Let's Brew Wednesday - 1935 Fullers OBE

It's back! Finally another installment of Let's Brew. And even on a Wednesday. Plus the recipe is for the legendary Fullers Old Burton Extra. This is indeed a special day.

Old Burton Extra was a souped-up Burton, sold on draught. It was party-gyled along with their normal Burton, BO, and their Mild. It looks very similar to what some other London brewers called KKK. You do know what a Burton was, don't you? Forgotten already. I don't know.

Burton was one of the standard draught beers in London pubs for the first half of the 20th century. The last survivor is Young's Winter Warmer. They were usually given K-designations inside breweries. They were a development of the pale K Ales brewed in the 19th century. Along with Mild, they darkened at the end of the 1800's. In the 1930's, a typical Burton was around 1048 -1055º, quite heavily hopped at 1.5 to 2 pounds per barrel and dark brown in colour.

It's a shame none of the London brewers currently makes one. I'd drink it.

Brew this beer. Sip it thinking of the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Pearly Kings, pease pudding and saveloys.




Over to Kristen . . . . .





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Fullers - 1935 - OBE - BO - X
General info: Old Burton Extra. Burton Old ale. X ale. Some really neat names along here. What’s even cooler is that the OBE only accounted for 0.5% of these entire gyle and the BO was only about 10%. That leaves about 90% of this entire gyle set left for the simple mild X ale. It very much leaves me wondering if 2 barrels of OBE that were made weren't made specifically for the head brewer himself. This recipe is written strictly for making the OBE.
Beer Specifics			Recipe by percentages
Gravity (OG)	1.067		41% English pale malt (2)			0.6% Caramel colorant
Gravity (FG)	1.014		41% American 6-row			0% Caramel
ABV	7.13%		14.4% Flaked Maize			0%
Apparent attenuation	79.26%		2.9% White sugar
Real attenuation	64.93%
IBU	68.6		Mash	120min@149°F		0.985166475315729qt/lb
SRM	17			120min@65°C		2.06L/kg
EBC	33.8
			Boil	1.5 hours
	Homebrew @ 70%				Craft @ 80%
Grist	5gal		19L		10bbl		10hl
English pale malt (2)	5.21	lb	2.374	kg	282.83	lb	109.27	kg
American 6-row	5.21	lb	2.374	kg	282.83	lb	109.27	kg
Flaked Maize	1.83	lb	0.833	kg	99.24	lb	38.34	kg
White sugar	0.37	lb	0.167	kg	19.85	lb	7.67	kg
Caramel colorant	0.08	lb	0.037	kg	4.43	lb	1.71	kg
	12.704		5.784		689.17111
Hops
Goldings 4.5% 90min	3.06	oz	86.6	g	189.44	oz	4.577	kg
Goldings 4.5% 30min	1.50	oz	42.5	g	93.00	oz	2.247	kg
Goldings 4.5% dry hop	2.07	oz	58.7	g	128.31	oz	3.100	kg
Fermentation	65°F /18.3°C
Yeast	Nottingham ale yeast
	1968 London ESB Ale Yeast  - WLP002 English Ale Yeast
Tasting Notes: OBE - Tons of light fruits, apple and pear drops. Resinous, earthy and spicy hops, hints of orange and biscuity malt. Robust drying hop tannins on the palette with a good kick of hop bitterness on the end that keeps going. The malt balances well but not to the point of a Barley Wine. Clean, crisp and bitter. Dangerously easy to drink!

Ingredients and technique

Grist & such
The darkness of these beers belies the fact that it has absolutely no roast malt, caramel malt nor dark invert sugars. They get nearly their entire color from the addition of caramel coloring.  Two different English pale malts, American 6-row along with 14% flaked maize make up the entirety of the malt for this gyle. Very little white sugar and a good 1.5% of caramel colorant round this off.


Hops
The hops were as fresh as you can get being less than 8 months old. The hopping was absorbingly high but enough to give the first gyle around 70 bu. The second gyle had very little in the way of hop but still pull around 10 bu. The third gyle had no hops. They were added at kettle make-up and then again at 30min. Each of the beers where dry hopped differently. The OBE got 0.75lb/ bbl with East Kent Goldings, the BO got 0.50lb/ bbl with Fuggles and the X ale got none. Poor X ale…

Mash & Boil
Nothing really fancy about the mash nor the boil with this gyle. An extended mash with a single infusion to keep a mash of moderate temperature. The boil for gyle 1 was 90 minutes and gyle 2 was 105 minutes. 

Fermentation, Conditioning & Serving
All these beers were fermented a moderate temperature each finishing about the same time regardless of gravity. Aim for about 2.1 volumes of CO2 using either corn sugar or glucose syrup and around 1 million cells/ ml of beer. Serve at cellar temp per the usual.

Gyling & Blending
The recipe as written is for the OBE only. The actually recipe included two gyles with a third for the return. The first gyle was about 1.068, the second was 1.007 and the third at 1.002. Each was hopped as described above. We’ll get to the gyle specifics here shortly in Practical Partigyling, part 1.
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