Saturday 27 May 2017

Let’s Brew - 1839 Barclay Perkins XXX Ale

One final Mild for May. A rather beefy beer.

I can guess what you’re thinking: that isn’t a Mild, it’s a Double IPA. Or a Barley Wine. Anything but a Mild. But that’s definitely what this is.

The recipe is very much like the XX. There’s just a bit more of everything. All of Barclay Perkins beers were pretty strong at this point. The only one under 6% ABV was their Table Beer, which was a sort of low-gravity Porter. Though even that was 3.5% ABV. And that was for the kiddies.

You may have noticed that some of Barclay’s Ales of this period had very long boils, as much as 5 hours in some cases. It would be nice to compare and contrast Ale boil times with those for Porter and Stout. Unfortunately, even though they’re in the same brewing book, there are no details of boil times for the Porters.

What’s odd is that the Ale and Porter records are in different formats, too. No idea why that should be. They didn’t have a dedicated Ale brewery at this point.

Barclay Perkins only started brewing Ales in the 1830’s. As did all the other big Porter breweries. It’s undoubtedly related to the 1830 Beer Act. This introduced a new type of the pub, the beer house, which couldn’t sell spirits. These seem to have greatly boosted the popularity of Ales, prompting the Porter brewers to get in on the action.

Until then they had only tied their pubs for Porter and Stout, letting them buy in Ales from wherever they liked. By the 1870s Ale had outstripped Porter in sales, even in London. Ale, in the form of Mild Ale, was to retain its dominance for almost a century.



1839 Barclay Perkins XXX Ale
pale malt 23.50 lb 100.00%
Goldings 240 mins 3.50 oz
Goldings 90 mins 3.50 oz
Goldings 30 mins 3.50 oz
OG 1104
FG 1018
ABV 11.38
Apparent attenuation 82.69%
IBU 114
SRM 9
Mash at 147º F
Sparge at 165º F
Boil time 240 minutes
pitching temp 58º F
Yeast Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale

6 comments:

Lee said...

Sweet Jesus!
The stats on that beer made me jump out of my skin.
You could get 4 "modern" milds out of that bugger.

Eric Branchaud said...

I am impressed at the level of attenuation they were able to achieve in such a big beer at that time. It would be challenging for many to reach that level of attenuation even nowadays with modern malts.

Anonymous said...

Any comments on a water profile for this beer?

Ron Pattinson said...

Anonymous,

you can see the profile here:

http://barclayperkins.blogspot.nl/2010/02/brewing-water.html

It's the london deep well one.

John said...

I'll be brewing this on Saturday. Very interested to see how it turns out.

Angel Barclay Browne said...

I'm decended from Barclay Perkins Brewery , my Grt Grt grandfather was Arthur Kett Barclay , Barclay Perkins Brewery grew into the biggest brewery in the world , my family finally sold out to the Courage Brewery in 1950's .The family are also part of the Barclays Bank family .
Happy Brewing ,regards Angel Barclay Browne