A Bitter of light colour

[BigEd]

Brewed this last Saturday with some thoughts of Boddington's, at least in the colour and gravity department. With the demise of the Strangeways Brewery I was unable to find any reliable info on ingredients so this one just relied on some ideas from friends and guesswork. The Boddington's available in the US is most often in the half litre nitro cans so I can only dream about having had a pint in Manchester back in the day. Cheers!

38 Litre batch

5 Kg Munton's pale malt
225g Crystal 20L
450g homemade golden invert syrup
450g torrified wheat

28g Fuggles @ 75 minutes
28g Goldings @ 60 minutes
28g WGV @ 10 minutes

WhiteLabs WLP-013 ale yeast

[iowalad]

Sounds tasty.

Let us know how it turns out.

[nobby]

I presume some one is making Boddies under licence now? It does seem to have fallen out of favour down south at least, I can't recall seeing it on tap for sometime, perhaps i'm not looking hard enough though.

Its all part of the whitebread/Interbrew company. Its available on draft in plastic chav style pubs along side carling and Stella. Its rubbish comparied to what it used to be. I grew up in my teens and early 20 only drinking it. Preston used to be awash with boddies pubs. I must admit to thinking of brewing a clone if one available.

Biged's recipe does seam a bit under hopped from what it used to taste like. It was never had a high ABV used to be around 3.3% but had a very strong flavour.

[iowalad]

I had it on cask once in 2006 in Broadway (Worcestershire?). It seemed okay to me but every Englishman assures me it is complete crap compared to its glory days.

I used Graham's recipe tweaking the hops so they came out to 37 IBUs using Tinseth. I rather liked the WGV for hops - pity they have disappeared around here. I still have a few ounces though.

[oblivious]

It defiantly was cask and not one of those fake hand pumps?

[iowalad]

I believe it was cask so but I wouldn't be difficult to fool.
As I understand it InBev contracts the cask to a brewery in Manchester (Hydes?) and the kegged stuff is made elsewhere (Wales maybe?).

Definitely was different than the pub ale we ge in the nitro can here in the states.

[nobby]

I believe it was cask so but I wouldn't be difficult to fool.
As I understand it InBev contracts the cask to a brewery in Manchester (Hydes?) and the kegged stuff is made elsewhere (Wales maybe?).

Definitely was different than the pub ale we ge in the nitro can here in the states.

made a Samsbury in Preston

[iowalad]

Boddingtons Bitter courtesy of Graham Wheeler's Brew Your Own British Ale

25 liters 23 liters
OG 1035
Pale malt 3,510g 3,230g
Crystal 190g 175g
White Sugar 125g 125g

Start of boil
WGV 77g 70g

Last 15 minutes of the boil
Golding 10g 10g
Fuggle 5g 5g
Irish Moss 10g 10g

Mash 66C, 90 minutes
Boil time: 90 minutes
Racking Gravity: 1008
ABV: 3.7%
Bitterness units: 37
Color: 14 EBC, 7 SRM

[BigEd]

Thanks for posting that recipe, iowalad. I just did some rough math on my recipe and it looks to be about 1.040 OG, ~24IBU and is a light golden color. I took a sample from the fermenter earlier tonight and it tastes pretty good. The beer is only six days old and it has some yeasty/sulphur qualities but seems to show good promise.

[tribs]

The mass produced Boddies is cr@p.

iowalad is correct, the cask version is brewed under license by Hydes (Still in Manchester) and is pretty good.

It seemed okay to me but every Englishman assures me it is complete crap compared to its glory days

I cannot compare it to the glory days as I never experienced them but I bet a lot of them have never tried a well kept pint of the Hydes cask version and are using the commercial keg/can version for their comparison.

FYI, there is a recipe in Beer Captured that suggests using a tiny amount of black malt.

[Jrevillug]

The mass produced on is crap because it doesn't use sampls of the manchester ship canal

[nobby]

Found this on the Northern Craft Brewers web site

We ran a competition if July 2006 with the aim of reproducing Boddies as it was in 'the good old days' (late sixties-early seventies). The closest was judged to be that brewed by Thomas Yates of Cheshire using this recipe.

For 23-l (5 gal)

3.5 kg pale malt (I used M.O.)
112 g crystal malt 120 EBC
200 g white sugar

75 g W.G.V. 6% AA
20 g Fuggles 5% AA

Brupaks ale yeast.

Mash at 66 degC (150 degF) for 90 minutes
I sparged down to 1005

Boil all W.G.V. for 90 minutes
15 g Fuggles for 60 minutes and
5 g Fuggles at end of boil and steep for 20 minutes before cooling

I add the sugar to the fermenter to improve efficiency as I do not hop sparge.
Ferment as cool as possible for the yeast used and rack and fine at 1/4 gravity.
Leave for a week in secondary then prime with white sugar and keg /or bottle in your normal manner.

Best drunk young and fresh as possible just like the real thing. Approx. 3.8 % ABV

Enjoy, Thomas.