Let's Brew Wednesday - 1901 Boddington's Stout

A double recipe post today for you lucky devils. Because I seem to have misplaced this recipe from Kristen and had already queued up a recipe of my own.

Back at the turn of the 20th century Boddington still brewed two Stouts, this one and the stronger Double Stout. Though, if I’m honest, it’s quite Porter-like, at least in terms of gravity. But that’s something I’ve come across more often. Provincial Single Stouts having a London Porter-like gravity.  As result of beers brewed in London being generally stronger than those from outside the capital.

There’s a surprisingly small amount of roasted grain in the grist, which makes you wonder how they got a Stout-like colour. The answer may lie in how the black malt was handled. It wasn’t mashed with the other grains but added with the sugar during the boil. I’ve seen this technique before and assumed it was intended to draw as much colour as possible out of the malt.

Stout can’t have been their most popular beer as sometime between 1903 and 1913 it was discontinued. Again, this is something I’ve seen at other provincial breweries, where reduce the number of Stouts from two or three to one in the early 20th century. It was a different story in London, where breweries were still making multiple Stouts in the 1950s and 1960s. Whitbread, for example.




That’s enough of me, over to Kristen . . .

Kristen’s Version:
Notes: Probably the least stouty of all the stouts we’ve done in a very long time….not really even a porter. Really has all the hallmarks of a strong dark mild, not that it really needs a ‘what’. This is a cool, dark fruity, easy drinker for any occasion. 

Malt: Three base malts. English, American and Ouchac…. A really neat evening ensued with a glass (ok glasses) of whiskey that led me down the rabbit whole of finding out what in the Ouchac it is/was. Ouchac malt, made form Ouchac barley, was also know as Anatolian barley…from Anatolia…Asia Minor…after many horrible atrocities, genocides and wars, it became know as the Republic of Turkey (1923). So, malt from Turkey. You’ll also see a little sprinkle of black malt. Just a touch. A smidge. And a good dose of No3ish Invert to get that color up to moderately dark.

Hops: Like the IPA, there were 5 different hops blended. A bunch of Englishy hops and an American one. Frankly, it doesn’t really matter here. There were no dry hops, nor late hops so all we want is to get our BU’s in this baby. For me, I’d add them all FWH and be done with it. You can add them more traditionally as listed.

Yeast: Same as the IPA. Pick something that doesn’t attenuation so well and I’d under pitch a touch to to keep her a bit more round on the end. London III really would go swimmingly with this beer. Stay away from anything really minerally I’d say…or weird. Or really, you could do anything. This is such a different type of stout, feel free to mess around with it.

Cask: Standard procedure:
1) let the beer ferment until finished and then give it another day or so. For me right around 5-7 days.
2) Rack the beer to your vessel of choice (firkin, polypin, cornie, whatever).
3) Add primings at ~3.5g/L
4) Add prepared isinglass at 1ml/L
5) ONLY add dry hops at 0.25g/l – 1g/L.
6) Bung it up and roll it around to mix.
Condition at 55F or so for 4-5 days and its ready to go. Spile/vent. Tap. Settle. Serve at 55F.