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Tony’s Pre-1970 Boddington’s Clone Recipe

Tony Leach is a home brewer based in Stockport and got in touch with us a while back for input on his attempts to clone Golden Age Boddington’s.

He had alread hashed it out pretty thoroughly on the Jim’s Beer Kit messageboard, including comments from Ron Pattinson, before we exchanged a few emails debating hop varieties, whether it was necessary to use any brewing sugars, and so on. He also spoke to someone who used to work at the brewery (on the phone, having been put through by the pub landlord) who advised him to use Nottingham dried yeast rather than the liquid strain that is supposedly the Boddington’s strain.

Boddington's clone just before fermenting.
A sample of Tony’s clone after cooling, before fermenting. SOURCE: Tony Leach.

Here’s the recipe Tony eventually came up with:

Old Boddies Pre-1970
English Pale Ale

Recipe Specs
------------

Batch Size (litres): 23
Total Grain (kg): 3.425
Total Hops (g): 54
Original Gravity: 1.036
Final Gravity: 1.006
Alcohol by Volume: 3.93%
Colour (SRM/EBC): 6.6/13
Bitterness (IBU): 28.7
Efficiency: 75%
Boil Time: 75 mins

Grain
-----
2.5 kg Maris Otter Malt (73%)
0.5 kg Pilsner Malt (14.6%)
0.2 kg Golden Syrup (5.8%)
80g Carapils (Dextrine) (2.3%)
80g Torrefied Wheat (2.3%)
60g Flaked Corn (1.9%)

Hops
----
24g Northern Brewer (7.8% Alpha) @ 75 mins
24g Goldings (5.5% Alpha) @ 15 mins
6g Goldings (5.5% Alpha) for dry hop

Misc
----
Single-step infusion mash at 65°C for 90 mins; mash PH adjusted to 5.3.
Fermented at 18°C with Danstar Nottingham dried yeast
Water: 'Stockport corporation pop dechlorinated with a crushy.'

This is his interpretation of the information at hand with some tweaks to suit modern materials and methods, with the primary success criterion being not complete historical verisimilitude but something more practical: the approval of some local drinkers who remembered Boddington’s at its best.

He brewed batches aiming for 28 and 30 IBUs but says:

Had the 28 IBU brew on at my local last night. For some reason it was only around 98% bright but that did not put people off having a go. Generally, it went down very well and brought some memories back for a few of the older boys. It’s dry — very dry, leaves you thirsty. Twenty-eight IBU is perfect, I would not go more. The dryness gets you and the bitterness hits the throat just right.

He’s keen for others to give his recipe a go; we will certainly be doing so later in the year.

4 replies on “Tony’s Pre-1970 Boddington’s Clone Recipe”

If anyone has the water profile from the aquifer Boddies (and most of the other Manchester breweries used) please post it as this would help get the recipe bang on. The recipe above i used just Northern Brewer and Goldings hops, however here is the list of hops Boddies used to use from the same period. If you want to experiment further this should help.

Fuggles, Goldings, Whitbread Goldings Varieties, Styrian Goldings, Northern Brewers and Bramling Cross.

Remember they will have used mixtures of these varieties when hop harvests might have failed etc, I settled on Northern Brewers and Goldings as the percentages given in the original recipe published by Boak and Bailey worked well well with them and gave the correct bitterness etc.

Also this recipe is NOT the late 1980 to 1990’s recipe, that one has a far simpler grain bill although hops should be similar.

Tony

Also PH was adjusted with gypsum and PH5.2 buffer to give 5.3 in the mash.

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