MacLay's 70/-

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charliemartin
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MacLay's 70/-

Post by charliemartin » Mon Dec 04, 2017 9:16 pm

Brewed this on 29th November. An Attempt at a MacLay's 70/- clone. Swapped out some of the pale malt for melanoidin malt to increase the maltiness hopefully.
Hoping this will be ready to serve on the beer engine at Christmas.

MacLay 70 shilling

Date: 29th November 2017

Gyle Number: 71

Fermentable Colour lb: oz Grams Ratio
Pale Malt 5 EBC 5 lbs. 12.2 oz 2620 grams 83.3%
Weyermann Melanoidin 70 EBC 0 lbs. 7.4 oz 210 grams 6.7%
Crystal Malt 145 EBC 0 lbs. 5.5 oz 155 grams 5%
Wheat Malt 3.5 EBC 0 lbs. 5.5 oz 155 grams 5%


Hop Variety Type Alpha Time lb: oz grams Ratio
Fuggle Whole 4.8 % 90 mins 0 lbs. 0.9 oz 25 grams 43.2%
Fuggle Whole 6.4 % 90 mins 0 lbs. 0.5 oz 14 grams 24.2%
Brewers Gold Whole 9.1 % 10 mins 0 lbs. 0.7 oz 19 grams 32.6%


Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.035
Final Gravity: 1.008
Alcohol Content: 3.5% ABV
Total Liquor: 34.9 Litres
Mash Liquor: 12.6 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 86.0 %
Bitterness: 29.82 EBU
Colour: 19 EBC

Yeast: Crossmyloof Real Ale yeast

Almost had a disaster with this brew. I was recirculating the mash and noticed it seemed exceptionally pale. Not sure how I remembered, but it suddenly dawned on me that I had forgotten to weigh out the crystal malt addition when I was preparing the grain bill!#-o Hurriedly weighed, crushed and added the crystal malt to the mash. Think I got away with it.
The original gravity was 1.036, so slightly up on the target OG. The Minch Malt Hook Head pale malt does give very good efficiency. Will have to remember to adjust that when I start using the Crisp extra pale malt which I have recently bought.

This took off like a mad thing. Checked the SG on 2nd Dec and it was down to 1.011, so 3 points to go to FG.

Cheers,
Charliemartin
Altonrea Homebrew

RobP

Re: MacLay's 70/-

Post by RobP » Tue Dec 05, 2017 1:38 am

Maclay are an old Scottish brewery. I assume you're trying to make the Belhaven "Maclay 70/-"? I have no idea whether that was made to an old Maclay recipe but you might be interested in this blog article...
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.co.uk/20 ... -1992.html
It seems 70/- was known as "SPA" in the brewhouse and was made to the same recipe as the 60/- (which was coloured with caramel)

So, if Belhaven pinched an old Maclay recipe, this might give you a head start.

http://barclayperkins.blogspot.co.uk/20 ... -1992.html

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charliemartin
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Re: MacLay's 70/-

Post by charliemartin » Tue Dec 05, 2017 10:18 am

RobP wrote:Maclay are an old Scottish brewery. I assume you're trying to make the Belhaven "Maclay 70/-"? I have no idea whether that was made to an old Maclay recipe but you might be interested in this blog article...
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.co.uk/20 ... -1992.html
It seems 70/- was known as "SPA" in the brewhouse and was made to the same recipe as the 60/- (which was coloured with caramel)

So, if Belhaven pinched an old Maclay recipe, this might give you a head start.

http://barclayperkins.blogspot.co.uk/20 ... -1992.html
Hi Rob,
Interesting article. I recall the MacLay beers from the 80's. I used to work for the Bank of Scotland from 1983-1991 and all our partying, sorry training, was done in Edinburgh. There was a pub not far from the B&Bs we stayed in which had a good selection of well kept MacLays ales.
I think the recipe came from Graham Wheeler's BYOBRA, but not sure. Will check when I have a minute.
It would be interesting to try and recreate one of the old recipes. Getting hold of the various invert sugars and caramel might be tricky though.

