Saturday 10 January 2009

Ind Coope and Allsopp beers 1921 - 1938

Sorry about the digression yesterday. Back to British beer. I think that's my theme at the moment.

More from volume 1 of the Whitbread Gravity Book today. IPA. Another interesting topic. There seem to have been two quite different types of beer called IPA between the wars.

There's the weak but quite hoppy version made by London brewers. That had an OG of 1037-1045º. Weaker than standard draught Bitter, which was 1048 - 1055º. Both Whitbread and Barclay Perkins made this type of IPA. The attenuation was about the same as Bitter, between 70 and 80%.

IPA's brewed in Burton were quite different. Again, they were bottled beers. But a good bit stronger, around 1055º. I showed you the Worthington version a few days ago. Burton IPA's had an extremely high degree of attenuation, over 80% and sometimes over 90%.

Allsopp was another Burton brewery. Let's have a look at their beers:


You'll see that their IPA is very similar to Worthington's. It's a shame there's just the one sample, but it gives you the idea. It's strength wasn't much lowwer than in 1901, when it had an OG of 1062.

I've included some Ind Coope beers for no real reason other than that the two breweries merged in 1934. Ind Coope's brewery was in Essex. I'm surprised that the Arctic Ale wasn't stronger. I thought it was ridiculously strong.

So you can compare them properly, here are some London IPA's:

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ron...this is off topic, but I have a question. What's happened to Bass Pale Ale (the bottled Bass). How has it changed?

THOMAS CIZAUSKAS said...

Do not be abashed. Digress away.

Ron Pattinson said...

Bottled Bass. The old Red Triangle stuff? I've only information up until the late 1960's.

I thought I'd posted about Bass. I can stick it all together if you want. I'm lazy and that's an easy post to do.

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Anonymous said...

The Ind Coope 1930s post-Allsopps Arctic Ale was their Ind Coope No 1 Burton barley wine, renamed for the famous old Allsopps brew.

Anonymous said...

Really enjoy your blog... interesting to note, our Jaipur has exactly the same OG as the No.3 Strong Ale... don't know if they would have used as many U.S. hops though...

Anonymous said...

The No 3 Strong Ale would probably have been a Burton Ale, that is, closer to old ale or winter warmer, rather than a "bitter pale ale" or an IPA like Jaipur, though, Kelly, and it was meant to have a slight residual sweetness compared to pale ale/bitter, which is why the final OG is that bit higher than the IPA's was.

Ron Pattinson said...

zythophile, you beat me to it. Though, because no colour is given, it's hard to be 100% sure. My guess, too, would be a "Burton". What in London would have been a KK.

Kelly, same OG, about the same ABV? That must mean Jaipur has 80%+ attenuation. You might be surprised about the use of US hops. If Whitbread and Barclay Perkins are anything to go by, there's a fair chance up to a third of the hops in the No.3 were from the West Coast.

Anonymous said...

because no colour is given, it's hard to be 100% sure.

Indeed, but the name of the beer, as well as the attenuation, fits in with it being a Burton-brewed Burton - the Burton brewers seem generally (that is, I know Bass, Truman and Ind Coope did) named their strongest Burton Ale No 1, and then given higher numbers to lower-strength versions: Bass went as far down as No 6.

ANTONY HAWLEY said...
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