Let’s Brew - 1839 Barclay Perkins XXX Ale

One final Mild for May. A rather beefy beer.

I can guess what you’re thinking: that isn’t a Mild, it’s a Double IPA. Or a Barley Wine. Anything but a Mild. But that’s definitely what this is.

The recipe is very much like the XX. There’s just a bit more of everything. All of Barclay Perkins beers were pretty strong at this point. The only one under 6% ABV was their Table Beer, which was a sort of low-gravity Porter. Though even that was 3.5% ABV. And that was for the kiddies.

You may have noticed that some of Barclay’s Ales of this period had very long boils, as much as 5 hours in some cases. It would be nice to compare and contrast Ale boil times with those for Porter and Stout. Unfortunately, even though they’re in the same brewing book, there are no details of boil times for the Porters.

What’s odd is that the Ale and Porter records are in different formats, too. No idea why that should be. They didn’t have a dedicated Ale brewery at this point.

Barclay Perkins only started brewing Ales in the 1830’s. As did all the other big Porter breweries. It’s undoubtedly related to the 1830 Beer Act. This introduced a new type of the pub, the beer house, which couldn’t sell spirits. These seem to have greatly boosted the popularity of Ales, prompting the Porter brewers to get in on the action.

Until then they had only tied their pubs for Porter and Stout, letting them buy in Ales from wherever they liked. By the 1870s Ale had outstripped Porter in sales, even in London. Ale, in the form of Mild Ale, was to retain its dominance for almost a century.

1839 Barclay Perkins XXX Ale
pale malt	23.50 lb	100.00%
Goldings 240 mins	3.50 oz
Goldings 90 mins	3.50 oz
Goldings 30 mins	3.50 oz
OG	1104
FG	1018
ABV	11.38
Apparent attenuation	82.69%
IBU	114
SRM	9
Mash at	147º F
Sparge at	165º F
Boil time	240 minutes
pitching temp	58º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale