Pre 95 Boddingtons anyone ?

[Northern_Brewer]

They were certainly dry-hopping in the 19th century, and were well aware of hop creep :
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/search/label/dry hopping
But you're typically only getting a couple of points out of hop creep, it's hard to imagine getting >91% attenuation without a diastatic yeast.

 

[Sadfield]

They were certainly dry-hopping in the 19th century, and were well aware of hop creep :
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/search/label/dry hopping
But you're typically only getting a couple of points out of hop creep, it's hard to imagine getting >91% attenuation without a diastatic yeast.

But you were referencing 82% attenuation as being in diastatic territory. Hop creep would be more plausible, no?

 

[An Ankoù]

I wonder, when we consider that pitching rates for yeast are in billions of cells per litre and these multiply exponentially, what is the probability of a single cell mutating to present the STA1 gene when it's parent cell did not.
I wonder, too, whether other off flavours or presumed infections could be caused through mutation.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

But you were referencing 82% attenuation as being in diastatic territory. Hop creep would be more plausible, no?

Could be either, I'm not sure you can say one is more plausible than the other unless eg "draught" Stones is referring to the keg version which wasn't dry-hopped AFAIK so will definitely not have seen hop creep. And you've got to be careful applying modern ideas on "normal" attenuations to beers made with historical malts with less extract than modern ones, also on looking at Ron's numbers and assuming they're the FG of beer on the bar when in many cases they are racking gravities which will be a bit higher (and so attenuation will be a bit lower).

So I'm not trying to be too definite either way - but we know Beer2 "saison" yeasts are used in some UK breweries today, and many Beer2 yeasts are diastatic.

Edit: I meant to add, there's some 1950 barley wines over 90% here :
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2016/11/tennants-gold-label-part-two.html

 

[peebee]

On the pursuit of Boddingtons:

I gave up looking for "alternatives" to the 1971 recipe (that Ron Pattinson dug up and was linked into this thread by @Northern_Brewer). @Hanglow suggested Bass/Worthington brews were also very highly attenuated, but the "very highly attenuated" (which I take to mean FG 1.003-1.004) ones were only dotted about the records Ron P. publishes. Perhaps the Boddington's "very highly attenuated" bitters were the same (i.e. occasional "blips")? But following this line of thought I came across this:

Boddington beers after WW II

... the important bit being "A big increase in the rate of attenuation means that Boddington Bitter remained over 4% ABV, despite the reduction in gravity", this following the WWII bombing in December 1940 that put the brewery out of action for a few months and presumably is the moment the yeast from Tadcaster was brought in? So this implies "very high attenuation" was more than just a blip in the case of Boddington's?

This was what interested me! A beer of FG 1.007-1.008 wouldn't interest me; I know I wont like it. But a beer of FG 1.003-1.004 transcends my definition of "beer" and is in (dry) "Saison" territory. Now that'll be worth trying!

Pre-war Boddington's (e.g. Shut up about Barclay Perkins: Let's Brew Wednesday - 1939 Boddington IP ) has nothing exceptional to persuade me to try it.

I wouldn't be brewing such a beer this side of next May, so I'm stopping my search for alternatives just now: The Boddington's 1971 recipe looks fairly standard for that time* (apart from the FG!) so I don't really need an "alternative".


* i.e. Small additions of flaked maize, "enzymic" malt, sugar; in place of 100% pale malt. Goldings and Fuggles hops still dominating with inclusion of American hops (Clusters) getting rarer.

 

[foxbat]

The characteristics being bandied about here such as "creamy" and "high attenuation" are exactly how I'd describe the Brewlab Yorkshire strain that I'm using at the moment. It really is like no other I've tried and I wish I knew its origin.