Wednesday 6 December 2017

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1942 Shepherd Neame MB

Time to see what had happened to Shepherd Neame’s Mild after a couple of years of war. It’s bound to be nothing good.

For a start it’s dropped down to the minimum OG of 1027º. Nowhere left to go down any further. Even 80% attenuation still leaves it below 3% ABV. A bit depressing, especially as there was likely to be no whisky in the pub to perk it up a bit.

As was standard at Shep’s, there’s just one malt, the base of pale. Supplemented by a couple of types of sugar. The No. 3 invert was in the original, but the No. 4 is my substitution for a proprietary sugar called WC or VC. I suspect the “C” stands for caramel, so it seems a reasonable enough guess.

All of their beers, other than the Stouts, contained a small amount of diastatic malt extract. MB, however, has considerably more. It has 8 cwt. of another type of malt extract, simply described as “ME”. I’ve no idea why this is. The 1940 also contained some, but only a quarter of the amount. Maybe they just had a lot of it hanging around and used it to stretch out the malt.

The flaked barley is there because they were told to use it.

The hops are once again a total guess, but probably not far from the truth. Possibly they were all the cheaper Fuggles, but looking at the Pale Ale recipes I can see that they used exactly the same hops. They came from the 1939, 1940, 1941 and 1942 harvests. I’ve knocked the amount down to account for the age of some of the hops.

The original was brewed on Bonfire Night, 5th November.

1942 Shepherd Neame MB
pale malt 3.50 lb 68.29%
flaked barley 0.50 lb 9.76%
No. 3 invert sugar 0.50 lb 9.76%
No. 4 invert sugar 0.125 lb 2.44%
malt extract 0.50 lb 9.76%
Fuggles 120 mins 0.25 oz
Goldings 60 mins 0.25 oz
Goldings 30 mins 0.125 oz
OG 1027
FG 1005.5
ABV 2.84
Apparent attenuation 79.63%
IBU 10
SRM 11
Mash at 152º F
Sparge at 170º F
Boil time 120 minutes
pitching temp 62º F
Yeast a Southern English Ale yeast

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