Recreating Boddingtons

Try some of these great recipes out, or share your favourite brew with other forumees!
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Clibit
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Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by Clibit » Sat Nov 03, 2018 12:39 am

RobP wrote:
Fri Nov 02, 2018 11:43 pm
I was 18 in 1978. So through the 80s into the 90s.
I would say it was great in the 70s, good in the 80s, poor in the 90s. Roughly speaking.

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Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by f00b4r » Wed Feb 10, 2021 9:40 pm

Some great posts this week by Ron Pattinson on Boddies over the years:

http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com

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Cobnut
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Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by Cobnut » Thu Feb 11, 2021 9:53 am

That's interesting.

I recall visiting Manchester during my A Level years (checking out UMIST's potential as a place to study) and enjoying the Boddingtons (this would've been about 1982).

I've had it in recent years and can't say I like it.

I also find that several pints has a similar effect to drinking macro lager: it gives me a bad head.

So I'm tempted to have a go at brewing an early 1980's Boddy's recreation to see what it's like.

Or maybe a 1970s version, if their 1970s versions were even better!

Perhaps even both!

(adds more potential beers to the list...)
Fermenting: nowt
Conditioning: English IPA/Bretted English IPA
Drinking: Sunshine Marmalade, Festbier, Helles Bock, Smokey lagery beer, Irish Export StoutCascade APA (homegrown hops), Orval clone, Impy stout, Duvel clone, Conestoga (American Barley wine)
Planning: Dark Mild, Kozel dark (ish), Simmonds Bitter, Bitter, Citra PA and more!

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Eric
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Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by Eric » Thu Feb 11, 2021 1:27 pm

Ron wrote
Exactly the same three sugars were used in the whole 25 years covered: DMS (Diastatic Malt Syrup), Flavex and Br. I've no real idea what the latter two were, unfortunately. Except that the former was a proprietary sugar produced by EDME.

While the types of sugar remained constant for 25 years, their proportions didn't. At times most was DMS, at others BR, with Flavex always in the middle position.
Looks as if Flavex is potentially still made and may have been used for colour adjustment. Must assume Br is another variant f malt extract.

Image


Send that to him Eric, in his Blog reply.
Without patience, life becomes difficult and the sooner it's finished, the better.

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Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by f00b4r » Thu Feb 11, 2021 2:23 pm

Good find Eric!
The older recipes for Boddies, with the flaked maize and sugars remind me of the approach with some of your beers (same kind of head they promoted in the advert too, in the latter years).
I’m going to try out one of the 50’s/70’s recipes after my next brew, it’s been on my radar to try for a while but this has given my a bit of a nudge.

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Eric
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Re: Recreating Boddingtons

Post by Eric » Thu Feb 11, 2021 4:28 pm

f00b4r wrote:
Thu Feb 11, 2021 2:23 pm
Good find Eric!
The older recipes for Boddies, with the flaked maize and sugars remind me of the approach with some of your beers (same kind of head they promoted in the advert too, in the latter years).
I’m going to try out one of the 50’s/70’s recipes after my next brew, it’s been on my radar to try for a while but this has given my a bit of a nudge.
The find was new for me, only looking when reading your link to Ron P's blog.

Thank you for your kind comment on my beers, but as you suggest, they are just an attempt at recreating beers of that period and of my youth. Those generally were Northern (including Scottish from around Edinburgh) Pale and with a good balance of hops with a few ounces added dry to each cask. Then even darker beers were frequently brewed pale with colour added at racking. Grist would often be 70 to 80% pale malt with the rest of adjunct and sugar, which is how I presently make virtually all but specialist beers.

The preferred adjunct pre WWII was flaked maize, with lower nitrogen and haze reducing properties, but that soon became unavailable to British Brewers. The government however required brewers to use adjuncts to save the energy used in malting and flaked barley was mostly used. With fears for food shortages the government demanded oats be used in place of barley, but fortunately, as those who have used a lot of oats knows, was thankfully short-lived when fortunes in the Battle of the Atlantic turned. After the war, flaked maize retuned as the preferred option. Now, by observation, it seems the most popular adjunct might be torrified wheat, but by and large, many newer breweries use none.

I use all available adjuncts and often a mix of several when tidying my stock and similarly with sugar. A bag of barley can be bought for a quarter of what I must pay for malt. A Kg bag of sugar suitably treated, is not only cheaper and different, but allows the production of bigger or stronger brews than the mash tun can otherwise produce.

I'm surprised that Boddington's didn't use any adjunct in that period.
Without patience, life becomes difficult and the sooner it's finished, the better.

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