Brewing with Roger Protz

Ahead of the release of his forthcoming book on the history of India Pale Ales, UBREW teamed up with beer legend Roger Protz for a collaboration brew.

A Brief History of IPA from Roger

India Pale Ale, as the name suggests, was a beer designed for travel. It was brewed for export to India and other outposts of the British Empire in the 19th century. The first brewery to develop a beer for the India trade was called Hodgson who had the good fortune to be based at Bow Bridge in East London, close to the docks where ships sailed for India.

But Hodgson made the mistake of annoying the mighty East India Company by not paying his bills. As a result the company suggested to a Burton brewer named Allsopp that he should brew a similar beer for the India trade. Allsopp was able to brew a far better beer than Hodgson for export to India and soon he and other brewers in the town, including Bass and Worthington, were sending large amounts of beer to India.

“Burton brewers, unlike London ones, had the advantage of remarkable water in the Trent Valley, rich in sulphates, which are flavour enhancers and brought out the full flavours of malt and hops.”

The Recipe

The beer we brewed is an IPA based on an old recipe from Bass Brewery which actually dates back to the Victorian era. Think classic English IPA with an emphasis on the ‘classic’. With this brief in mind the team set to coming up with an exact recipe which would work with our equipment and availability of ingredients. Following some liaising with Roger and a few minor tweaks we settled on the recipe above. We replaced Halcyon pale malt from the original recipe with Maris Otter for a smoother finish, and Progress hops with Fuggles as was Roger’s wish.

“The beer I am keen to reproduce was brewed in the early 1990s but was based on Bass recipes dating back to the 19th century.”

The Brew

The brew day itself was very much plain sailing. Roger began by declaring his limited history of homebrewing to be “utterly hopeless” and suggested I take the lead on brewing. I wouldn’t let him get off that easily, and ensured he got stuck in with every aspect of the brew, although I let him off most of the cleaning.

We mashed in at around 68 degrees to ensure the final beer has a rich full body and let the mash do it’s thing for 45 minutes. We added a teaspoon of Gypsum (found naturally in Burton water as well as Magnesium or Epsom Salts) to the mash which will help pronounce hop flavours in the final beer. This was followed by a 15 minute Vorlauf (recirculating the wort for clarity) and then Sparge (rinsing residual sugars from the grains).

We then transferred to our boil kettle and added our 320g of hops (clearly the Victorian didn’t mess around when it came to hops!). 200g of Fuggles and EKG went in at 60 minutes to achieve a whooping bitterness of 83IBUs. The remaining hops went in the last 10 minutes for flavour and aroma.

Pitching and Fermentation

Finally we cooled the wort, transferred it to the fermenter and pitched the yeast — a strain from Burton upon Trent which “provides delicious subtle fruity flavours like apple, clover honey and pear.”

With the brew day over, the beer will spend 3 weeks in the fermenter before being transferred into an oak barrel for 3 months of ageing. There are even rumours afloat that the barrel may spend some time on a boat for that authentic India Pale Ale experience.

Whatever happens, we can’t wait to try this historic beer when it’s ready in September!