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While I'm on my whole 1950's thing, I thought I'd throw in some recipes, too. It's thirsty work doing all this number shuffling.

This is an odd beer. On the label, it's billed as a "Extra Brown Ale". Which I suppose it sort of is. Though it could equally be called a Burton. The base brew is X Ale, or Hock, Fullers standard Mild. Because obviously this was a parti-gyle. That's just the way Fullers operated. And the quantity of Old Harry being brewed was quite small - just 60 barrels, along with 480 barrels of X. Still, that's a huge volume compared to OBE in the 1930's. I don't think I've seen a batch bigger than five or six barrels.. The smallest are only one or two barrels.

I was a bit surprised by the lack of crystal malt in the recipe. I would have expected that. Instead it's just pale malt, flaked maize and sugar.

A word about the sugar. The original is No. 2 Invert, PTX and Intense. I'm not totally sure what the composition of the latter two was. I know Intense was pretty dark, probably a mix of invert sugar and caramel. PTX I haven't a clue about. So I've specified No. 3 invert and caramel as a substitute. It should get you somewhere in the right area.

There are no details of the hops, other than that they are English. A Fuggle's/Goldings combination seems a fair enough guess. Feel free to use any English hops that take your fancy.

Brown Ale is another one of those terms used inconsistently. As you'll see when I finally get my arse in gear and look at my Brown Ale analyses. There a couple of pretty different variations.





Right, time to pass you over to . . . me, again . . . . .








1955 Fullers Old Harry
pale malt 7.75 lb 73.81%
flaked maize 1.00 lb 9.52%
No.2 invert 1.25 lb 11.90%
No.2 invert 0.50 lb 4.76%
caramel 1.00 oz
Fuggles 90 min 0.75 oz
Goldings 60 min 0.75 oz
Goldings 30 min 0.75 oz
OG 1051
FG 1015
ABV 4.76
Apparent attenuation 70.59%
IBU 30
SRM 24
Mash at 150º F
Sparge at 166º F
Boil time 90 minutes
pitching temp 61º F
Yeast Wyeast 1968 London ESB or
White Labs WLP002 English Ale




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