Shut up about Barclay Perkins - Adnams grists in 1939

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Adnams grists are notable for a couple of reasons. First, they contain no adjuncts, only malt and sugar. This was highly unusual. Pretty much everyone included maize – usually in flaked form, but occasionally as grits – in their recipes.

Only PA contained pale malt. The other beers all used something called medium malt as a base. I’m assuming that it was something along the lines of mild malt, but I could be wrong. It’s use in darker beers suggests that it’s less fancy base malt.

The grists of XX, XXXX and DS are all very similar, except the latter includes chocolate malt as well as amber and crystal. At thus point it was unusual to find amber malt in anything other than Porter and Stout.

The grist of PA is incredibly simple, containing just pale malt and No. 1 invert sugar. That’s about as stripped down as Bitter recipes come.

The sugar content, at around 15% of the grist is quite. But as Adnams used no adjuncts, the malt percentage is about the same, or even a little higher, than was the norm.

There are no proprietary sugars, just No. 1 and No. 3 invert. Which, by this time, was pretty old-school. Many brewers used all sorts of specialised sugar products, often designed for a particular type of beer. No. 3 is exactly what you would expect to find in dark beers like XX and XXXX.

Adnams malts in 1939
Date	Beer	Style	OG	pale malt	amber malt	choc. Malt	crystal malt	medium malt
22nd May	XX	Mild Ale	1029		4.79%		4.79%	76.62%
24th May	XXXX	Old Ale	1055		4.81%		4.81%	76.91%
23rd May	PA	Pale Ale	1039	87.10%
8th Jun	DS	Stout	1042		5.96%	5.96%	5.96%	71.57%
Source:
Adnams brewing record Book 26 held at the brewery.

Adnams malts in 1939
Date	Beer	Style	OG	no. 1 sugar	no. 3 sugar	Tintose	total
22nd May	XX	Mild Ale	1029		12.77%	1.03%	13.80%
24th May	XXXX	Old Ale	1055		12.82%	0.66%	13.48%
23rd May	PA	Pale Ale	1039	12.90%			12.90%
8th Jun	DS	Stout	1042		7.95%	2.59%	10.54%
Source:
Adnams brewing record Book 26 held at the brewery.

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