Fuller's OBE

One of the handy things about looking through brewing logs in the brewery, is that you have someone to ask questions. It can simplify things considerably. I'd guessed that OBE didn't stand for Order of the British Empire. John Keeling was able to explain its meaning. Old Burton Extra.

It's one of the beers I'd wanted to find. Fuller's Burton. A strong, dark Ale that was replaced by ESB in the early 1970's. The first occurence I found was in the 1935 brewing book. Where it was party-gyled with X and BO. I've no idea what BO was. It actually looks more like the gravity I would expect from a Burton - somewhere in the mid-1050's. These are the vital statistics of the three different beers:

________________OBE____BO_____X
gravity (lbs barrel)__24.40___20.20___11.74
gravity (OG)______1067.59__1055.95_1032.52
gravity (FG)______1019.94__1014.40_1007.76
ABV_____________6.30____5.50____3.28
apparent attenuation_70.49%__74.26%__76.15%

The OBE was unusual for a couple of reasons. For a start, only 2 barrels were brewed. Out of 515.5 barrels (453 of X, 60.5 of BO). Only the first wort was used. The fermentation was very fast for a beer of it's gravity. It was down to 1021.6º after just 48 hours, though it wasn't racked for another 3 days. It wasn't dropped into a square, but fermented all in an FV. Not surprising. Two barrels would barely cover the bottom of one of the settling squares.

Here are the full details of the fermentation:


These were the ingredients used:

English pale malt____26.67%
Australian pale malt__26.67%
Australian pale malt__23.16%
Chilean pale malt____3.51%
flake_____________14.47%
sugar____________5.52%

Of the sugar, the dark sugar "Intense" made up 1.46% of the grist. This was presumably solely responsible for the dark colour.

I keep thinking about the tiny batch size of just two barrels. Surely OBE couldn't have been a draught beer?