Visit the Shut up about Barclay Perkins site

A lovely simple Boddies Bitter recipe from just after WW I. That’s good, as it means I have far less to bullshit about than usual.

Surprisingly, it’s not much weaker than the 1914 version, which was 1053º. Lucky Mancunians to have had their Bitter so little emasculated by the war.

There are a mere three elements: base malt, flaked maize and a single type of sugar. There were two types of pale malt, one described as “Holes ”, the other as simply “Foreign”. The former I’m hoping/guessing came from my hometown, Newark. Holes being the name of one of the town’s breweries. And the only brewery I’ve ever worked in. As opposed to hanging around while others do the work and tipping a few hops into the copper. I know from other records, that Boddington did use malt from Newark. Not so strange as Newark was a major malting time.

The hopping was pretty damn complicated, using six hops in the copper and three in the cask. Pacific hops from the 1920 and 1921 harvests, English hops from 1920, 1921, 1921 and 1922. The dry hops were Pacific hops from 1921, with English hops from 1921 and 1922.


1922 Boddington IP
pale malt 8.25 lb 76.74%
flaked maize 1.75 lb 16.28%
No. 2 invert sugar 0.75 lb 6.98%
Cluster 130 mins 1.00 oz
Fuggles 90 mins 1.00 oz
Goldings 30 mins 1.00 oz
Goldings dry hops 0.33 oz
OG 1048
FG 1015
ABV 4.37
Apparent attenuation 68.75%
IBU 46
SRM 6
Mash at 154º F
Sparge at 168º F
Boil time 130 minutes
pitching temp 62º F
Yeast Wyeast 1318 London ale III (Boddingtons)




More...