Friday 15 September 2017

Barclay Perkins X Ale grists 1935 - 1936

As promised, here are the Barclay Perkins grists. Well, some of them.

I’ve decided to split them up to make the tables a bit more manageable, I’m kicking off with X Ale. Basically standing in for all of their Milds. Because X Ale was in all of the Mild parti-gyles and sometimes single-gyled.

When I started harvesting these records I was struck by how much the grists changed over a short period of time. Without there being external factor, like a war, forcing changes. I’m not really sure what to make of it. For example, why does one version randomly contain some lager malt?

Let’s take a look at the grains first. There are several ever-presents: pale, amber, crystal and mild malt, plus flaked maize. But only the pale and crystal malt percentages are reasonably constant at around 20% and 5%, respectively. While amber malt and flaked maize are all over the place, with a variation of over 100%.

Barclay Perkins X Ale grists 1935 - 1936 (malts)
Year Beer Style OG pale malt amber malt crystal malt MA malt SA malt lager malt flaked maize
1935 X Mild 1034.8 23.55% 9.42% 6.28% 37.68% 17.27%
1935 X Mild 1034.8 18.37% 7.65% 5.36% 43.62% 15.31%
1936 X Mild 1034.7 18.66% 7.11% 5.33% 29.32% 14.22% 14.22%
1936 X Mild 1034.7 19.03% 3.81% 5.71% 41.86% 5.71% 13.32%
1936 X Mild 1034.8 19.23% 4.05% 5.06% 32.40% 16.20% 7.09%
1936 X Mild 1034.8 19.42% 3.88% 5.18% 33.02% 16.19% 7.12%
Sources:
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number ACC/2305/01/620.

There’s a similar story with the sugar:

Barclay Perkins X Ale grists 1935 - 1936 (sugar and hops)
Year Beer Style OG no. 2 sugar no. 3 sugar caramel Martineau BS hops
1935 X Mild 1034.8 5.23% 0.58% MK Fuggles, Kent Fuggles
1935 X Mild 1034.8 9.18% 0.51% MK Fuggles, Kent Fuggles
1936 X Mild 1034.7 0.48% 10.66% MK Fuggles, Kent Fuggles
1936 X Mild 1034.7 10.15% 0.41% Kent, MK Goldings
1936 X Mild 1034.8 15.52% 0.45% MK Fuggles, MK Goldings
1936 X Mild 1034.8 14.68% 0.50% MK Fuggles
Sources:
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number ACC/2305/01/620.


The only sugar used in every grist was caramel, which was used for colour. I would have expected No. 3 invert to be in all the grists. That’s the usual Mild sugar. It seems odd to find No. 2 invert, which was usually used in cheaper Pale Ales.

All of the hops were English and from Kent. Mostly Fuggles, but with some Goldings, too. Nothing unusual there, though a lot of brewers would have been using North American hops in the 1930’s.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi Ron,
I'd look at the extract poundage from the brews without the lager malt, the the one with , if they're roughly the same I'd say the lager malt was for extract , in a similar way to the use of Ouchak, Smyrna etc and n the records I've seen from northern and Burton Breweries.
Cheers,
Edd