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I’ve already mentioned that William Younger was a bit odd with their beer range. Nowhere was that more true than with their Stouts.

In first half of the 19th century they brewed Stouts that looked very much like those from London. And different from Younger’s Scottish-style beers in that the rate of attenuation was significantly higher. In the 1870’s they started a new range of Stouts, much more lightly hopped and with a poorer degree of attenuation. Sometimes they contained no fresh hops at, just spent hops from previous brews.

MBS, which appeared just before WW I, seems to combine attributes of the two older sets of Stout. It had a reasonable degree of attenuation, but was lightly hopped and used spent hops. It seems to have been discontinued in the 1930’s

This post WW I version is rather more heavily and thankfully without spent hops. It’s a nightmare writing a recipe with lots of spent hops in it. I’ve assumed, for recipe purposes, that spent hops have a tenth of the power of unused hops. No idea how accurate that is.

For William Younger, the recipe is incredibly complicated, with three different sorts of malt and caramel. Obviously, there’s a shitload of grits, too. Though not quite as many as it some of their other beers.

The hopping, in terms of varieties, is exactly the same as for all their other beers of this period: Kent, Saaz, British Columbia and Pacific. Not quite sure what Saaz was bringing to the part as the amount used was always pretty small.

For a compare and contrast exercise, next I’ll give you the recipe for DBS, the most long-lived of Younger’s Stouts. And the most normal-looking one.


1921 William Younger MBS
pale malt 6.25 lb 50.00%
black malt 0.75 lb 6.00%
amber malt 0.75 lb 6.00%
grits 4.25 lb 34.00%
caramel 500 SRM 0.50 lb 4.00%
Cluster 90 min 1.25 oz
Cluster 60 min 1.25 oz
Saaz 30 min 0.50 oz
Fuggles 30 min 1.00 oz
Goldings dry hops 1.00 oz
OG 1055
FG 1017.5
ABV 4.96
Apparent attenuation 68.18%
IBU 67
SRM 34
Mash at 152º F
Sparge at 160º F
Boil time 150 minutes
pitching temp 60º F
Yeast WLP028 Edinburgh Ale


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