Elgood’s beers in 1969

As the 1960s drew to a close, Elgood was still brewing quite a broad range of beers. Six in all. And every one with a gravity between 1030º and 1038º. Not exactly a great spread of strengths.

Six beers? I hear you say. There are seven in the table. Well, that’s because part of the way through the year X was replaced by MM. A beer with a slightly higher gravity. Though, as we’ll see later, there recipes of the two were quite similar.

I’m a bit surprised that they had a separate brew for Brown Ale. It’s incredibly similar to X Most brewers by this time were just tweaking their Dark Mild with perhaps different primings before bottling. Which is why they so rarely turn up in brewing records.

EB – Elgood Bitter – and PA have a slightly higher hopping rate than the other beers. But not by a huge amount: around 5 lbs per quarter (336 lbs) of malt compared to 4 lbs. It’s all fairly light. As you’ll see when we get to the recipes.

The Lager is a typical pseudo-Lager of the type produced by many smaller breweries in the 1960s and 1970s. Lacking the equipment to ferment cold or lager, brewers simply made a very pale top-fermenting beer and the served it cold. The first time it was chilled was almost certainly in the pub cellar. The fermentation temperature profile is exactly the same as for their other beers.

Elgood was still brewing a little Stout. At the not very “stout” gravity of 1030º. With a fairly poor rate of attenuation leaving it under 3% ABV.

Speaking of which, the rate of attenuation is all over the place. Ranging from 67% to 83%. And even more so than it appears from the table, as the attenuation of different brews varied quite a bit. 

Elgood beers in 1969
Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	Pitch temp	max. fermen-tation temp
BA	Brown Ale	1030.0	1007.2	3.02	75.99%	4.13	0.44	60.5º F	65º F
MM	Mild	1032.7	1008.9	3.15	72.88%	3.70	0.47	60º F	64º F
X	Mild	1030.0	1007.2	3.02	75.99%	3.88	0.43	60º F	65º F
Lager	Lager	1034.3	1010.0	3.22	70.97%	3.64	0.63	60º F	68º F
EB	Pale Ale	1038.8	1008.9	3.96	77.14%	4.76	0.66	60º F	66º F
PA	Pale Ale	1030.0	1005.0	3.31	83.38%	5.00	0.52	60º F	67º F
Stout	Stout	1030.0	1009.4	2.72	68.61%	4.17	0.48	60º F	64º F
Source:
Brewing record held at the brewery