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RobP

Re: MacLay's 70/-

Post by RobP » Tue Dec 05, 2017 12:15 pm

I don't think you'll ever find out what those sugars were. The best you'll probably do is guess what they might have been and substitute an appropriate amount of brewers invert 1-4 to get as near as you can.
There's a few blogs about making invert. I like this one. There's also a list of recipes from Ron Pattinson's blog linked above. Run down those and you see he doesn't know where those proprietary sugars come from either.

http://www.unholymess.com/blog/beer-bre ... ers-invert

As far as trying to clone those Scottish beers goes I'd say the important thing to note is how pathetic the apparent attenuation is, they're all considerably under 70%. If you're after authenticity you'd need to replicate that more than anything else. The normal method seems to be use Edinburgh ale yeast and ferment cool.

https://www.whitelabs.com/yeast-bank/wl ... -ale-yeast

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Re: MacLay's 70/-

Post by Hanglow » Tue Dec 05, 2017 3:55 pm

Maclays were based in Alloa, then they closed the brewery and concentrated on their small estate, which was sold to Stonegate a couple of years ago after some financial mismanagement. The Maclays beers in the 80s would have been brewed in Alloa, when they closed the brewery around 2000 or so they did contract the brand out and also made some at Clockwork in Glasgow as they owned that brewpub, but those beers were always ( and still are) very variable

I only started drinking in the mid 90s and the Maclays light and heavy were my among favourite scottish beers of the time. I believe Roger Ryman was one of the brewers at the time so that might explain it, he's head brewer at St Austell now. I'd have loved to have tried the earlier version

I have done their Oat Malt Stout once before based on the info that Ron has supplied on his site, it was ok, obviously I have no idea if it was anything like the original :)

Also Brupacks sell brewers caramel, I think it's available in a few homebrewstores if you want to use it

RobP

Re: MacLay's 70/-

Post by RobP » Tue Dec 05, 2017 4:19 pm

That was interesting. Can confirm the Oat Malt Stout recipe off Ron's site makes a tasty beer.

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charliemartin
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Re: MacLay's 70/-

Post by charliemartin » Tue Dec 05, 2017 7:42 pm

I think there will be an attempt in the future to brew one of these beers, or at least something similar. Got too many planned already though to do it anytime soon.
Not sure about WLP028 though. I have used it several times before and would not say it is a low attenuator. I appreciate that low temps might help in that respect, but if you are bottling the beer there would be a high risk of bottle bombs when the yeast wakes up and eats all the previously unfermented sugars. Might be okay if you were kegging.

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Hanglow
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Re: MacLay's 70/-

Post by Hanglow » Tue Dec 05, 2017 10:52 pm

I'm fairly sure a lot of the FGs that are given in the old recipes are when the beers are racked from primary - so if they went into a conditioning tank/secondary/vat/barrel/cask etc there would be more fermentation. Although that wouldn't be true for all of them no doubt

RobP

Re: MacLay's 70/-

Post by RobP » Tue Dec 05, 2017 11:12 pm

Yes, a lot of truth in that.

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colgilbec
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Re: MacLay's 70/-

Post by colgilbec » Mon Dec 11, 2017 11:01 pm

Chaps , it may be some strange coincidence but after reading this interesting piece , i clicked on the invert sugar link from RobP 4th message down and i was taken to a spoof virus site requesting money to remove it.The only way i could get rid of it was by using control alt delete . I have sent a message to Rob and maybe mods can you check this link,thanks.
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jaroporter
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Re: MacLay's 70/-

Post by jaroporter » Tue Dec 12, 2017 12:49 pm

yeah that site has been doing that for a bit
dazzled, doused in gin..

RobP

Re: MacLay's 70/-

Post by RobP » Tue Dec 12, 2017 3:02 pm

colgilbec wrote:
Mon Dec 11, 2017 11:01 pm
Chaps , it may be some strange coincidence but after reading this interesting piece , i clicked on the invert sugar link from RobP 4th message down and i was taken to a spoof virus site requesting money to remove it.The only way i could get rid of it was by using control alt delete . I have sent a message to Rob and maybe mods can you check this link,thanks.
Yeah seems to work the next time I click on it. Should probably let the owner know it happens.

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