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It's finally bye bye to Mild in this interminable series. Something completely different thistime: Pale Ale.

I'll start with a caveat. There are only seven beers from just two breweries. A rubbish sample size. I would be very reluctant to draw too much in the way of conclusions from this handful of Pale Ales.

That fact in itself tells us something. Of the three large London breweries for which I have long sets of brewing records (Whitbread, Truman and Barclay Perkins) only Truman brewed a Pale in the 1840's. As I've mentioned several times before, the Scots were ahead of the game when it came to Pale Ale. That was a big factor in the success of Edinburgh and Alloa brewers: anticipating the demand for Pale Ale.


Date Year Brewer Beer Style OG FG ABV App. Atten-uation lbs hops/ qtr hops lb/brl boil time (hours) boil time (hours) boil time (hours) Pitch temp max. fer-ment-ation temp length of fer-ment-ation (days)
23rd Oct 1845 Truman Pale Ale Pale Ale 1066.2 1017.5 6.45 73.64% 20.0 5.92 61 76.5 10
16th Mar 1846 Truman Pale Ale Pale Ale 1066.8 1019.1 6.30 71.37% 25.0 7.44 60 77 12
Average 1066.5 1018.3 6.38 72.50% 22.50 6.68 60.5 76.8 11.0
10th Jan 1849 Younger, Wm. Export Pale Ale 1061 1018 5.69 70.49% 20.00 5.41 1 2 56 65 6
24th Jan 1849 Younger, Wm. Export Pale Ale 1062 1015 6.22 75.81% 20.00 5.83 1.33 1.33 56 66 7
3rd Apr 1849 Younger, Wm. Export Pale Ale 1062 1014 6.35 77.42% 20.00 5.68 1.17 1.17 56 67 8
14th Nov 1849 Younger, Wm. Export Pale Ale 1063 1012 6.75 80.95% 20.00 5.95 1 1 56 67 9
7th Jun 1849 Younger, Wm. Export Pale Ale 1071 1017 7.14 76.06% 20.00 6.32 1 55 66 8
Average 1063.8 1015.2 6.43 76.15% 20.00 5.84 1.10 1.38 55.8 66.2 7.6
difference -2.7 -3.1 0.05 3.64% -2.50 -0.84 1.10 1.38 0.00 -4.7 -10.6 -3.4
Sources:
Truman brewing record document number B/THB/C/127 held at the London Metropolitan Archives
William Younger brewing record document number WY/6/1/2/3 held at the Scottish Brewing Archive

Rather than go through point by point as usual, I'll restrict myself to more general comments. The beers are generally pretty similar. Truman's has a slightly higher OG, but Younger's is a bit more attenuated, leaving the ABV almost identical. That's a bit of a turnaround. So far in my comparisons the London beers have always been the most attenuated. I can't see any huge difference in the hopping. All the beers in the table contain a shitload. Considering how similar the beers are in other respects, the difference in fermentation temperatures is striking. The maximum temperature of Truman's beers averaged over 10º F more. Yet weirdly, the Younger's beers fermented for more than three days less on average.

Whatever the differences with Truman's, Younger's Pale Ale looks the part for the mid-19th century: moderate gravity, quite high attenuation, loads of hops. And nothing at all like the cliché of Scottish beer.


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