1913 Boddington XXX

This recipe is intended to give you an idea about what Mild was like before the great catastrophe of WW I.

Having first become acquainted with the beers of the big London brewers, I was in for a surprise when I looked into provincial brewers. By the eve of war, they mostly brewed a single Mild in London. But it was a decent strength, somewhere in the low 1050’s. Whereas outside the capital multiple Milds were still being brewed, but many of them were comparatively weak.

XXX was Boddington’s top-of-the-range Mild. But, despite having the designation XXX, it was only about the same strength as a London X Ale. Though that still makes it far more powerful than any Mild sold after WW I. 1917 was a the last year of 1050º Mild Ale.

The grist is fairly simple, as most were at the time. It’s just pale malt, flaked maize and sugar. In the recipe, I have the sugar down as No. 2 invert. In reality I’ve no idea what type it was. The log just records it as sugar. No. 2 invert is a neutral bet. It could have been No. 3, but I doubt it. Even in the 1980’s Boddies Mild wasn’t very dark. It only looked dark in comparison to their straw-coloured Bitter.

The original contained no less than six different hops in the copper and another three as dry hops. One of the copper hops and one of the dry hops were Californian, the rest were English. At least as far as I can tell. The handwriting is pretty scrawly. They all look like grower names, so that’s what I’ve assumed. Using American hops for dry hopping is quite unusual. As they didn’t like the flavour much they were mostly used at the start of the boil.

The attenuation is a bit rubbish. Though it should be borne in mind that the FG I’ve listed was the racking gravity and it was a cask-conditioned beer. The FG by the time it was served would have been lower.

1913 Boddington XXX
pale malt	10.25 lb	87.23%
flaked maize	1.00 lb	8.51%
No. 2 invert sugar	0.50 lb	4.26%
Cluster 90 mins	0.50 oz
Fuggles 60 mins	0.50 oz
Fuggles 30 mins	0.50 oz
Cluster dry hops	0.25 oz
OG	1052
FG	1017
ABV	4.63
Apparent attenuation	67.31%
IBU	21
SRM	6
Mash at	152º F
Sparge at	168º F
Boil time	90 minutes
pitching temp	62º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1318 London ale III (Boddingtons)