Wednesday 9 June 2010

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1935 Fullers OBE

It's back! Finally another installment of Let's Brew. And even on a Wednesday. Plus the recipe is for the legendary Fullers Old Burton Extra. This is indeed a special day.

Old Burton Extra was a souped-up Burton, sold on draught. It was party-gyled along with their normal Burton, BO, and their Mild. It looks very similar to what some other London brewers called KKK. You do know what a Burton was, don't you? Forgotten already. I don't know.

Burton was one of the standard draught beers in London pubs for the first half of the 20th century. The last survivor is Young's Winter Warmer. They were usually given K-designations inside breweries. They were a development of the pale K Ales brewed in the 19th century. Along with Mild, they darkened at the end of the 1800's. In the 1930's, a typical Burton was around 1048 -1055º, quite heavily hopped at 1.5 to 2 pounds per barrel and dark brown in colour.

It's a shame none of the London brewers currently makes one. I'd drink it.

Brew this beer. Sip it thinking of the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Pearly Kings, pease pudding and saveloys.




Over to Kristen . . . . .





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Fullers - 1935 - OBE - BO - X
General info: Old Burton Extra. Burton Old ale. X ale. Some really neat names along here. What’s even cooler is that the OBE only accounted for 0.5% of these entire gyle and the BO was only about 10%. That leaves about 90% of this entire gyle set left for the simple mild X ale. It very much leaves me wondering if 2 barrels of OBE that were made weren't made specifically for the head brewer himself. This recipe is written strictly for making the OBE.
Beer Specifics

Recipe by percentages
Gravity (OG)
1.067

41% English pale malt (2)
0.6% Caramel colorant
Gravity (FG)
1.014

41% American 6-row
0% Caramel
ABV
7.13%

14.4% Flaked Maize
0%
Apparent attenuation
79.26%

2.9% White sugar

Real attenuation
64.93%







IBU
68.6

Mash
120min@149°F
0.985166475315729qt/lb

SRM
17


120min@65°C
2.06L/kg

EBC
33.8










Boil
1.5 hours













Homebrew @ 70%
Craft @ 80%
Grist
5gal
19L
10bbl
10hl
English pale malt (2)
5.21
lb
2.374
kg
282.83
lb
109.27
kg
American 6-row
5.21
lb
2.374
kg
282.83
lb
109.27
kg
Flaked Maize
1.83
lb
0.833
kg
99.24
lb
38.34
kg
White sugar
0.37
lb
0.167
kg
19.85
lb
7.67
kg
Caramel colorant
0.08
lb
0.037
kg
4.43
lb
1.71
kg

12.704

5.784

689.17111



Hops








Goldings 4.5% 90min
3.06
oz
86.6
g
189.44
oz
4.577
kg
Goldings 4.5% 30min
1.50
oz
42.5
g
93.00
oz
2.247
kg
Goldings 4.5% dry hop
2.07
oz
58.7
g
128.31
oz
3.100
kg









Fermentation
65°F /18.3°C















Yeast
Nottingham ale yeast

1968 London ESB Ale Yeast  - WLP002 English Ale Yeast









Tasting Notes: OBE - Tons of light fruits, apple and pear drops. Resinous, earthy and spicy hops, hints of orange and biscuity malt. Robust drying hop tannins on the palette with a good kick of hop bitterness on the end that keeps going. The malt balances well but not to the point of a Barley Wine. Clean, crisp and bitter. Dangerously easy to drink!

Ingredients and technique
Grist & such
The darkness of these beers belies the fact that it has absolutely no roast malt, caramel malt nor dark invert sugars. They get nearly their entire color from the addition of caramel coloring.  Two different English pale malts, American 6-row along with 14% flaked maize make up the entirety of the malt for this gyle. Very little white sugar and a good 1.5% of caramel colorant round this off.


Hops
The hops were as fresh as you can get being less than 8 months old. The hopping was absorbingly high but enough to give the first gyle around 70 bu. The second gyle had very little in the way of hop but still pull around 10 bu. The third gyle had no hops. They were added at kettle make-up and then again at 30min. Each of the beers where dry hopped differently. The OBE got 0.75lb/ bbl with East Kent Goldings, the BO got 0.50lb/ bbl with Fuggles and the X ale got none. Poor X ale…

Mash & Boil
Nothing really fancy about the mash nor the boil with this gyle. An extended mash with a single infusion to keep a mash of moderate temperature. The boil for gyle 1 was 90 minutes and gyle 2 was 105 minutes. 

Fermentation, Conditioning & Serving

All these beers were fermented a moderate temperature each finishing about the same time regardless of gravity. Aim for about 2.1 volumes of CO2 using either corn sugar or glucose syrup and around 1 million cells/ ml of beer. Serve at cellar temp per the usual.

