Saturday 18 September 2021

Let's Brew - 1960 Fullers London Pride

Another example recipe for my vertical look at the style of London PA. Though this wasn't called PA. And the beer which was called PA was no longer a Best Bitter. The war had knocked it down to Ordinary Bitter strength. When things had perked up a bit in the early 1950s, Fullers introduced a new beer which filled the Best Bitter slot. A beer which after a couple of name changes was finally dubbed London Pride.

London Pride sold in decent quantities for what was quite a strong Bitter. I can understand why. It’s a cracking beer when looked after properly.

This particular example was parti-gyled with the PA. The recipe is like all those from Fullers: pale malt flaked maize and sugar. The No. 2 invert and glucose are in the recipe. The No. 3 is my substitution for PEX and CDM.

It intrigues me that London Pride always seems to have tasted pretty much the same, even though there was a big change of the recipe, I think in the 1990s, when Fullers went all malt. The current version is pale malt, crystal malt and a tiny amount of chocolate malt for colour.

1960 Fullers London Pride
pale malt 8.00 lb 80.60%
flaked maize 1.25 lb 12.59%
No. 2 invert sugar 0.50 lb 5.04%
No. 3 invert sugar 0.05 lb 0.50%
glucose 0.125 lb 1.26%
Fuggles 90 min 1.00 oz
Goldings Varieties 30 min 1.00 oz
OG 1043.5
FG 1011.5
ABV 4.23
Apparent attenuation 73.56%
IBU 27
SRM 5
Mash at 144º F
Sparge at 168º F
Boil time 90 minutes
pitching temp 60º F
Yeast WLP002 English Ale

This recipe appears in my book on post-WW II UK brewing, Austerity!

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/austerity/23181344




2 comments:

Michael Foster said...

I'm willing to bet that consistent and distinctive flavor comes from the yeast--I personally am not a fan of any of London Pride's beers for that reason (the ester profile is too fruity and tart to me).

Mike in NSW said...

It's interesting that London Pride, Brains SA and the former Newcastle Exhibition - all of which I drank before heading for Australia as a migrant - are in a simlar category - described as "quite a strong beer". At 4.3 ABV I'd regard them as fairly mid strength.
I'd guess that this is in the context of nine pints at darts night.