Im gonna have to look for this beer and give it a shot .
Boddington's Pub Ale clone without nitro?
- Thread starter snarf7
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Northern_Brewer
British - apparently some US company stole my name
Err - the 1987 version I posted above came from Ron. And the IPA *is* the standard bitter, it retained the original name within the brewery, even if it was marketed as bitter - qv Greene King IPA, which most people would consider a bitter but is a true IPA, inasmuch as it has its roots dating back to the Empire and is a true reflection of how British beer has altered since that time. Before WWI Boddies was all about mild, the IPA was only 3% or so of production, that grew to around a quarter by WWII and is now 100% of sales in the UK.
It's not the US Boddies that she's after :
Don't expect to find the real deal here - the cask version was outsourced and then abandoned, so you'll only find it on keg, which never suits traditional British styles. Beers like Marble Bitter on cask are more successful interpretions of the Manchester style of bitter - and arguably Track Sonoma is the true inheritor of the mantle, despite being made mostly with Centennial.
If you want a creamy head on draught then you want cask beer with a tight sparkler, failing that nitro keg. CO2 kegs just don't come out right.
pym99
Active Member
There around two issues here: the recipe and the conditioning/dispense. Unless your SIL has a very refined palate and tons of experience tasting different British ordinary bitters, the SMaSH recipe below should taste to her a lot like the Boddington's Pub Ale we get in the widget cans here in the US. The key flavors are the English Pale malt and the English hops, in about the right ratio. The cask-conditioning will produce an effect more like Nitro dispense than regular, artificially-carbonated kegged beer.
Recipe. I would brew a super simple SMaSH recipe with a true British Pale Ale malt (like Maris Otter or Golden Promise) and EKG. I would adjust quantities for your system to target an OG of 1038 or so and 25 IBUs, with 2/3 of hops at 60 min and 1/3 at 10 min. Add 3 tsp Irish moss or 1 Whirfloc tablet at 15 minutes. I would go with Wyeast 1098 or another English strain with moderate attenuation. Start fermentation at 65 and ramp up to 68-70 by day 5. No dry hops or hop stand additions, no finings, no filtering.
Conditioning/dispense. I would wait for the beer to reach FG in the primary and then cask-condition in the keg with priming sugar targeting around 1.5-1.8 volumes, i.e. using about 2.5 oz of corn sugar boiled in a pint or so of water. Keep the keg at fermentation temps (65-72) for 2 weeks. Cold crash in fridge for a few days. Just before serving, vent keg to release excess pressure, connect to CO2 at 5 psi, and serve at 50-55 F. (Or, bottle-condition to achieve 2.0 volumes.) When you first tap the keg, you will have a lot of tiny, very dense CO2 bubbles from the cask-conditioning that will take a while to settle. Over the next week or so, as you dispense canned C02 will make its way in and the carbonation will become more coarse and it will settle more quickly, losing its cask-conditioned character. However, by keeping the PSI at 5, you will avoid over-carbonating the beer and are essentially using the minimum possible artificial CO2 to push the beer out and blanketed in CO2. It will still be tasty; it just won't mimic the nitro effect any more.
Recipe. I would brew a super simple SMaSH recipe with a true British Pale Ale malt (like Maris Otter or Golden Promise) and EKG. I would adjust quantities for your system to target an OG of 1038 or so and 25 IBUs, with 2/3 of hops at 60 min and 1/3 at 10 min. Add 3 tsp Irish moss or 1 Whirfloc tablet at 15 minutes. I would go with Wyeast 1098 or another English strain with moderate attenuation. Start fermentation at 65 and ramp up to 68-70 by day 5. No dry hops or hop stand additions, no finings, no filtering.
Conditioning/dispense. I would wait for the beer to reach FG in the primary and then cask-condition in the keg with priming sugar targeting around 1.5-1.8 volumes, i.e. using about 2.5 oz of corn sugar boiled in a pint or so of water. Keep the keg at fermentation temps (65-72) for 2 weeks. Cold crash in fridge for a few days. Just before serving, vent keg to release excess pressure, connect to CO2 at 5 psi, and serve at 50-55 F. (Or, bottle-condition to achieve 2.0 volumes.) When you first tap the keg, you will have a lot of tiny, very dense CO2 bubbles from the cask-conditioning that will take a while to settle. Over the next week or so, as you dispense canned C02 will make its way in and the carbonation will become more coarse and it will settle more quickly, losing its cask-conditioned character. However, by keeping the PSI at 5, you will avoid over-carbonating the beer and are essentially using the minimum possible artificial CO2 to push the beer out and blanketed in CO2. It will still be tasty; it just won't mimic the nitro effect any more.
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