Boddington Bitter sugars 1920 - 1938

Back to looking at Boddington Bitter in ridiculous detail. It's interwar sugars in focus today.

You can see one of the typical features of Boddington recipes: the same for quite long periods, then sudden dramatic changes. In this case, that happened in 1933, when the sugars were totally changed.

Unfortunately, I've no idea what type (or even types) of sugar were used before 1929 as it's only described as "saccharum". Your guess is as good as mine as to what that signifies. If you held a knife to my throat, I'd guess some type of invert sugar.

At least the sugars are named from 1933 on. Not that it helps a huge amount. DMS is Diastatic Malt Syrup, as the name implies, a type of diastatic malt extract. Flavex is another type of malt extract produced by EDME. As for "B", the only possibility I can come up with is Barbadus, i.e. raw cane sugar.

The total percentage of sugar, averaging around 5-6%, is on the low side. More usual was around 10%.

The 1935 example used Tadcaster yeast. Which is also the yeast they started off with when the brewery reopened in 1941. Was this their backup yeast or was it the source of their own yeast?

Boddington Bitter sugars 1920 - 1938
Year	DMS	BME	Flavex	B	other sugar	total sugar
1920					6.56%	6.56%
1921					4.47%	4.47%
1922					7.69%	7.69%
1923					4.00%	4.00%
1924					4.00%	4.00%
1925					3.88%	3.88%
1926					5.56%	5.56%
1927					3.88%	3.88%
1928					4.00%	4.00%
1929		1.51%			2.01%	3.52%
1930		2.06%			2.06%	4.12%
1932		2.27%			2.27%	4.55%
1933	1.64%		1.09%	2.19%		4.92%
1934	1.54%		1.03%	2.05%		4.62%
1935	2.73%		1.37%	2.73%		6.83%
1936	2.66%		1.33%	2.66%		6.66%
1937	2.65%		1.32%	2.65%		6.62%
1938	2.65%		1.32%	2.65%		6.62%
Sources:
Boddington brewing records held at Manchester Central Library, document numbers M693/405/127 and M693/405/128.