Let's Brew Wednesday - 1935 Fullers OBE

It's back! Finally another installment of Let's Brew. And even on a Wednesday. Plus the recipe is for the legendary Fullers Old Burton Extra. This is indeed a special day.

Old Burton Extra was a souped-up Burton, sold on draught. It was party-gyled along with their normal Burton, BO, and their Mild. It looks very similar to what some other London brewers called KKK. You do know what a Burton was, don't you? Forgotten already. I don't know.

Burton was one of the standard draught beers in London pubs for the first half of the 20th century. The last survivor is Young's Winter Warmer. They were usually given K-designations inside breweries. They were a development of the pale K Ales brewed in the 19th century. Along with Mild, they darkened at the end of the 1800's. In the 1930's, a typical Burton was around 1048 -1055º, quite heavily hopped at 1.5 to 2 pounds per barrel and dark brown in colour.

It's a shame none of the London brewers currently makes one. I'd drink it.

Brew this beer. Sip it thinking of the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Pearly Kings, pease pudding and saveloys.




Over to Kristen . . . . .





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Fullers - 1935 - OBE - BO - X
General info: Old Burton Extra. Burton Old ale. X ale. Some really neat names along here. What’s even cooler is that the OBE only accounted for 0.5% of these entire gyle and the BO was only about 10%. That leaves about 90% of this entire gyle set left for the simple mild X ale. It very much leaves me wondering if 2 barrels of OBE that were made weren't made specifically for the head brewer himself. This recipe is written strictly for making the OBE.
Beer Specifics			Recipe by percentages
Gravity (OG)	1.067		41% English pale malt (2)			0.6% Caramel colorant
Gravity (FG)	1.014		41% American 6-row			0% Caramel
ABV	7.13%		14.4% Flaked Maize			0%
Apparent attenuation	79.26%		2.9% White sugar
Real attenuation	64.93%
IBU	68.6		Mash	120min@149°F		0.985166475315729qt/lb
SRM	17			120min@65°C		2.06L/kg
EBC	33.8
			Boil	1.5 hours
	Homebrew @ 70%				Craft @ 80%
Grist	5gal		19L		10bbl		10hl
English pale malt (2)	5.21	lb	2.374	kg	282.83	lb	109.27	kg
American 6-row	5.21	lb	2.374	kg	282.83	lb	109.27	kg
Flaked Maize	1.83	lb	0.833	kg	99.24	lb	38.34	kg
White sugar	0.37	lb	0.167	kg	19.85	lb	7.67	kg
Caramel colorant	0.08	lb	0.037	kg	4.43	lb	1.71	kg
	12.704		5.784		689.17111
Hops
Goldings 4.5% 90min	3.06	oz	86.6	g	189.44	oz	4.577	kg
Goldings 4.5% 30min	1.50	oz	42.5	g	93.00	oz	2.247	kg
Goldings 4.5% dry hop	2.07	oz	58.7	g	128.31	oz	3.100	kg
Fermentation	65°F /18.3°C
Yeast	Nottingham ale yeast
	1968 London ESB Ale Yeast  - WLP002 English Ale Yeast
Tasting Notes: OBE - Tons of light fruits, apple and pear drops. Resinous, earthy and spicy hops, hints of orange and biscuity malt. Robust drying hop tannins on the palette with a good kick of hop bitterness on the end that keeps going. The malt balances well but not to the point of a Barley Wine. Clean, crisp and bitter. Dangerously easy to drink!

Ingredients and technique

Grist & such
The darkness of these beers belies the fact that it has absolutely no roast malt, caramel malt nor dark invert sugars. They get nearly their entire color from the addition of caramel coloring.  Two different English pale malts, American 6-row along with 14% flaked maize make up the entirety of the malt for this gyle. Very little white sugar and a good 1.5% of caramel colorant round this off.


Hops
The hops were as fresh as you can get being less than 8 months old. The hopping was absorbingly high but enough to give the first gyle around 70 bu. The second gyle had very little in the way of hop but still pull around 10 bu. The third gyle had no hops. They were added at kettle make-up and then again at 30min. Each of the beers where dry hopped differently. The OBE got 0.75lb/ bbl with East Kent Goldings, the BO got 0.50lb/ bbl with Fuggles and the X ale got none. Poor X ale…

Mash & Boil
Nothing really fancy about the mash nor the boil with this gyle. An extended mash with a single infusion to keep a mash of moderate temperature. The boil for gyle 1 was 90 minutes and gyle 2 was 105 minutes. 

Fermentation, Conditioning & Serving
All these beers were fermented a moderate temperature each finishing about the same time regardless of gravity. Aim for about 2.1 volumes of CO2 using either corn sugar or glucose syrup and around 1 million cells/ ml of beer. Serve at cellar temp per the usual.

Gyling & Blending
The recipe as written is for the OBE only. The actually recipe included two gyles with a third for the return. The first gyle was about 1.068, the second was 1.007 and the third at 1.002. Each was hopped as described above. We’ll get to the gyle specifics here shortly in Practical Partigyling, part 1.
xxxxx

Further rest

Look at this:

For the memory-impaired, here's the entry from 6 years earlier:

From six Ales to two. In just a couple of years. Dramatic, eh?

