Recreating the complete Young's parti-gyle

[Colindo]

Hi everyone,

ever since Ron Pattinson published his Young's recipes and mentioned that in 2006, Ordinary, Special and Ram Rod were still parti-gyled I wanted to recreate this. I have experience with Fuller's parti-gyle, following the brewlogs that were published in this forum. Young's parti-gyle seem to have been quite a bit more complicated though, so I thought it made sense to have a bit of a discussion here.
These are Ron's posts:
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2024/03/lets-brew-wednesday-2006-youngs-ordinary.html
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2024/03/lets-brew-2006-youngs-special.html
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2024/03/lets-brew-wednesdauy-2006-youngs-ram-rod.html

After reading those I had many open questions, such as which hop varieties were actually added and at what time. The IBU are much lower than stated in the Real Ale Almanac of 1992, which I have. Also the crystal malt seems strangely pale. So I asked John Hatch, former Young's brewer and manager of the heritage site in the Ram quarter, if he could send me a photo of the page and answer my questions.

His answers:

• In the hops section of the page you can see that the Goldings we used were T.G. Redsell and the Fuggles were P. Highmoor. The ratio of Goldings to Fuggles was usually 2:1 but, as we were running down the hop stocks before closing the brewery, Derek must have adjusted the ratio such that both hops would run out at the same time.
• The Late copper Goldings, added at the last 10 min of the boil, were also Redsell.
• The hop rates are 2.6 lb/Qtr for the Copper hops and 1.15 lb/Qtr Late Copper hops.
• The total alpha used is 37.81 lb out of 629 lb of total hops used. This would make the average alpha about 6% which does sound surprisingly high for Goldings & Fuggles. However, I have checked back and the alpha of the Redsell was 5.85% and the Highmoor was 6.2%
• Dry hopping of RR and SPA was carried out in conditioning tank as far as I can remember but I do not have those particular rates available (sorry for the omission).
• Young’s only used Crystal 150 as far as I remember, Ron may have mis-read someone’s poor handwriting.
• We used to get bulk Crystal 150 from a number of suppliers, but it looks like the batch used in 2006 was from Baird.
• Finally, the pitching rates for the three beers can be seen in the yeast section on the attached, all in litres of yeast (balm) per Brl. The SPA was 1.4, the RR was 1.6 and the PA was 1.2.

So, my plan is to go through the brewlog in the next few weeks and try to work out what a good clone recipe could look like. I will probably start by chucking all numbers into a spreadsheet and converting to hectolitre and kg. Not only would that help me, being from Germany, but also it would make a comparison with Fuller's easier.

The missing data for the IBUs and the dry-hops is what I'll take from the Real Ale Almanac:
All beers have 30-34 IBU, all hops are whole hops, Special was dry-hopped with Target and Ram Rod was dry-hopped with Goldings.

 

[Colindo]

I had a bit more time on hand than I thought, so for those of you that are new to brewing records, here is an annotated version. I think everyone is baffled when first seeing these, but the annotations help.

 

[Miraculix]

That's dedication my friend! I'm looking forward to hearing how the beer turns out.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Good stuff.

• In the hops section of the page you can see that the Goldings we used were T.G. Redsell and the Fuggles were P. Highmoor.

I'd assume it's Highwood, not Highmoor - like Tony Redsell, Stuart Highwood is one of the doyens of Kent hopgrowing, at Crowplain Farm in the Weald between Tonbridge and Maidstone, although the company name is Peter Highwood.

 

[Colindo]

@Northern_Brewer I didn't read it as "moor" either. "Highwood" is probably correct. I have to say the handwriting is not the best, though.

This is my table so far.

Grain bill​	Qrs​	kg​	%​	​	​
Maris Otter​	154​	23440​	96.25​	​	Hecto litres per barrel​
Crystal 150​	6​	913​	3.75​	​	1.63584​
​	160​	24353​	​	​	​
​	​	​	​	​	​
Hops​	lbs​	kg​	​	​	​
Golding​	145​	66​	​	​	​
Fuggle​	291​	132​	​	​	​
Golding (late)​	193​	87​	​	​	​
​	​	​	​	​	​
Water​	bbl​	hL​	L per kg malt​	°F​	°C​
Mash​	346​	566​	2.32​	152​	67​
Underlet​	30​	49​	0.20​	165​	74​
Sparge​	645​	1055​	4.33​	147​	64​
​	lbs​	g/L​	​	​	​
Gypsum​	101​	0,27​	​	​	​
​	​	​	​	​	​
Yeast​	L/bbl​	L/hL​	​	SG​	°P​
Ordinary​	1.2​	0.73​	​	1.0368​	9,2​
Special​	1.4​	0.85​	​	1.0448​	11.2​
Ram Rod​	1.6​	0.98​	​	1.0528​	13.2​

I can already compare with Fuller's that the mash thickness after the underlet is the same 2.5L/kg, but Fuller's do a longer sparge with 4.9L/kg vs Young's 4.3L/kg.