Boddington Bitter 1939 - 1945

The next slice of time I'm going to look at on my stupidly detailed look at Boddies Bitter over the ages is much shorter. Just the seven years that the UK was involved in WW II. Why so short? Becaose there was a shitload going on. Several decades of preacetime change were crammed into the few short years of war.

Boddington is a good example of a 7d per pint Bitter. Something which in London would have been a standard Bitter. Except in the North, most brewers didn’t make more than one beer in the style.

Increasing the rate of attenuation to minimise the effect gravity cuts seems to have been Boddington’s tactic. They managed to keep the ABV over 4% despite the OG falling to well below 1040º.

The hopping rate per quarter (336 lbs) of malt remained pretty constant. A falling gravity, however, meant that the rate per barrel was reduced. The quantity of dry hops remained around the same all through the war years. 

Boddington Bitter 1939 - 1945
Year	Beer	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	dry hops (oz / barrel)
1939	IP	1045	1010	4.63	77.78%	6.92	1.39	3.95
1940	IP	1045	1012	4.37	73.33%	6.99	1.32	3.76
1941	IP	1040	1010	3.97	75.00%	7.06	1.16	3.72
1942	IP	1040	1008.5	4.17	78.75%	7.32	1.15	3.69
1943	IP	1041	1006.5	4.56	84.15%	6.98	1.13	3.62
1944	IP	1038	1005	4.37	86.84%	7.93	1.18	3.77
1945	IP	1037	1006	4.10	83.78%	7.00	1.07	3.67
change		-17.78%	-40.00%	-11.43%	7.72%	1.11%	-22.90%	-7.06%
Source:
Boddington brewing record held at Manchester Central Library, document number M693/405/129.