Let's Brew Wednesday – 1957 Whitbread IPA

English IPA. There has been so much total and utter bollocks spoken about the style. Most definitions seem to be what Americans think English IPA should be like. Not based on something as dull as beers actually brewed in the UK.

It’s always good fun picking a style in BeerSmith. As this is an IPA brewed in England, I plumped for English IPA. 1050º to 1075º it tells me is the gravity range. Where the fuck did they get that from? I’m pretty certain that between 1820 and 1990 there wasn’t a single IPA breed in the UK with an OG over 1070º. The classic IPA gravity in the 19th century was 1065º. After WW I, Bass and Worthington excepted, there wasn’t an IPA with a gravity over 1055º. Just thought I’d make that clear.

In the 20th century, one of the commonest types of IPA was like Whitbread’s. A low-gravity, very pale, quite hoppy, bottled beer. Other London brewers had similar beers. Barclay Perkins, for example. It’s pretty much died out, though Harveys still make one.

It’s another painfully simple Whitbread recipe. Pale malt, crystal malt and invert sugar. Where could you go wrong with that? This is one of the very few beers where the colour calculated in BeerSmith pretty much matches the one in the brewing record. Meaning the colour wasn’t adjusted with caramel. Or with only a very little.

The hops were a mix of Mid Kent and East Kent, which I’ve interpreted as Fuggles and Goldings. It’s another beer with a relatively short boil. Which was pretty standard at Whitbread after WW II.

I can’t think of anything else to say. Other than, here’s the recipe:

1957 Whitbread IPA
PA malt	6.50 lb	83.87%
crystal malt 40L	0.50 lb	6.45%
no. 1 sugar	0.75 lb	9.68%
Fuggles 75 min	0.75 oz
Goldings 40 min	1.00 oz
Goldings 20 min	1.00 oz
OG	1035.8
FG	1006.5
ABV	3.88
Apparent attenuation	81.84%
IBU	36
SRM	6
Mash at	147º F
Sparge at	168º F
Boil time	75 minutes
pitching temp	64º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread ale