Saturday 24 March 2018

Let's Brew - 1953 Elgood BPA

One of the most popular styles of the 1950’s was Light Ale, a low-gravity, bottled Pale ale. It was often mixed with draught Bitter, usually in the hope of livening up cask beer in poor condition.

At 1031º, BPA (presumably standing for Bottled Pale Ale) was pretty typical for a Light Ale of the time. Not exactly heady stuff.

The recipe isn’t exactly what you’d call complicated. Just malt, a bit of sugar and a dash of malt extract. And a single, unspecified type of hop. Fuggles are just my guess. What isn’t a guess this time are the hop additions, which are handily noted in the log. The vast majority were added at the start of the boil.

The original mashing scheme was 20 minutes at 149º F, followed by an underlet and 1 hour 40 minutes at 152º F.


1953 Elgood BPA
pale malt 6.00 lb 88.89%
No. 2 invert sugar 0.50 lb 7.41%
malt extract 0.25 lb 3.70%
Fuggles 95 mins 1.50 oz
Fuggles 30 mins 0.25 oz
Fuggles hop back 0.125 oz
OG 1031
FG 1006.5
ABV 3.24
Apparent attenuation 79.03%
IBU 27
SRM 5
Mash at 152º F
Sparge at 167º F
Boil time 95 minutes
pitching temp 62º F
Yeast WLP025 Southwold

1 comment:

John said...

Newbie question alert, but why do we often see malt extract in these old recipes, Ron, do you know? I can't get my head around it. Unless it was a capacity thing; surely they could extract the sugars from malt more cost effectively than paying someone else to do it, then condense it down a bit and finally ship it to them? Or was it a stock ingredient that was chucked in if the OG looked a bit low? Can't of been for quality / taste purposes, surely?