Recreating Boddingtons

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Billb

Recreating Boddingtons

Post by Billb » Sun Oct 13, 2013 5:09 pm

I’d love to be able to brew Boddingtons bitter, just like it was around Manchester when I was first into drinking beer. I don’t mean the horrible creamflow stuff in cans, I mean the wonderful “Cream of Manchester” brewed at the Strangeways Brewery before it sadly closed.

I’ve tried a couple of times, and while I made decent beer both times, it wasn’t quite Boddingtons. I remember it having a golden straw colour and a white white creamy head. The smell was straw-like, and the flavour was crisp, bitter and left you with an almost woody after-taste. That after-taste was critical – I’m not talking deep oaky, or heavy woody, I’m talking the sort of light woodiness of fresh wood shavings from a light wood.

OK, enough of my flavour ramblings…

Both of the brews I made were based on the Graham Wheeler recipe. Here’s the last one in detail:
Grain bill
3220g maris otter pale ale malt
200g crystal malt (45L)
100g white sugar
Hops
39g Whitbread Goldings, 60 min (25 IBU)
13g fuggles, 10 min (2 IBU)
27 IBU
Mash at 66C for 60 mins
Boil time 60 mins
OG 1.038, FG 1.009, 3.8% ABV
Yeast Safale S-04
Water treatment (profile for bitter): (for 32 litres)
13g gypsum
4g CaCl
1g MgSO4
2g NaCl

So that’s the recipe I used. As I said, it was drinkable, but not Boddingtons. I have no idea where that straw aroma or woody aftertaste came from.

Does anyone have any views on what I should be changing next time around?

I understand WGV is critical to Boddingtons, so I had wondered about using all WGV, and maybe a little more as late hops? Maybe a little for dry hopping?

What about the yeast? S-04 is reliable but fairly generic. Can anyone suggest something that might come closer?

What about fermentation temperature? Last time I had no temp control, so it would have been about 20C. I have temperature control now, so I can hold it lower.

Is the water treatment over the top? Probably… I’ve tended to not go so wild on water treatment in recent brews.

Welcome your views!

Bill.

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oz11
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Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by oz11 » Sun Oct 13, 2013 6:52 pm

Try here for a late 1980's version from Ron P

oakwell

Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by oakwell » Sun Oct 13, 2013 7:50 pm

this is Orfy's recipe. I've not tried it myself but he seems to have a reputation for a good recipe so I'll give it a go at some point. I live within a few miles of Strangeways and started drinking Boddies in the late 60's. A great beer in it's day.

Boddington's

English Ordinary Bitter


Type: All Grain
Date: 10/01/2007
Batch Size: 23.00 L
Brewer: Orfy
Boil Size: 30.50 L Asst Brewer:
Boil Time: 60 min Equipment: My Equipment
Taste Rating(out of 50): 40.0 Brewhouse Efficiency: 80.0
Taste Notes: Brewed to be a match for the Boddington's Cask bitter at it's peak.

Ingredients

Amount Item Type % or IBU
3.30 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 89.2 %
0.25 kg Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 6.8 %
0.12 kg Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 3.2 %
0.03 kg Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM) Grain 0.8 %
25.00 gm Northern Brewer [8.50%] (60 min) (First Wort Hop) Hops 27.9 IBU
25.00 gm Goldings, East Kent [4.00%] (45 min) Hops 10.9 IBU
25.00 gm Goldings, East Kent [4.00%] (60 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep) Hops -
1 Pkgs Youngs Generic Ale Yeast Yeast-Ale



Beer Profile

Est Original Gravity: 1.040 SG
Measured Original Gravity: 1.036 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.012 SG Measured Final Gravity: 1.005 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 3.7 % Actual Alcohol by Vol: 4.0 %
Bitterness: 38.8 IBU Calories: 326 cal/l
Est Color: 7.9 SRM Color: Color


Mash Profile

Mash Name: Single Infusion Total Grain Weight: 3.70 kg
Sparge Water: 27.55 L Grain Temperature: 20.0 C
Sparge Temperature: 77.0 C TunTemperature: 20.0 C
Adjust Temp for Equipment: FALSE Mash PH: 5.4 PH

Name Description Step Temp Step Time
Single Add 9.66 L of water at 75.0 C 68.0 C 60 min



Mash Notes:
Carbonation and Storage

Carbonation Type: Kegged (Corn Sugar) Volumes of CO2: 2.1
Pressure/Weight: 53.3 gm Carbonation Used: 75
Keg/Bottling Temperature: 17.0 C Age for: 7.0 days
Storage Temperature: 15.0 C

Clibit
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Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by Clibit » Sun Oct 13, 2013 8:20 pm

And this is one that Seymour put on this forum a while ago, from his seemingly huge database of historical recipes, and I copied for future reference. It kind of looks right. But Orfy will have no doubt tested recipes until he got as close as he could, I suspect, before posting his on the interweb.

Boddington Bitter (raise your hand if you find this complex hop bill hard to believe…)
Boddingtons/Strangeway Brewery (Historic, 1853-2005) - Manchester, UK
OG: 1038
IBU: 30
Colour: amber
Grainbill: 95% Pale, 2% Black Patent, 3% Cane sugar
Bittering Hops: 35% Fuggles, 30% Goldings, 22% Whitbread Goldings Variety, 8% Bramling Cross, 5% Northern Brewer
Aroma hops: Northern Brewer, Bramling Cross, Goldings
Yeast: proprietary brewery strain, originally obtained from Strangeways Brewery in Manchester, now available as WY1318 London III

Mattpc
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Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by Mattpc » Sun Oct 13, 2013 11:26 pm

There is a Graham Wheeler recipe in one of his CAMRA brewing books.

