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. 

 

 

Youngs boiling and fermentation in 1940

Yes, I'm still away on holiday. How selfish of me. Going away creates so much work for me. Lining up more than a dozen blog posts before I leave. Then writing the same number of travel posts when I return. It's all very time-consuming.

Boiling times are basically the same. Two hours, for most boils, for most beers. Only the watery A got a little less. And the strongest beer, XXX, got a little longer.

More surprising is that the fermentation temperatures have been reduced. The pitching temperatures are, on average, 1.5º F cooler and the maximum temperatures 4 º F. 

Despite the lower fermentation temperature, the fermentations lasted a day less. Which doesn’t make a whole deal of sense to me. The small drop in gravities wouldn’t have been enough to make that much of a difference. 

Youngs boiling and fermentation in 1940
Beer	Style	boil time (hours)		Pitch temp	max. fermen-tation temp	length of fermen-tation (days)
A	Mild	1.75	1.75	59º F	66.25º F	7
X	Mild	2	2	58º F	67.5º F	7
PAB	Pale Ale	2	2	59º F	65º F	6
PA	Pale Ale	2	2	58º F	67º F	7
P	Porter	2		59º F	68.25º F	4
S	Stout	2		58º F	70.25º F	4
XXX	Strong Ale	2	2	58º F	65.5º F	7
XXXX	Strong Ale	2.5	2	58º F	68.5º F	8
	Average	2.03	1.96	58.38º F	67.28º F	6.3
Source:
Young's brewing record held at Battersea Library, document number YO/RE/1/9.

 

Youngs boiling and fermentation in 1939

Some processes next. Boiling and fermentation.

Most of the beers had two coppers and hence two boil times. The exception being the Black Beers, which only had one.

Most of the boils were two hours long. The exception being the two Mild Ales, where it was 1.75 hours. Other than when they were parti-gyled with the Strong Ales, when they were two hours. There’s nothing particularly odd about the length of the boil.

All of the pitching temperatures are around 60º F. Which is what you would expect for standard-strength beers. The temperature rose around 12º F during fermentation. Nothing really to see there. It’s all pretty normal.

The length of the fermentations, on the other hand, is generally quite long. Averaging just shy of 8 days. Which is a little on the long side. But nothing crazy. 

Youngs boiling and fermentation in 1939
Beer	Style	boil time (hours)		Pitch temp	max. fermentation temp	length of fermentation (days)
A	Mild	1.75	1.75	61º F	69º F	9
X	Mild	1.75	1.75	60º F	68º F	8
PA	Pale Ale	2	2	60º F	71.75º F	8
PAB	Pale Ale	2	2	60º F	70.5º F	8
P	Porter	2		59º F	68.5º F	8
S	Stout	2		59º F	74.25º F	8
XXX	Strong Ale	2	2	60º F	71.25º F	4
XXXX	Strong Ale	2	2	59º F	75.5º F	6
	Average	1.94	1.92	59.75º F	71.09º F	7.4
Source:
Young's brewing record held at Battersea Library, document number YO/RE/1/8.

 

Youngs boiling and fermentation in 1960/1961

That’s ingredients dome. Processes next. The excitement!

Boiling is pretty easy.  Two hours. In just about every case. And on average. What else can I say? It’s all pretty boring. Let’s see if fermentation temperatures are any more exciting.

Most beers were pitched a bit under 60º F. Other than the Milds, which were started a bit warmer.

The length of fermentation is pretty dull, too. Eight days. In all but a couple of cases. Which does seem quite long, given the temperatures and gravities involved.

Dropping was mostly for lower gravity beers. Like X Ale and PA> It also happened pretty quickly. Around 24 hours into the fermentation.

You know what we can do now? Look at a full fermentation record. Always such a treat. When I can be arsed to transcribe them.

Luckily, I am in an arsing sort of mood.

From pitching to racking was 158 hours. Though the bulk of the attenuation was achieved in the first 48 hours. And for the last four days it basically just sat in the fermenter cooling down.

In this batch of X Ale, three fermenters were employed and only one of them was dropped. I’ve no idea why that was. This fermenter was dropped, after 24 hours. When approximately a third of the eventual attenuation had occurred.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t record when the attemperators were switched on. But, judging the temperature of the wort, it seems to have happened sometime after the 40-hour mark.

There wasn’t a huge rise in temperature during the fermentation. Just 7.75º F. With most of the fermentation occurring at around 67º F.

I assume that the skimming after 48 hours was to obtain healthy yeast for later pitching in another beer.
 

Youngs boiling and fermentation in 1960/1961
Year	Beer	Style	boil time (hours)		Pitch temp	max. fermen-tation temp	length of fermen-tation (days)	dropped?
1961	X	Mild	2	2	60.5º F	68.5º F	8	25 hours
1960	XS	Mild	1.75	1.75	60º F	67.5º F	8	no
1960	PAB	Pale Ale	2	2	59º F	71º F	8	no
1960	PA	Pale Ale	2	2	59º F	69.25º F	8	22 hours
1960	SPA	Pale Ale	2.25	2	58º F	71.5º F	9	no
1960	QSPA	Pale Ale	2	2	59º F	71º F	8	no
1961	Ex PA	Pale Ale	2	2	58.5º F	68.25º F	8	no
1961	MS	Stout	2	2	58.5º F	69.5º F	6	no
1961	XXX	Strong Ale	2	2	58.5º F	69.75º F	8	no
1960	XXXX	Strong Ale	2	1.75	58º F	70.75º F	8	no
1961	CA	Barley Wine	2	2	58.5º F	66.5º F	8	no
		Average	2.00	1.95	58.9º F	69.4º F	7.91
Source:
Young's brewing record held at Battersea Library, document number YO/RE/1/29.

