Let's Brew Wednesday - 1941 Whitbread Strong IPA

The takes were upped again in early 1941, when Whitbread brewed another couple of souped-up IPAs. This time even stronger than the last. Just about exactly double that of standard IPA.

As in 1940, there’s a reference to liquoring back in the log. I assume to the standard strength, as the hopping rate after watering down matches. What sort of effect would adding about the same volume of water have on a beer? Not a good one, I would have thought.

I haven’t noticed any other beer being treated this way? Why pick on IPA? I suspect because it was weak, cheap and an exclusively bottled beer. It would have gone into a conditioning tank where it would have been easy to dilute it. Though I suppose beer isn’t racked into casks direct from the fermenter, either.

Unlike in 1940, the recipe is the same as the standard beer. Which only confuses me more. Surely, you’d want to compensate for all that water?

The hops were again a right mix: Mid-Kent from the 1937 harvest (cold stored), East Kent from 1938 (cold stored) and 1940, plus Worcester from 1939.

Unless everything I thought I knew about brewers is wrong, I’m sure this would have been sampled before watering. Just for quality control purposes, obviously.

Even if no-one ever got to drink this IPA as brewed, I still think it’s worth inclusion for its novelty. And an example of how, perhaps, a UK brewer might have gone about brewing a strong IPA in the 1940s.

1941 Whitbread Strong IPA
pale malt	13.75 lb	88.71%
crystal malt 60 L	1.00 lb	6.45%
No. 1 invert sugar	0.75 lb	4.84%
Fuggles 90 mins	2.50 oz
Goldings 30 mins	2.25 oz
Goldings dry hops	1.00 oz
OG	1068.5
FG	1019
ABV	6.55
Apparent attenuation	72.26%
IBU	52
SRM	10
Mash at	147º F
After underlet	150º F
Sparge at	165º F
Boil time	90 minutes
pitching temp	64º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale