and dangerously mendacious, as the so-called trade one. It is the province of trade journals to " scent out that which pays them best, and go for it baldheaded," to defend alum in baking powder, infants starving by skimmed condensed milk, chemical " swipes " as beer, crushed dates, Indian corn, potato, &c , spirit as whisky, all of which may be very profitable to the maker, brewer, or distiller, but is injurious to the trader, the publican, and the consumer. We should hear less tirades against the evils of drink if trade journals did their duty, and not only told traders what were pure spirits, &c, but warned them against those that are " faked." The lager beer prosecution, in our present issue, is a case in point. We warned the trade months ago of this adulteration, but the trade journals, as usual, denied the practice.
"Food and Sanitation volume 4", 1894, page 42
http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA42&dq=laevuline&id=-ncBAAAAYAAJ#v=onepage&q=laevuline&f=false

Proprietary brewing sugars

Once you hit the 20th century, there's one problem with brewing logs. All the bloody proprietary sugars. Things either with exotic-sounding names like laevuline or prosaic permutations of letters, like DCS. Or even worse, enigmatic names, like Hay's "M".

Where am I mentioning this now? In preparation for the coming series of posts on Lees post-WW II beers. They were big sugar fans. Some of their beers contained as many as half a dozen.

In some cases, sugars make up such a high percentage of the grist, that just substituting table sugar for them really isn't going to work. Because, in addition to providing fermentable material, the sugars also had other functions. like colouring.

So (courtesy of Kristen) is your cut out and keep guide to proprietary brewing sugars:

Sugar	Colour	Description
Black treacle	400 ebc	dark fruits not caramel
Carameline	3600 ebc	invert sugar based colourant
CDM		see carameline
CWA		starch conversion syrup eg enzymatic syrup
DCS		see carameline
HX	0 ebc	white sugar of lower grade. XXV top dutch grade
Lactose	0 ebc	unfermentable. lends 35 gravity points per pound per gallon. So for the archer stout it would be 224lb  35pts/ 1329 gal = ~6 pts fg just from lactose.
Proteinex	10 ebc	soluble nitrogen invert kettle fining. increase yeast health and beer head

Well, some brewing sugars. There's also Laevuline, a priming sugar. A very common priming sugar. SP, too. That's another sort of priming. Any help with what these - and Hay's "M" -  were would be much appreciated.

Mitterteich

Hösl Bräu Brauerei Gaststätte 17:08

Cool. We've left the Zoiglstube and come to a brewery tap. And the brewery is right behind me. Cool, cool, cool.

Hösl Bräu Dunkles: beer, good, beer good, full, ness. It has that Dunkles taste I've never been able to pin down better than "nutty".

Mike is having trouble working up any enthusiasm for the brewery tap. The Zoiglstube has all awed him out. He's in a state of shock. Bit like going to Florence, I guess. I'm still in beer fan mode, snapping photos of the brewery and pub.

On the way to the bus stop, I notice a shop with a couple of Zoigl products. Beer and schnapps. I can't resist. Call it an impulse. The beer, it turns out, isn't a genuine Zoigl. Just a Kellerbier from Brauerei Würth in Windischeschenbach. (It was still pretty good.)

Our bus is a coach this time. Or dog coach. An unmatched trio of dogs are running loose. Clearly they belong to the driver. None of the other passengers seems concerned. To me, it looks like the smallest dog could easily get trapped under the brake pedal. It's sitting very close. Now wouldn't that be a weird way to die? Killed by dog.

The bus stops virtually outside our hotel.

We dine at the hotel. I saw enough of Wiesau earlier. The beer and food are fine. But it all seems a bit flat after the Zoiglstube. I guess life's going to be all downhill from here on.

Hösl & Co Brauhaus
Bahnhofstr. 1,
95666 Mitterteich.
Tel.: 09633 - 92220
Fax: 09633 - 922222
E-Mail: hoeslbraeu@t-online.de
http://www.hoeslbraeu.de/