Devanha Brewery Recipes?

[seymour]

Wow, cool! Fingers crossed. See, it never hurts to ask. Like the rest of us, pro brewers love to "talk shop".

Hey Seymour, Loved your picture of your old Scottish ale. Come on, tell me your secret for great head retention

Kind regards, Louis )

Oats, mate. That's it, the secret to great head retention, lace, creamy and silky mouthfeel.

[louiscowdroy]

Nice one that's Seymour )

[orlando]

Wow that's a pretty comprehensive reply! Fantastic information. Thank you very much for that Seymour...

You're welcome. I love me some strong Scotch ale! In fact, I shared the very last bottle of this craziness last night:
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=17666&p=588148&hil ... id#p588148

a caramelly, deep reddish amber ale, 9% ABV, continuously hop-bursted mainly with Saaz hops to 107 IBU, fermented with the McEwans yeast strain, and aged for 1 1/2 years. Very sad to see it go.

...I think the Younger's No.3 they sold in the 1980s as opposed to the 1880s was a fair bit weaker and nowhere near so heavily hopped....

Without a doubt. What a difference a hundred years makes, right?

...I will definitely try that brewery for info on the Devanha beers.

Sounds good. Please update this post if you get a helpful reply. And keep us posted on whatever you decide to brew. Best of luck!

Cheers,
-Seymour

Haven't we seen that Kebab before .

[seymour]

...Haven't we seen that Kebab before

Yep. I referenced the old thread, though. Not trying to fake you out or anything.

Of course, I have eaten several more since then.

[paraffin]

[quote="charliemartin"]I have had some communication from the Skye Brewery on this topic. Most recent one says they are going to put something together for me in terms of a recipe. They also said the original XXX was based on Younger's No.3! I'm off on holiday for a couple of weeks so may not be able to update this thread for a little while.

Cheers,
Charliemartin[/quote]

excellent, fingers crossed, look forward to that. My attempt looks about right, but nothing like the taste.

[charliemartin]

Just had a reply from the Skye Brewery with a recipe for Devanha XXX! The e-mail is below:

Here is the recipe we used the last time we brewed Devanha XXX. Obviously you will need to tweak the quantities unless you want nearly 6,000 pints which is what this will brew!

450kg Maris Otter
50kg Torrified Wheat
40kg Crystal
20kg Roast
2.35 DWB

Hops at Boil: .9kg Goldings
30 mins later: .9kg Goldings
40 mins later: 7.5kg Goldings

Additions added with the final aroma hops:
210gms Ultra
250gms Salt
135mls Zinc
25kg Demerara Sugar.

Happy brewing!

Best Regards

Angus

I have replied to them with a few questions which I await answers for, but in the meantime I have input a scaled down recipe into Beer Engine (divide quantities by 150). With my set up (for 23 litres) it gives an OG of 1.040, FG 1.010, 3.8% ABV, 80 EBC and 24 EBU. When I get the chance to brew this I will probably try WLP028 as they are a bit vague regarding yeast, claiming it is their own house yeast which they use.

Some of the info obviously relates to water treatments, such as DWB (I believe this is from Murphys). I am not really clued up on water treatments yet, but would suspect they aim for something akin to Edinburgh brewing liquor. Obviously these treatments would vary according to your own water.

Hope this is of use to some of you fellow homebrewers.

Cheers,
Charliemartin

[Hanglow]

Nice one Do you know which roast for sure? black/chocolate or I assume roasted barley?

I get half the colour though at most, using Morey.

Also the beer was 4.4%, I assume they'd hit their numbers as they would have better efficiency

Looks a good recipe

[charliemartin]

I assumed they meant roasted barley. I couldn't recall the abv of Devanha XXX, but 4.4% sounds about right. I have asked them for target OG & FG. They did say it may not be a simple case of scaling down the recipe, presumably because of the efficiencies in their system over a homebrew set up, but it seemed a good starting point.

Cheers,
Charliemartin

[seymour]

Back in the eighties I used to drink some beers produced by a local brewery which were delicious. It was the Devanha Brewery, based in Alford, Aberdeenshire (now defunct) and they made two beers as I recall. Devanha XXX and Devanha XB. They would be akin to typical Scottish 80 and 70 shilling beers, but were much better than the typical McEwans 80 shilling...

