Wednesday 22 May 2024

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1970 Youngs Celebration Ale

Parti-gyled with the Best Malt Ale I published a few days ago was this beer called CA in the brewing book. Which I’m guessing stands for Coronation Ale Celebration Ale, a renaming of Coronation Ale . Though it may not have been marketed as that. As it looks suspiciously like the Old Nick from 1975.

I’m fairly sure that this was an exclusively bottled beer. Though they may have filled up the odd pin for a special occasion. There wasn’t a great deal o fit brewed. This batch was just 30 barrels along with 279 barrels of Mild.

The finishing gravity is very high. Or at least the racking gravity is. It’s possible that there could have been further conditioning in tank before bottling. 

1970 Youngs Celebration Ale
pale malt 11.25 lb 66.18%
crystal malt 60 L 1.50 lb 8.82%
flaked maize 2.25 lb 13.24%
malt extract 0.50 lb 2.94%
No. 3 invert sugar 1.25 lb 7.35%
caramel 1000 SRM 0.25 lb 1.47%
Fuggles 120 min 2.00 oz
Goldings 15 min 1.75 oz
OG 1079
FG 1032
ABV 6.22
Apparent attenuation 59.49%
IBU 32
SRM 27
Mash at 149º F
Sparge at 170º F
Boil time 120 minutes
pitching temp 57.5º F
Yeast WLP002 English Ale

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very similar recipe to the 1970 Youngs Best Malt Ale

Anonymous said...

Looks familiar... (this was the recipe you listed for the Young's Best Malt post, Ron).

I'm guessing this was for Charles's investiture? Was brewing a coronation ale for events like that common historically?

Anonymous said...

Anyone got any ideas what coronation this beer was for?

Anonymous said...

+1 for the Charles investiture.

Anonymous said...

It seems a bit fanciful to assume that CA stands for Coronation Ale. The label you show is for their 1953 Coronation Ale (according to this website https://www.labology.org.uk/). It could just as easily stand for Chairmans Ale for example.

John Lester said...

CA would have been Celebration Ale, which I believe was simply a renaming of Coronation Ale (and it had an almost identical label). In 1964 the brewery described it as “a high gravity dark beer of the barley wine type”, but it was replaced by Old Nick in 1971 (I don’t know whether or not that was a different beer from Celebration Ale).

Anonymous said...

Or Christmas Ale

Ron Pattinson said...

John Lester,

thanks very much for that. I was assuming that it was the same beer as Coronation Ale, but probably not sold under that name. I think that Old Nick was basically the same beer, but I'll have to check. Both were parti-gyled with Best Malt Ale.