Stout Drinkers!

They've just made 400 years worth of Dutch newspapers available online. The first word I searched for? Stout.

This was hit number two.

I don't want to incur Tandleman's wrath again, so here's a translation:

STOUT DRINKERS!

Why is an incorrect opinion often expressed about one Stout or another? Because in most cases it is not properly treated or delivered without being properly matured. The extra-Stout, as of the Brewery, has little flavor and is very insipid. Tapping (new system), the right length of maturation  and the good treatment are certainly key requirements for making Stout tasty and invigorating. Artificial methods, used to make it quickly foamy, cannot give the beer the same full and vigorous taste, it gets from maturing.

The well-matured Stout from any Brewery, the assessment is left to consumers, is more of a tonic for anemia than anything else.

Largest turnover of Vollenhoven's Extra-Stout.

VOLLH. Extra Stout 12.5 Ct.
DELI Extra Stout 12.5 Ct.
Bass Extra Stout 17.5 Ct.

Ned. Stout Bottelarij
N. Heerengracht b/d Weesperstr., Amsterdam

Van Vollenhoven's Stout has been a persistent little devil. After the brewery was purchased by Heineken it was transformed into a bottom-fermenting beer, but hung around until the 1990's. I tried it a few times. It wasn't great. Then a group bought the rights and contracted De Schans to brew a version based on old recipe. Now that's a great beer. Just frustratingly hard to find.

The Deli brewery, on Weesperzijde, was founded in 1886 and closed in 1939. It wasn't the most successful of the new generation of modern breweries founded at the end of the 19th century, never really challenging the likes of Amstel and Heineken. Surprisingly, parts of the brewery survived until 2003, buried in a later industrial building. I spotted parts of them as they were being demolished. The wall with the circular windows was part of the Ijskelder.

I think you know who Bass were.

Barclay perkins Lager grists in 1934

No need for an introduction. The title fulfils that function fantastically.

I've become a new writer of late. Responsive, responsible, caring, baring, staring at the wall for inspiration. That's why I've started paying attention to your requests.

Someone asked about Barclay Perkins Lager recipes. So here are the grists. I would give you the full recipes, but I've many posts to write and very little time. I'm compressing them. A bit like hard rain. But without the whining.

This is stuck inside the front cover of document ACC/2305/1/641:

Not quite the full grists even, as they also contained grits.

More later. When. I've. Got. My. breath. Back.

More rest

That's definitely what I need. Don't know about you.

But here's some anyway:

Compare with this.


Summary: more volume of fewer types. No overflow brewing of non-Ales.

More snapshots later.

Whitbread's Belgian Trade (1940)

This is from another of Whitbread's handwritten spreadsheets. One that lists their sales by beer type and region.

This is part of the page for the quarter ending March 29th 1940. The trade was soon afterwards interrupted for a few years. Something to do with an Austrian lunatic, I believe.

These are the bottled beers. ES is Extra Stout, PA is Pale Ale and DB is Double Brown. Oddly enough, the first two are still available in Belgium. Despite Whitbread itself having disappeared into a corporate glob years ago.

Rest

Little time. No. Done that one. Can't be arsed. No. Done that, too. Rest . . . yes. That's what I need.

Ever get pissed off with Shakespear using words the wrong way? Those bastards in the past. How dare they attach a different meaning to words we know and love? The bastards. total bastards.

I was ill a couple of weeks ago. Self-pity and Rab C. Nesbit got me through.

[Just explaining the bout of Tourettes.]

Rest. It sounds like what I should be doing now. But you know what those bastards did? Do you really want to know? Those bastards in the past. They used our word "rest" to mean something completely different.

Now me being a didactic sort of twat - and one fascinated by language -  you're probably expecting me to explain exactly what "rest" meant in this context. Normally, I'd be only too happy fulfil your clichéd expectations. But Andrew sucked out all my energy with Scar Stories*. Martyn Cornell. He's a clever chap with a much better etymological dictionary than me. He'll explain it, I'm sure.

Rest. That's what I should be getting, not explaining. So here it is. Barclay Perkins rest from 1840 For their Ale brewery. (They also had Park Street and Stoney Lane.) 

Lovely handwriting they had back then. Unprescient use of language. But lovely handwriting. And an idiosyncratic way of spelling gyle.

I would explain what this tells us about trends in 19th century brewing. But I need my rest.




* A game where I tell the stories behind the scars on my body.

Guinness vs Whitbread Stout

Remember this bit from "Beer Knowledge"?

"When the British government imposed restrictions on malting and beer strength during the First World War, the dry Irish style stole a march on its British counterpart and, aided by both canny advertising and the missionary zeal of Irish Diaspora, it's become the benchmark for stouts."

I just found something in one of Whitbread's spreadsheets that throws some light on this assertion. A bucket of cold light. It's a document with incredibly detailed sales records. Both of Whitbread's own beers and ones from other brewers. Like Guinness and Bass.