Youngs X fermentation 4th July 1960
hours	FV	heat	gravity	action
0	4	60º F	1030.5	pitched
14		62.5º F	1026.6
19		62.75º F	1000.0
24		63.25º F	1022.7	dropped
38	7	66.5º F	1012.7
43		67º F	1009.4
46				RS
48		67.75º F	1006.6	Skim PY
62		67.75º F	1005.5	Skim PY
67		67.5º F	1005.5
158		58º F	1005.5	racked
Source:
Young's brewing record held at Battersea Library, document number YO/RE/1/29.

 

 

 

Youngs boiling and fermentation in 1990-1991

Processes now. We’re really getting through this stuff, aren’t we?  Soon it will all be over and we can all get on with something useful.

These are all details that I originally started extracting for a specific purpose. To demonstrate that Scottish beers were not boiled longer and fermented more coolly than English beers. It does provide useful information for other purposes, too.

Compare to pre-WW II practices – or the 19th century – the boil times are extremely short. With the longest just 90 minutes and the shortest a mere 36 minutes (the first copper for Export).

Average boil times are around 60 minutes. Which seems like just about the bare minimum required for technical purposes.

Moving onto fermentation. For the top-fermenting beers, pitching temperatures are around 60º F. Which is what you would expect. With the stronger beers a little lower than 60º F.

Maximum fermentation temperatures are mostly around 70º F. The exception being Oatmeal Stout, which went as high as 75º F. Interesting, that. As, back in the 19th century, Porter and Stout in London were usually fermented quite a bit warmer than Ales. Sometimes hitting as much as 88.5º F. 

Unsurprisingly, the two Lagers have cooler fermentations. Starting in the low 50sº F and ending in the mid-50sº F. Which is a little on the warm side for Lagers.

Most beers only fermented for four or five days. Even the strongest, Old Nick. Exceptions were John Young’s London Lager, which fermented for eight, and Export Pale Ale which fermented for nine. The latter was quite high gravity, but that does still seem excessive. 

Youngs boiling and fermentation in 1990-1991
Year	Beer	Style	boil time (hours)			Pitch temp	max. fermen-tation temp	length of fermen-tation (days)
1990	JYLL	Lager	1			53º F	56º F	8
1991	Premium Lager	Pilsner	1.50			52º F	56.5º F	5
1990	Light Ale	Pale Ale	1.17	1.33		62º F	70º F	4
1990	PA	Pale Ale	1.17	1	1	60.5º F	71.5º F	6
1990	SPA	Pale Ale	1.17	1.50	1.17	60º F	70º F	4
1990	Export	Pale Ale	0.60	1.22	0.63	57º F	71.5º F	9
1990	Porter	Porter	1			59º F	68.5º F	4
1991	Oatmeal Stout	Stout	1.17			63º F	75º F	4
1991	Winter Warmer	Strong Ale	1			60º F	71º F	4
1990	Old Nick	Barley Wine	1			59º F	71.75º F	4
	Average		1.08	1.26	0.93	58.6º F	68.2º F	5.2
Source:
Young's brewing record held at Battersea Library, document number YO/RE/1/59.

Listen to brewer John Hatch explain how they brewed at Youngs in the 1990s.  

Chapman boiling and fermentation in 1880

Moving on to processes.

Starting with boiling. Not that there’s anything very odd about it. For most beers, the first copper was boiled for 90 minutes and the second for 120 minutes. Times which aren’t anything out of the ordinary.

As none of the beers is super strong, it makes sense that there were no extremely long boils. The longest, for the second copper of Stout, was 160 minutes. I wonder if that was to try and darken the weaker wort a little. A dark colour being a bit of a requirement for a Stout.

Pitching times are a little on the low side. All of them, including for the weakest beers, are under 60º F.

The highest temperatures were generally 10º F to 12º F above the pitching temperature. So, generally a bit under 70º F. A pretty standard range of temperatures and pretty dull, really.

I can see from the brewing records that attemperators were used to control the temperature of the fermentation. The attemperators were generally switched on about two days into the fermentation and switched off about two days later.

Here’s a full fermentation record:

It’s interesting that the attemperators were switched off just before the wort hit its maximum temperature. 

Chapman boiling and fermentation in 1880
Beer	Style	boil time (hours)		Pitch temp	max. fermen-tation temp	length of fermen-tation (days)
X	Mild	1.5	2	58.5º F	69.25º F	8
XX	Mild	1.5	2	57º F	67.75º F	8
XXX	Stock Ale	1.5	2	57º F	66.5º F	8
AK	Pale Ale	2.5		58º F	69.25º F
PA	Pale Ale	1.5	2	57º F	68.5º F	5
S	Stout	1.5	2.67	58.5º F	69.5º F	7
Source:
Chapman brewing record.

