For drinkers, the happiest change is an increase of a few degrees in the gravity. Which has now attained the dizzying heights of 1033º. That, along with quite a bump in the degree of attenuation, have boosted the ABV to a heady 3.7%. Pretty decent for a Light Ale. Most barely crawled above 3% ABV.
Over at the grist, the big change is the dropping of the small amount of malt extract. There’s also been an increase in the percentage of crystal malt, which leaves this iteration slightly darker than that from 1964. There remains quite a lot of wheat flour, which I can only assume was for head retention purposes.
The brewing log doesn’t give away much about the hops. Not harvest year or variety is given. Four are English and another is described as “Styrian”. I assume that by the last they mean Styrian Goldings. The amount is pretty small, however.
| 1984 Eldridge Pope BAK | ||
| pale malt | 5.50 lb | 74.12% |
| crystal malt 60 L | 0.75 lb | 10.11% |
| wheat flour | 0.50 lb | 6.74% |
| No. 2 invert sugar | 0.67 lb | 9.03% |
| Fuggles 85 min | 0.50 oz | |
| Styrian Goldings 85 min | 0.125 oz | |
| Goldings 30 min | 0.50 oz | |
| Goldings dry hops | 0.125 oz | |
| OG | 1033 | |
| FG | 1005 | |
| ABV | 3.70 | |
| Apparent attenuation | 84.85% | |
| IBU | 15 | |
| SRM | 8 | |
| Mash at | 144º F | |
| Sparge at | 165º F | |
| Boil time | 85 minutes | |
| pitching temp | 63º F | |
| Yeast | WLP099 Super High Gravity Thomas Hardy | |
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4 comments:
here we are at the end of our AK journey
Hurrah!
Still, I've learnt something. I've learnt that I'm not especially interested in learning about old beers - just old strong beers. Perhaps it's because I got started in the 70s, when the received wisdom was that proper old-fashioned beers were - among other things - really, really strong (like, over 5%!), not like the gnat's pee you got these days. Still, learning that brewers had been producing gnat's pee for absolute yonks is interesting in its own right, I guess.
Am I right in guessing these weren't marketed as low calorie beers?
Miller didn't introduce the "Lite" name until the mid 1970s, and it sounds like AK had faded out by then, so my wild guess is that public thoughts about calories from beer weren't getting enough traction for companies to use in marketing campaigns until at least the 1970s in the UK too.
I think you are just teasing us about the end of the AK journey. Your readers deserve better. Fess up.
@Phil I agree. Before following Ron, I had often fantasised about travelling back through time and arriving in Britain in the 1930s and walking into a pub to relish in the strong, tasty beers that were arrayed in hand pumps on the bar. Glorious glorious, the robust ales of Empire and the gently waving barley fields and the fragrant hop yards.
In reality I would probably have had a sip, then reality would have come crashing down! That is if I hadn't inadvertently been flattened by a truck carrying flaked maize on the way to the brewery.
Now 1899 - that would have been a different story.
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