Burton Ale never completely died at Fullers during the war. Its gravity may have taken a plunge, but it did still exist. Albeit in a much weaker form and in limited quantities.
Never limited to just a handful of barrels, like OBE, the volume of Burton Fullers produced was limited by the end of the war. This batch, for example, was just 60 barrels, in a parti-gyle of 673 barrels. Most of which was X Ale, a rather watery Mild.
The gravity and recipe are much the same as in 1944. Except some of the base malt has been replaced by glucose. A pretty minor change, probably prompted by better availability of sugar. Other than the replacement of flaked maize by flaked barley, the recipe is little changed from 1939.
4.1% ABV might seem a bit feeble for a Strong Ale. But compared to the barely-intoxicating Mild Ales most were drinking, Burton Ales like this were dangerously strong.
There were two types of hops, both English and from the 1944 season.
| 1945 Fullers BO | ||
| pale malt | 8.00 lb | 80.00% |
| flaked barley | 1.25 lb | 12.50% |
| glucose | 0.50 lb | 5.00% |
| caramel 1000 SRM | 0.25 lb | 2.50% |
| Fuggles 90 min | 0.75 oz | |
| Fuggles 30 min | 0.75 oz | |
| Goldings dry hops | 0.50 oz | |
| OG | 1044.5 | |
| FG | 1013.5 | |
| ABV | 4.10 | |
| Apparent attenuation | 69.66% | |
| IBU | 19 | |
| SRM | 19 | |
| Mash at | 147º F | |
| After underlet | 151º F | |
| Sparge at | 168º F | |
| Boil time | 90 minutes | |
| pitching temp | 61.5º F | |
| Yeast | WLP002 English Ale | |
Do you have any sense if people drank a lot more of these in a single sitting (assuming the pub had the supply and the drinker had the money) in the way they might have drunk a pre-war beer?
ReplyDeleteI'm curious if people continued to think of these as weak Burtons, or if they actually thought of them as an ordinary beer that hadn't been thinned away so much by the war.