Old Peculier

close... but no cigar

This beer was the challenge for the December Brew Club meeting - i.e. brew a clone of Theakston’s most famous dark beer. In the time-honoured fashion I left it until the last minute, sampled a load of recipes off the interweb, looked into my inventory of materials and came up with a cunning plan / recipe. Then changed my mind a bit half-way through brewing it. Or forgot stuff. Most of the recipes called for some combination of molasses sugar (muscovado), golden syrup and black treacle so I got all three. This is to add “dark” alcoholic strength without adding too much body. In this case I used MJ’s “English Ale” yeast coz it’s a classic english ale.

Theakston’s Old Peculier is currently rated at 5.6% ABV. It is classed as a strong ale, although 5.6% these days isn’t particularly strong. ISTR that back in the 70’s it was only sold in half-pints in certain pubs, and Theakston’s website says it used to be called “lunatic broth” - was it stronger back then?

Anyway my version has only managed to reach 5.0%

Did I mention that I forgot about adding the muscovado, and only used half a tin each of the treacle and golden syrup. I know what I’m going to do next time I brew this - chuck it all in!

Interestingly I was unable to find any Old Peculier on draught anywhere close to home but did find some in a midlands Wetherspoons shortly after I’d bottled mine (and tasted it). The original was a fair bit sweeter with a different balance of dark tastes. BTW - adding the extra syrups and sugars won’t make a sweeter result as all those sugars will just ferment out and make it higher alcohol. To make it sweeter I need to add (or have added) more dark speciality malts with unfermentable sugars. There are already SIX different malts in this recipe. Maybe I need more.

OG = 1051, FG = 1014 (pretty sweet!) => 5.0% ABV

Part of my “design” was to chuck in some wheat malt to give it a bit of a head… mission accomplished there I think:

Theakstons say they make theirs with “two bitter hops combined with the majestic and noble Fuggles hop”. Well so did I so I don’t see any reason to change that in any re-brew.

My tasting notes are that this is a very easy drinking dark reddish brown ale, slightly sweet, nice and malty with a hint of chocolate but no coffee. I fancy the Theakstons version had more of a licorice twist to it, but I’d need to do a side-by-side tasting. And I’d call it sessionable rather than being a strong sipping ale. Finish one, immediately fancy another.

So all in all a successful brew in its own right, but a bit off its target of being an O.P. clone. However I know what to do to have a better shot at it.