Chapman 5th Oct 1880 XX fermentation
time (hours)	gravity	temperature
0	1067.9	57º F
13		59.5º F
23.5	1063.7	61.5º F
25	attenuators on
37	1054.8	63.75º F
47.5	1046.0	64.75º F
61	1032.4	66º F
72	1025.2	67º F
76	attenuators off
100	1020.5	67.75º F
107.25	1019.1	67.75º F
157	1015.2
	racked
Source:
Chapman brewing record.

 

 

DDR boiling and hop additions

More fun stuff from the example brewing record in Technologie Brauer und Mälzer. I hope you find it as interesting as I do.

Wort was generally boiled for around two hours. Which is on the long side compared to what happened in, for example, the UK. Youngs mostly boiled between 60 and 75 minutes. Another difference is that there was only a single wort and single boil in the DDR. While in the UK, other than for particularly small batches, there were usually at least two boils, often three or even four.

There were usually two or three hop additions. With these timings:

15-25%	when kettle filling
50-60%	start of boil
25%	15-30 min before end
Source:
Technologie Brauer und Mälzer by Wolfgang Kunze, VEB Fachbuchverlag Leipzig, 2nd edition, 1967, page 258.

Isn't that fascinating?

Now for a specific example. Which is of a brew of Helles Vollbier from sometime in the mid-1960s. This beer was boiled for 110 minutes.

1960s DDR Helles Vollbier hop additions (kg)
hop type	1st addition	2nd addition	3rd addition
timing	230 min	120 min	20 min
Czechoslovakian			10
Hallertau		15
DDR	10	5
hop extract 1:10	0.5
total	15	20	10
%	33.33%	44.44%	22.22%
Source:
Technologie Brauer und Mälzer by Wolfgang Kunze, VEB Fachbuchverlag Leipzig, 2nd edition, 1967, page 212.

You'll notice that the first hop addition is a bit larger and the second a bit lower than that recommended by Kunze. Though the timings are the same: first addition as the kettle starts to fill, second when the kettle is full, third 20 minutes before the end of the boil.
 

Adnams boiling and fermentation in 1913

Time to crack on with some processes. Beginning with boiling and fermentation.

With just a single copper, boiling was a fairly simple affair at Adnams. The Mild Ales underwent a boil of 1.75 hours. All the other beers got 15 minutes more. Nothing much more to say, really. All pretty normal.

The pitching temperatures are all around 60º F. Which is what I always think of as the standard temperature for pitching. Perhaps a degree or two lower for strong beers.

Similarly, the maximum fermentation temperatures are all within a degree or so of 70º F. Higher in the stronger beers, lower in the weaker ones. Nothing odd at all.

The normalcy theme continues with the length of fermentation. Which, for every beer except PA, was seven days. About as long as you would expect, if the brewer wasn’t in a rush.

Adnams boiling and fermentation in 1913
Beer	Style	boil time (hours)	Pitch temp	max. fermen-tation temp	length of fermen-tation (days)
X	Mild Ale	1.75	60º F	69.75º F	7
XX	Mild Ale	1.75	60.25º F	68.25º F	7
BLB	Pale Ale	2	60.5º F	69.5º F	7
PA	Pale Ale	2	60º F	70.25º F	8
BS	Stout	2	60º F	70.75º F	7
DS	Stout	2	59.75º F	71.25º F	7
Tally Ho	Old Ale	2	60º F	71.25º F	7
Source:
Adnams brewing record Book 1 held at the brewery.

 

 

 

Fullers boiling and fermentation in 1910

Processes now. Starting with boiling and fermentation.

With the exception of X and BO, all the beers had two coppers.

Nothing very odd about the boiling process. Mostly, the boil length was in the range of 1.5 to 2 hours. Which was fairly typical. The only exception is BO, where the boil lasted 2.75 hours. Presumably some of that time was to concentrate the wort.

The fermentation temperatures are equally unexceptional, in the 60º F to 70º F range. I’m not finding much to say here, am I? 

Around a week for primary fermentation was pretty standard, too. Fullers used the dropping system of fermentation. I thought it would be interesting to include when the beers were dropped to the settling square.  There doesn’t seem to be much consistency to it, varying between 20 and 70 hours. 

Fullers boiling and fermentation in 1910
Beer	Style	boil time (hours)		Pitch temp	max. fermen-tation temp	length of fermen-tation (days)	dropped after (hours)
X	Mild	2		59º F	69º F	7	20
AK	Pale Ale	1.75	2	60º F	68.5º F	8	70
PA	Pale Ale	1.75	2	59.5º F	69º F	8	46
P	Porter	1.5	1.75	60º F	66.5º F	6
BS	Stout	1.5	1.75	59.5º F	69º F	6
BO	Strong Ale	2.75		60º F	70º F	9	60
	Average	1.88	1.88	59.7º F	68.7º F	7.3	49.0
Source:
Fullers brewing record held at the brewery.