Sorry to chime in late to this discussion. I too have been trying to replicate both the XXX and the IPA recipes. I drank a lot of XXX in the late 60s and the 70s, so I have some residual memory of the taste. Unhappily, I have no clue what the IPA was like, never having had one.
My recipe, as you will see, has been vetted by a former employee of the brewery that now owns the Ballantine name and beer. He also developed a replica recipe when he worked for a microbrewery in the Northwest. I have made this six times now, and am still trying to get it right in terms of color and flavors. Also, I want to distill some BG hops to try the hop oil addition, because that is really the signature of this old departed ale.
I was able to track down a gentleman who was brewer for Pabst, the owner of the Ballantine name now. He had access to the recipes for XXX and the IPA. I did not ask him for exact details, since that info is proprietary to Pabst. He was gracious enough to answer two series of questions from me, and to review my first recipe. Here is what he had to say, edited slightly by me to create a summary of his information:
“Between actual knowledge of the product, my perception and all my years of product formulation, here are my hypotheses:
O.G. 11.5-12.0 plato
A.E. 2.3-2.5 plato (I assume A.E. final gravity)
Adjunct ratio 20-30% (corn grits)
Malt would almost have to have been 100% 6 row Eastern seaboard brewery)
No color malt
B.U. would have been much lower than your figures, 20-25 IBU at most, perhaps lower (I had used 40 IBU based on other information). As for hop additions, I used a fair amount of hops at kettle K.O. (for additional aroma) and from which you will not get a lot of isomerization and used enough in the first two additions to get the required B.U.'s
This was a very easy drinking beer. Ballantine used a real ale yeast (as did Narragansett). My guess is that fermentation temperature would have been in the low 60's F followed by 2 weeks in ruh at 32F.
The outstanding feature of this product was the hop aroma which came from hop oil distilled at the brewery. I gleaned this from the head of brewing operations at rival Rheingold.
The regular Ballantine was a light refreshing, easy drinking beer with a very strong hop aroma. The hops used were Brewers Gold. There is only one grower left in the U.S. planting Brewers Gold (for one of the two remaining large Canadian brewers...actually one is Belgian and the other American at this point). These are the hops I used at Portland Brewing.
We did distill our own oil at first but later found a place in the U.K. that extracts the oil with liquid CO2 at 5000 psi, and this method, without heat, produced a much purer, better flavored and aromatic oil. We mixed pellets with water and heated it with an open flame...our excellent engineering staff built a beautiful stainless steel condenser. The oil floated on the top of the distillate and had to be pipetted off. I don't know what Ballantine used for a still.
I grew up in Rhode Island (drank Ballantine for several years from Newark before that brewery closed) and was hoping to latch on to a position at Narragansett (I knew some of the people there) but ended up working for Huber, Anchor, and was brewmaster for Heileman, Miller/Leinenkugel (Milwaukee), Portland, Schell's and Pabst Asia.”
That’s it for the XXX, he had this to say about the Ballantine IPA.
“The beer that was 40-50 IBU was the Ballantine IPA which did not seem to have hop oil and was aged one year in wood. This was a very bitter beer with a noticeable oak character and a slightly vinous/solventy note, quite bitter but with not a lot of hop aroma. This beer was reddish in color and so did contain some color malts.”
So, based on his input, here is my recipe for XXX attempt number 2. Target was 6 gallons in BK at end of boil.
Target OG = 48
8.0 lbs. Six row malt
2.5 lbs. Flaked maize
HOP ADDITION NUMBER 1 NUMBER 2 NUMBER 3
HOP TYPE Perle Brewers Gold Brewers Gold
WEIGHT (GRAMS) 20 18 45
WEIGHT (OUNCES) 0.7 0.53 2.01
% ALPHA ACID 8 7.4 7.4
BOIL TIME (MIN) 60 30 0
IBU CONTRIBUTION 18 8.7 0
TOTAL IBUs 26.7
Single infusion mash temperature 152 F, 60 minutes. Batch sparge, because that's what I do. I used leaf Perle because I need some leaf hops for efficient wort straining through my hop screen, and they seem to give a clean bitterness.
Cheers!
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