I found a little more information online about the original Devanha Brewery, but most of which you already know:

The quaffale website states:

Devanha Brewery History:

Started brewing in October 1982 as an offshoot of the Aberdeen Ales drinks wholesaling group. A 10 barrel brewplant was used. The brewery went into receivership in 1985 but was quickly taken over. However brewing ceased in early 1987, the brewplant being sold to Harviestoun. In 2004 a new company was set up to brew beers under the Devanha name at Isle of Skye.

That implies Isle of Skye brewed the other Devanha beers too, but I've never heard that anywhere else, have you?


The Beermad website lists their three beers, complete with OG, which I hadn't seen elsewhere:

Pale 80/- (og 1042.0)
Triple X (og 1043.0)
XB (og 1036.0)

It looks to me like the Triple X OG: 1043 would match the 4.4% ABV of Isle of Skye's recipe as well.


According to this historical website, the Devanha Brewery produced a Porter too.

Devanha House was built in 1813 for William Black on the slopes of south Ferryhill, midway between Ferryhill House and Arthurseat. William Black had fitted out the former Paper Mills by the Wellington Suspension Bridge as a brewery - the Devanha Brewery. His Devanha Porter - a dark beer resembling stout - became famous throughout the UK, the Brewery being conveniently close to the railway halt at the Cattle Bank. The Brewery continued to be run by William Black & Co. until about 1912, after which it was taken over by Ushers of Edinburgh and used as a bottling plant for Usher's own beers and as a distribution centre. The site is currently under development. William Black & Co. also ran the Devanha Distillery, built about a mile upstream from the Brewery in 1825; it went out of production in 1909.

[charliemartin]

Seymour,
I have pasted an earlier e-mail from the Isle of Skye Brewery which gives a little bit of background to the Devanha link to them. I wasn't aware that they had three beers as I can only recall drinking the XXX and XB. The porter is obviously from the original Devanha Brewery based in Aberdeen city in the 19th Century, but as far as I am aware has no link (other than the name) to the 20th Century Devanha Brewery set up in Alford, Aberdeenshire.

Pam has passed your message to me for reply.

You were given the correct information regarding us having brewed Devanha XXX. The background to this is that myself and Dixie Taylor, who was one of the founders of Devanha Brewery (and our sales representative), set up a new Devanha Brewing Co Ltd around 10 years ago, with the intention of looking into the feasibility of re-establishing a brewery in Alford (where Dixie lives). In the meantime we decided to "contract brew" Devanha XXX here on Skye to kick-start things. Dixie had the original list of ingredients, but no recipe. However, we got a number of people together who remembered the beer well and, based on that, Pam, our head brewer, came up with a recipe that we then trialled with them. We were pleased that Pam's recipe seemed to replicate the original pretty well.

We contract brewed Devanha XXX several times, making it available in both cask and bottle. However, we did not have the time or money to market it properly and so led things slide to the extent that we have only brewed it a couple of times in the past few years. Dixie has now retired, and so the company name has been de-registered.

You obviously have a keen interest in Devanha. Can I ask you why, as I am intrigued? Devanha Brewery was well ahead of its time and failed because of this. I was working in Aberdeen when it was in production and remember it vaguely from then but like many of my then age group was not interested in real ale, never mind understand what it was. Now I make my living from it!

Best Regards

Angus MacRuary

Cheers,
Charliemartin

[charliemartin]

A quick update on this thread. I had a reply to an e-mail requesting further details about this recipe.

They mash at 65-65.5 C. Beer colour is 35-40 EBC. Bitterness is 20-24 EBU depending on AA of hops. They obviously don't change the quantities of hops to retain the same level of BUs. Target OG is 1.044 and FG 1.009-1.0095. (Doesn't add up to 4.4% ABV by my calculations, but maybe they use a different method)

I also discovered, for anyone else who wondered what "Ultra" was in the recipe, that it is copper finings.

Anyway I brewed this last week with WLP 028 yeast and it took off like a beast. Serious overflow through the airlock! Planning to leave until next week then rack off to pressure barrel and possibly six or so bottles.
If I get the time I will try to post a brewday with the recipe I used.

Looking forward to tasting it in a few weeks time.

Cheers,
Charliemartin

Update: See brewday thread for latest progress on this brew.

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=62107