If that quote is to be believed, a tide of Guinness washed away British Stout after WW I. So in, say, 1943, you'd expect Guinness to be outselling Whitbread's Stouts, right? Let's see if that was the case.

First, Guinness sales:

Whitbread's Guinness sales 1943
Town Guinness	barrels
Guinness pints	12,399
Guinness half pints	7,991
Total Town Guinness	20,300
Country Guinness
Guinness pints	2,501
Guinness half pints	1,902
Total Country Guinness	4,403
Total Guinness	24,703
Source:
document LMA/44503/C/08/063

So a little less than 25,000 barrels. Not bad. But what about Whitbread's Stouts?

Whitbread's own Stout sales 1943
Town Stout (including Kent)	barrels
London Stout pints	18,484
Special Stout half pints	14,100
London Stout quarts	12,045
Total London Stout	44,629
Oatmeal Stout pints	1,985
Oatmeal Stout half pints	119
Oatmeal Stout quarts	1,396
Total Oatmeal Stout	3,500
Milk Stout pints	9,284
Milk Stout half pints	6,347
Milk Stout quarts	3,980
Total Milk Stout	19,611
Total Town Stout	67,740
Country Stout
London Stout pints	9,460
Special Stout half pints	821
London Stout half pints	547
London Stout quarts	661
Total London Stout	11,489
Oatmeal Stout pints	24,235
Oatmeal Stout half pints	4,812
Oatmeal Stout quarts	2,394
Total Oatmeal Stout	31,441
Milk Stout pints	25,906
Milk Stout half pints	19,041
Milk Stout quarts	1,196
Total Milk Stout	46,143
Total Country Stout	89,073
Total Whitbread Stout	156,813
Source:
document LMA/44503/C/08/063

Just a little bit more. And those figures are just bottled Stout. Whitbread still sold a fair bit of draught Stout. And they sold 20,000 barrels of Stout in Scotland that I haven't included.

In 1943 Whitbread sold more than 6 times as much of their own Stouts as they did Guinness. More than 25 years after Guinness was supposed to have swept British Stouts away.

Can we agree that story is bollocks?

Table fun

Table fun for table fans. I was shocked to discover you do exist. You share my sickness. This is for you.

And as an excuse to write about Lager.

These are the Lagers Barclay Perkins brewed in the first year their Lager brewery operated. I made that sound as dull as a party conference. I'm having a Clement Freud sort of day. That's what happens when you write German for 8 hours.

Here are Barclay Perkins Lagers.

Blah.

Blah.

Blah.

Blah.

Barclay Perkins Lager production 1921 - 1922
Date	Year	Beer	barrels	gravity	gyle no.
May 13th	1921	Lager Export	64	1050	1
May 26th	1921	Lager Export	59	1049	2
Jun 8th	1921	Lager Export	62.25	1050	3
Jun 17th	1921	Lager Export	62.75	1049	4
Jun 29th	1921	Lager Export	135	1050	5
Jull 6th	1921	Lager Dark	64.75	1046	6
Jul 13th	1921	Lager Export	57.75	1050	7
Jul 21st	1921	Lager Export	127.25	1050	8
Jul 27th	1921	Lager Dark	122.25	1046	9
Aug 5th	1921	Lager Export	62.75	1050	10
Aug 18th	1921	Lager Dark	55	1045	11
Aug 25th	1921	Lager Export	61	1050	12
Sep 8th	1921	Lager Export	62.75	1050	13
Sep 23rd	1921	Lager Export	57.25	1050	14
Oct 12th	1921	Lager Export	62.25	1050	15
Dec 13th	1921	Lager Export	62.5	1050	16
Dec 28th	1921	Lager Export	61	1050	17
Dec 30th	1921	Lager Export	141.25	1050	18
Jan 9th	1922	Lager Export	127	1050	19
Jan 16th	1922	Lager Dark	61.5	1039	20
Jan 17th	1922	Lager Export	62.25	1044	21
Jan 18th	1922	Lager Export	60	1034	22
Jan 23rd	1922	Lager Export	60.5	1050	23
Jan 26th	1922	Munich	60.75	1057	24
Feb 6th	1922	Lager Export	62.5	1050	25
Feb 13th	1922	Lager Export	66.25	1050	26
Feb 15th	1922	Lager Dark	33.25	1047	27
Feb 20th	1922	Lager Export	68.75	1050	28
Feb 21st	1922	Dark	57	1049	29
Feb 27th	1922	Export	60	1050	30
Mar 6th	1922	Dark	123.75	1044	31
Mar 13th	1922	Dark	128	1044	32
Mar 20th	1922	Export	59.25	1050	33
Mar 27th	1922	Munich	63	1057	34
Apr 3rd	1922	Special Dark	60.25	1057	1
Apr 10th	1922	Dark	82	1044	2
Apr 12th	1922	Export	73.5	1050	3
Apr 18th	1922	Dark	60.25	1044	4
Apr 24th	1922	Export	66.25	1050	5
Apr 28th	1922	Export	62	1050	6
Total			2938.75
Source:
Barclay Perkins brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives.

Bit stronger than nowadays.