Wednesday 20 December 2017

1914 Boddington Stout

This is going to be a real treat. A Boddington beer with several types of malt. You must be so excited.

In 1903, Boddington still produced two Stouts: SS (Single Stout) and DS (Double Stout) at 1052º and 1069º, respectively. It looks like they dropped the latter and renamed SS simply Stout.

There’s no way that you could have called a beer with a gravity of just 1054º a Stout in 1914. Whitbread’s Porter, for example, was 1052º in 1914. Which has got me thinking more about Porter and its fate. It’s looking more and more as if, rather than disappearing, Porters were just relabelled as Stouts.

Let’s crack on with the grist, which is pretty exciting but also includes a big problem. The percentage of base pale malt is pretty low, only a third of the grist. Two other malts make up most of the rest: amber and high-dried. The percentage of amber malt is very high, making me wonder if this might be a diastatic form. Then there’s the high-dried.

I really don’t know what the best substitute for this malt is. I’m tempted to go with a dark Munich malt, but I’m really not sure how close that is. If you have a better idea, let me know.

The sugar in this beer is something described as “UI”. At least UI think that’s what it says. The handwriting is pretty bad. I’ve replaced it with No. 3 invert. Though it might have been something closer to No. 4 invert.

As with all Boddingtons records, the logs only tell me that the hops were English and Californian.


1914 Boddington Stout
pale malt 4.25 lb 34.55%
black malt 0.05 lb 0.41%
amber malt 3.50 lb 28.46%
high dried malt 3.50 lb 28.46%
No. 3 invert sugar 0.75 lb 6.10%
caramel 2000 SRM 0.25 lb 2.03%
Cluster 185 mins 0.50 oz
Fuggles 90 mins 0.50 oz
Fuggles 60 mins 0.50 oz
Fuggles 30 mins 0.50 oz
OG 1054
FG 1018
ABV 4.76
Apparent attenuation 66.67%
IBU 29
SRM 36
Mash at 150º F
Sparge at 168º F
Boil time 135 minutes
pitching temp 63º F
Yeast Wyeast 1318 London ale III (Boddingtons)

8 comments:

Stefan said...

Interesting Recipe would really like to brew this for myself,but I'm a little bit struggling with the invert sugars. Where can I get those or make them at home on a home brewer scale. I'm from Germany by the way.

Ron Pattinson said...

Stefan,

you can find information on makingh invert sugar here:

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/how-to-brew/invert-syrups-making-simple-sugars-complex-beers/

Unfortunately, it's not usually possible to buy brewers invert sugars on a homebrew scale.

Kristen England said...

With dark Munich you'll get the wrong flavors...that malt is very polarizing. For the high dried, regular Munich would be better I think. For the Amber, the stuff today is a roast product and I find that if I swap for Vienna but then cut back in ~25% of that for let's say Fawcett Amber it works very nice. For this example, ~20% Vienna, 8% amber malt. I have a dumpster fire of a beer where I tried to use 25% amber. No bueno.

A Brew Rat said...

I agree with Kristen's comments on dark Munich. For high dried malt, I would go with Tony Simmons guess for American colonial "high malt" as a mixture of biscuit, special roast, with a touch of black.

http://www.benfranklin300.org/etc_article_ale.htm

Kristen England said...

Rat, the issue with Tonys suggestion is there are very few things as polarizing as special roast...same can be said for the ubiquitous use of biscuit, victory and pale chocolate in so many recipes. Also, special roast and victory are types of biscuit malt. Try out using actual amber malt before people start messing with blending 21st century specialty malts. Its your beer, do as you wish, I just find everytime I see advice for these types of specialty malt blends for historic recipes all the historic beers that are handed to me to try all have the same 'house' flavor. (not aimed at you Rat)

tfantonsen said...

How about Castle Maltings Abbey/Amber, which is 45EBC and listed as a base malt:
http://www.castlemalting.com/CastleMaltingMaltSpecification.asp?Command=QualityParameters2&SpecificationID=137&CropYear=2017

Plan to use some of that for a partigyle of 1850 Truman Imperial Stout and Export Keeping*, both to be "vatted" in my brett barrel.

* Unless the 1850 Truman Porter appears

Ron Pattinson said...

tfantonsen,

that sounds perfect.

Unknown said...

Regarding the brewers invert sugar, you can buy this in 25kg blocks from Ragus here in the UK. I roped in a bunch of homebrewers before Xmas and we split the batch down to 2.5kg