Let's Brew Wednesday - 1956 Tennant's Gold Label

It’s great to have recipes for some of the notable beers of the post-war period. Like Tennant’s Gold Label.

Gold Label is interesting for several reasons. It was the first pale Barley Wine, for a start. But one that became so popular, that for quite a while I thought colour was the main difference between Old Ale and Barley Wine. Old Ale dark, Barley Wine pale.

It was also aged in wood for around a year at this point. Which tells me that there was almost certainly some Brettanomyces character to the end product. That also probably knocked the FG down by a few points.

Finally, it’s much stronger than most beers brewed in the 1950s. There were only a handful of beers of a similar strength. Things like Barclay’s Russian Stout and Benskins Colne Spring Ale.

It’s not a particularly complicated recipe: pale malt, flaked maize and sugar. There’s quite a lot of the latter two, presumably in order to keep the colour pale. And it helps the rate of attenuation, which is pretty high for a beer of this strength.

The hopping is pretty heavy and there’s a long boil, which, in combination, leave the finished beer at over 70 calculated IBUs.

1956 Tennant's Gold Label
pale malt	14.75 lb	67.82%
enzymic malt	0.25 lb	1.15%
flaked maize	4.00 lb	18.39%
No. 1 invert sugar	2.75 lb	12.64%
Fuggles 230 mins	2.50 oz
Goldings 230 mins	0.75 oz
Goldings 60 mins	3.25 oz
Hallertau dry hops	0.67 oz
OG	1103.5
FG	1020
ABV	11.05
Apparent attenuation	80.68%
IBU	72
SRM	9
Mash at	147º F
Sparge at	165º F
Boil time	230 minutes
pitching temp	56º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread ale