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This is a beer you may possibly have heard of. I’ve heard it’s quite popular.

It certainly is with Dolores. Pride is her preferred drink, when in London. Though you’ll notice that the brewhouse name wasn’t LP, as in later logs, but SPA. Which presumably stands for Special Pale Ale. I’m not sure exactly when it was introduced, but it seems to have been sometime in the early 1950’s. Something called Best PA appears in the Whitbread Gravity Book in 1951. It looks very similar to Pride in gravity. The first mention of London Pride in the Gravity Book is in 1953.

Many brewers took the opportunity to introduce a stronger Bitter in the 1950’s. Wartime restrictions had killed forced Bitters to drop below 4% ABV. Both Watney and Youngs called theirs Special Bitter, beers of a similar strength to London Pride. They sold for 2d a pint more than Ordinary Bitter. A premium I’d be willing to pay for the extra oomph.

It’s a simple recipe. Which I’ve made even simpler by replacing the glucose and the proprietary sugar PEX with more No.2 invert. The sugar content is quite low. 10% to 15% was more usual. In case wondering, the current version of London Pride has quite a different grist. Fullers now brew all-malt. There’s 5% crystal malt, 0.25% chocolate malt and the rest is pale malt.

The original mashing scheme was an underlet mash. It started at 144º F and stood for half an hour. There was then an underlet that raised the temperature to 152º F and it was stood for 2 hours. Feel free to replicate that if you want to go for full authenticity.



That’s all I can think of so over to me for the recipe . . . . .



1958 Fullers SPA
pale malt 7.75 lb 79.49%
flaked maize 1.50 lb 15.38%
no. 2 sugar 0.50 lb 5.13%
Fuggles 90 min 1.00 oz
Fuggles 60 min 0.75 oz
Goldings 30 min 0.75 oz
OG 1043.2
FG 1011.4
ABV 4.21
Apparent attenuation 73.61%
IBU 34
SRM 12
Mash at 152º F
Sparge at 165º F
Boil time 90 minutes
pitching temp 60º F
Yeast WLP002 English Ale



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