First beer I drunk at a pub (in the lakes) and used to attempt to brew all grain clones back in the 70-80s! Even back then there was rumours it contained (primed with) treacle. I remember in my attempts replacing the treacle with molasses and later molasses sugar, and I also replaced black malt with chocolate malt.
More recently I started on a more sophisticated clone recipe. it came from "British Brewer" but appears to have gone now. There was rumours of it using "Belgium" yeast and I made the mistake of trying "Safbrew Abbey", a highly attenuative, and fast, yeast. Fermented down to 7%ABV (target was 5.7) in two days.
Needed plenty of time to mature, and had an interesting flavour that was not at all like OP!
I'll try again soon with a less dramatic yeast (Safbrew T-58, which still is very "estery", or even S-33). The recipe I had which I'll stick to is:
(Thomas Fawcett malt to be "authentic")
85.2% Pale malt
4.8% Crystal malt
1.2% Chocolate malt
1.0% Torrified wheat (they like a good head in Yorkshire)
0.8% Black malt
4.4% Dark candi sugar
1.9% Lyle's golden syrup
0.8% Molasses
21 IBU Fuggles
6 IBU Fuggles (last 20 minute of boil)