Billb

Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by Billb » Mon Oct 14, 2013 10:29 am

Wow, thanks everyone. Looks like I have three recipes to work through there. It's interesting how different they are from each other.

I'll report back when I've tried any of them.

Bill.

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orlando
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Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by orlando » Mon Oct 14, 2013 3:20 pm

That flavour almost certainly came from their house yeast so I would look at that, particularly clibit's WY1318 tip London 111 tip, though it surprises me it's dedicated to London!!
I am "The Little Red Brooster"

Fermenting:
Conditioning:
Drinking: Southwold Again,

Up Next: John Barleycorn (Barley Wine)
Planning: Winter drinking Beer

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Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by Clibit » Mon Oct 14, 2013 3:33 pm

Do none of the current Manchester microbreweries use the old Boddies yeast? Would make sense if they could get it, which allegedly they could by simply getting some WY1318, if that actually is the Boddingtons yeast. Did Hydes use yeast from Strangeways when they took over brewing cask Boddies? They took over when Strangeways closed down. Hydes recently moved to Salford, to a modern, smaller site. I wonder if they have the yeast?

oakwell

Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by oakwell » Tue Dec 17, 2013 10:39 pm

hi Bill, did you brew this? if you did then which recipe and how did it turn out?

Billb

Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by Billb » Tue Dec 17, 2013 11:04 pm

Hi,
No, not yet - it's next on my list. But I've brewed such a lot of other beers recently I've got a glut to drink through first. :-)
I have already bought the WYeast 1318 London Ale III in readiness - it's sitting in the fridge.
I plan to brew more than one recipe using the same yeast, so when I've done them I'll post the recipes and my thoughts back to this thread.
Bill.

oakwell

Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by oakwell » Wed Dec 18, 2013 2:59 pm

cheers Bill, look forward to hearing how it goes

Clobber

Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by Clobber » Mon Dec 23, 2013 12:35 pm

Did the cream of manchester not have any adjuncts to create a cream head?

Was the original more of a standard beer with no head retention?

Billb

Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by Billb » Mon Dec 23, 2013 12:46 pm

The original cask beer had very good head retention - the classic thick white head that stuck around for a long time.

I must confess I've never seen any recipes that include adjuncts to aid retention. It might be worth thinking about, but I'll see what I get with these recipes first.

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PhilB
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Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by PhilB » Tue Jan 07, 2014 12:29 pm

Hi Bill

I saw this thread and was going to comment at the time, but then what with eating and drinking too much over the Xmas festivities I never got around to it ... hope you don't mind me coming to the discussion late with a bit of an "off the wall" suggestion ...
Billb wrote:The original cask beer had very good head retention - the classic thick white head that stuck around for a long time ... I must confess I've never seen any recipes that include adjuncts to aid retention.
... wasn't the old Strangeways Brewery just behind Manchester Victoria railway station? :? ... I wonder whether they kept their conditioning tanks under any railway arches there, where they would have been regularly shaken by the trains going overhead? :? ... I'll try to explain why I'm asking, but you'll need to bear with me a bit ...

Back last summer I'd read the Pete Brown book "Hops and Glory" and got it into my head to brew an old-fashioned IPA (like they brewed in the book) and condition it in the "old fashioned way" (in the book Brown took a cask on a sail boat across the Atlantic to Brazil, and then from there on a container ship around the Cape and around to India) the theory being that movement and changes in temperature "accelerate" (or at least effect) the conditioning of the beer. Of course, I don't have a publisher willing to pay me to go sailing for months to do something similar, so I brewed and fermented my beer, I then transferred it to a plastic pressure barrel, with a light amount of priming (50g for around 24 litres, mostly just enough to expel the oxygen and give it some protection) to bulk condition it in, which I stored (after a week and a half of "warm conditioning") in the boot of my car for the next 5 weeks, during August-September, when it was warm/hot during the day and cool at night and travelled wherever I was driving during that time (trying to recreate the conditions in the hold of an East-Inadiaman :wink: ). I only took it out of the boot at that time because the car had to go off for some repairs and I didn't want to donate my beer to any grease-monkeys :roll: ... and it spent the next 6 weeks in my garage. When I poured a half from the barrel, before I released the pressure, to let it (deliberately) go flat and transferred it to primed bottles ... it came out like that ...
Image
... hopefully you can see from that picture that it had a fantastically creamy head, but you won't be able to tell the almost mousse-like body it had at that stage as well (and it's kept after bottle conditioning too) ... it really was like some Nitrogen served, "extra-cold"/widget beer coming out of that pressure barrel, and reminded me very much of Boddingtons :? ... now you should bear in mind that that was made with a 97.5% Pale Malt and 2.5% Crystal Malt grist, in a single infusion mash, to an OG of 1.057 and finished with an FG of 1.005, no adjuncts, no head improving protein rests, nothing ... the only "special treatment" it had that I can see may have effected the head formation/retention, was a regular "jiggling around" during bulk conditioning in the boot of the car :?

Which is why I'm wondering whether the beer at the Strangeways Brewery might have experienced such movement during it's conditioning? :? Just a thought, but maybe worth an experiment :wink:

Cheers, PhilB

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Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by Clibit » Tue Jan 07, 2014 4:19 pm

Interesting experiment, but the brewery was on the other side of the ring road from Victoria - close to it, but the MEN Arena now sits between them and I can't imagine the conditioning beer was shaken about by trains at that distance sorry!

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