Aylesbury IPA breaks its duck

A strong India Pale Ale, based on a Victorian recipe and matured for more than five months, has been unveiled at the Hop Pole pub in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. The beer was brewed at my request by Simon Smith and David Renton, using the Aylesbury Brewhouse Company plant at the back of the pub: ABC is a subsidiary of the Vale Brewery in Brill, where Smith and Renton also brew.

The beer is called Sink or Swim, a name with allusions to Aylesbury ducks, the long-dead Aylesbury Brewery whose logo was also a duck, and the arduous sea voyage to India enjoyed by IPAs in the 19^th century.

The original ABC was bought and closed by Ind Coope 74 years ago. When I opened the new ABC last December, I was invited by the two brewers to produce my own beer on their plant. I plumped for an IPA that I could feature in my forthcoming book 300 More Beers to Try Before You Die. We brewed the beer in February, using – with permission – a recipe for a Victorian IPA from the Durden Park Beer Circle that recreates old beers. We reduced both the strength and hop levels of the original but the finished beer, at 6.8% and with 80 units of bitterness, is still exceptionally strong and hoppy by modern standards and is sold only in half pints in the Hop Pole.

Sink or Swim was brewed using all English ingredients: Maris Otter pale malt and Fuggles and Goldings hops. Seven barrels were brewed, using 13 bags of malt, each one containing 25 kilos of grain. The brewing liquor was Burtonised with sulphates to replicate the waters of Burton-on-Trent, the ancestral home of IPA in the 19^th century. Following a 90 minute mash, the wort was boiled for 85 minutes with a 50-50 blend of Fuggles and Goldings. Further hops were added to the copper just before the end of the boil and there was a final addition of hops in the fermenter.

Fermentation lasted for a traditional “two Sabbaths” or seven days and the beer was then left to condition for five months. We deliberately chose to allow the beer to age for that period in order to follow the length of a sea journey to India in Victorian times.

The finished beer has a pale bronze colour, with “lemon jelly” fruit on the nose, powerful hop resins, a rich malt loaf grain character and a hint of butterscotch and fresh tobacco. Tart and tangy orange and lemon fruit build in the mouth, with chewy malt, intensely bitter hops and a continuing hint of butterscotch. The finish is bittersweet to start but becomes dry with contributions from tart fruit, butterscotch/toffee, malt loaf and a quinine-like bitterness.

It’s a wonderfully refreshing beer and the hint of sweetness from the malt chimes with my belief that the 19^th-century IPAs would have had some sweetness to satisfy the Raj in India, who were also great drinkers of Hock and other sweetish wines.

The beer is on sale until next weekend at the Hop Pole – 83 Bicester Road, Aylesbury, HP19 9AZ: 01296 482129 – but a new batch will be brewed and will be bottled in time for Christmas. It will be available by mail order from the shop attached to the pub. There’s a typo on the current pump clip: the beer is called Indian Pale Ale and I’m sure this will be corrected when the second batch is ready for sale.

Photos by Alexander Wright.