Boddingtons Bitter (once the cream of Manchester) comes in two varieties, the bland and insipid keg variety and the oh so wonderful Cask variety.
For those of you who do not know the difference between the two the keg variety is a dead beer meaning that there is no live yeast in the product and all conditioning is done at the brewery.
The Cask conditioned variety contains live yeast and variety is conditioned in the cellar by the publican, there are also some additional hops in the barrel to improve the flavor. Ok to cask condition a beer takes a little but not much skill. You store the barrels in the upright position and about 2 to 3 days before it gets tapped (I will explain that later) you drop it onto its side and give at a good roll around the cellar. This shoogles up all the sediment and helps remind the yeast that it needs to do some work. This is called secondary fermentation.
A couple of days later the barrels is tapped this consists of battering a plastic peg into an aperture on the Side of the barrel which means that the carbon dioxide from the secondary fermentation is used to provide the gas in the beer. At this time the keg also has the Tap battered into it which is why it is called tapping. The beer is now ready to serve but a couple more days conditioning does no harm. Ideally the barrel should be emptied within 2 to 4 days after tapping. Some additional gas is injected into the beer as it is pumped, this adds some life to the beer, and helps prevent beer - gas separation in the lines which causes uncontrolled frothing.
What does all this have to do with Boddies well in the pub I work in this is how we serve up the stuff, and it was dam good I got 18 out of 20 from a Boddies mystery customer for my beer. The only thing I got put down on was being half a degree too warm, but I never saw the calibration certificate on his thermometer.
Anyway Boddies served in this manner was a fairly refreshing drink, flat by lager drinker’s standards but about normal by beer drinker’s standards. It had a nutty taste, with a fairly subtle aroma but was fairly smooth and I'd say it is more like a Scottish Heavy than and English Bitter, alcohol strength is in the 4 % mark. Now the problems with this beer started at around the time that the announcements that the parent company was going to close down the Strangeways Brewery and shift production to Wales, there was a noticeable drop in quality at this time the reasons for this I do not know, but it does not take a brilliant mind to work it out. This resulted in a lot of our regular Boddies customers switching To John Smiths. In the time since the last barrel to roll out of the strangeways brewery their has been a noticeable improvement in quality, could this be that the Welsh have learnt how to make the stuff, but the damage to the brand has already been done....
Boddingtons kept well is a great pint, but I do feel that the closure of the strangeways brewery is an absolute disgrace, 200 years of brewing history destroyed by greed. The fact the Boddies is a Manchester beer should have secured the future of the workers at Strangeways for generations to come, and I for one will not drink it again. It is obscene that the parent company used Manchester to advertise the beer and then did this to the people of the city; Boddies will never be the same now that it has been taken out of this city.
Farewell to Boddingtons beer we had many a good night together, I will miss you.
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