Gyling & Blending
The recipe as written is for the OBE only. The actually recipe included two gyles with a third for the return. The first gyle was about 1.068, the second was 1.007 and the third at 1.002. Each was hopped as described above. We’ll get to the gyle specifics here shortly in Practical Partigyling, part 1.
xxxxx

14 comments:

Ron Pattinson said...

Shit. I just deleted the last four comments. My only excuse is that I'm boling hot and my brain has stopped working.

I'd call Young's Winter Warmer the last Burton. I'd never thought of that as a Burton. A bit too strong, I suppose.

1930's Burtons. I've got a few of those. Barclay Perkins KK, Courage KK, to namr e two.

Kristen England said...

Funny Ron mentions the other Burtons. I'll be serving some of them at the NHC talk and a few will be the commemorative beers also.

I can do pictures, notes and recipes if you guys would like.

Adrian Avgerinos said...

To me, this recipe basically looks like a strong mild with extra hops. Is that all there is to Burton Ales of the 20th century? Is this typical or did many/most 20th century Burton Ales utilize crystal malt?

Was this beer served fresh or brewery aged?

And, while on the topic of Burton Ales, were the ones brewed in Burton composed of the same water used to brew the Burton IPAs? Were ones like this London version made using standard London water or did Fuller's "Burtonize" their water?

Yeah know, if you doubled up the caramel colorant you'd basically have a Black IPA. ;)

Oblivious said...

Would lover recipes Kristen!, an what about Marston's Owd Roger Ron, its still brewed?

Gavin said...

I wished that I brewed, it'd be good if a few more brewers took an interest in reviving some of these old beers even as one-offs, So many breweries these days seem content to churn out a load of unspectaculer guest beers where the bulk of the creativity has been spent on the name and the theme.

Anonymous said...

Sure! Nice post too.t

Ron Pattinson said...

Adrian, well spotted. Burton was sort-of an extra hopped dark Mild. But K Ales has exactly the same relationship to X Ales (Milds) in the 19th century. Except then, both were pale beers.

Though it is a bit more complicated than that. Some Burtons had grists more like Pale Ales.

I've posted about Barclay Perkins water treatments for all their beers, I can't remember the details offhand.

No idea about Burton-brewed Burtons. Not seen any brewing records,

Graham Wheeler said...

He made for the cellar door, and presently reappeared, somewhat dusty, but with a bottle of beer in each paw and another under each arm. "self-indulgent beggar you seem to be Mole," he observed. "Deny yourself nothing." . . .

The Rat, meanwhile, was busy examining the label on one of the beer-bottles. "I perceive this to be Old Burton," he remarked approvingly. "Sensible Mole! The very thing! Now we shall be able to mull some ale! Get the things ready, Mole, while I draw the corks."

Kenneth Grahame, Wind In The Willows, 1908

Unknown said...

Nice post Ron! Is there perchance a book coming soon on Burton / KKK / Stock ales??? I'd buy that!

joel.
www.catholicbeer.com

StuartP said...

Sensible Mole, indeed! I agree with the idea of bottling this one rather than having it on draught. Too dangerous for unmetered supping.
If I brew this in September, that's Christmas sorted.

Korev said...

@ Kristen I am very much looking forward to your talk and the samples at NHC. I would like to get some tips from you on converting log data to recipes as I have some Australian recipes from 1913 that I would like to brew. Cheers Peter

Martyn Cornell said...

As I have pointed out elsewhere, if you have the version of Wind in the Willows illustrated by Arthur Rackham, in the "homecoming" scene you can see the bottles Ratty is carrying up from Mole's cellar are clearly Bass Burton Ale, with the "red diamond" trademark.

Adrian: you're thinking of mild as a style, whereas it's easier to understand what went on if you see it properly as an age descriptor, that is, designating unaged ale/beer of any sort: the Burton brewers sold their weaker Burton Ales unaged or "mild", eg Worthington D (also known as Dash), and in the 20th century all those beers sold "mild" became categorised as a separate family called Mild, though they had little enough in common apart from being brewed for a short cellar life and a quick sale. So a Burton Ale recipe will indeed look like some modern "mild" recipes, because some Burton Ales were sold as milds.

Young's Winter Warmer was, of course, known as Young's Burton until 1971: it, Owd Rodger and Bass No 1 are about the last Burtons. Old Peculier is a close cousin, in my opinion, but I'm inclined to put it in a slightly different category of ales, and the same with Gale's Prize Old Ale. McEwan's Champion (based on the beer sold as Gordon's Scotch Ale in Belgium) is in the Scotch Ale style that is very similar to Burton Ale, and thus a similar survivor.

Barm said...

To me McEwan's Champion Ale just tastes like Export before they water it down. It has the same taste of roasted barley and metal that every other McEwan's beer has.

Magnus Bark said...

Just bought two bottles of the Fuller's version. I am very exited to try this one out!