Dark Mild Grainbills (reference)

[seymour]

I've never used more than 4-6 oz per 5 gal batch, even in high-grav stouts. It's rummy and tasty, but easily overwhelming.

[FUBAR]

I filled a couple of kegs and a few bottles with my Arkells Mash Tun Mild today, and I saved a little taster from the FVs and must say that I was quite disappointed by the taste or rather a lack of it, it seems strange considering the amount of crystal malt in the recipe. This brew was divided into 2 FVs and fermented with S04 in one and Windsor in the other, both of them finished at a FG of 1.014 and had an OG of 1.040,just hoping that there may be some improvement with time but can't see it somehow.

[seymour]

Bump.

Anyone else got some great mild recipes?

[barney]

A Recent Brew "Bumble Black"

93% Fawcetts Mild Ale Malt
4.5% Fawcetts Dark Crystal
2.5% Roast Barley

Brewed to 5% and bittered to 22 IBU with Progress
4 days into fermentation 400g honey per 20ltr

Nice pint, worth a crack at.

[Matt]

That looks tasty Barney.

I brewed this a week ago and the fv samples are tasting good:

Mild & Wild
3kg Mild ale malt
600g medium crystal
200g wheat malt
50g choc malt
50g roasted barley

Wild hops - tested with a hop tea and they are EKG I believe and I'm pinning at 5%AA because they were less bitter than a hop tea made with my 6.2% Fuggles.

FWH 30g
5 mins 30g

OG 1036
IBU 21
WLP017 Whitbread II

Although on the night I got 1042 which is I think because I got better mash eff due to better water adjustments - mash was bang on 5.2

[barney]

ITs very tasty Matt, it will improve a bit down to the roast. but its good at three weeks.

Good luck with yours, the recipe looks ace. Mild ale malt, wild hops and whitbread 2 yeast. Heaven.

[Matt]

ITs very tasty Matt, it will improve a bit down to the roast. but its good at three weeks.

Good luck with yours, the recipe looks ace. Mild ale malt, wild hops and whitbread 2 yeast. Heaven.

Cheers, all came together well, its still chugging away in the fv and I've got the last of my wild hops left to dry hop to add some hoppy aroma. I think this may be sacrilegious but I'm just going with what my nose and palate are saying

I wouldn't mind brewing your recipe Barney, I love the idea of the honey. Which yeast do you use?

Matt

[PhilB]

Hi

higsons mild
pale ale malt 74.6%
crystal malt 10%
wheat malt 10%
chocolate malt 5.4% get the grain bill to 1.031-2
invert sugar no. 2(near enough tate and lyles golden cane syrup 76% fermentable) enough to give 3 points gravity
mash @67.c for 60 mins
mix of bramling x 1st gold fuggles and goldings to give 22 ibus(all equal bittering amounts)@fwh with .5g styrian golding per imp gall @0

og 1.034-5 fg 1008 yeasties, higgies had a triploid stain thats a bitch to keep(brewlabs have it) but wlp0002 is good enough(so's notty!)

I just wanted to come back and thank Critch for this detail around Higson's Mild
A friend of mine decided to have his first go at AG brewing just after Xmas and decided, for his inaugural brew, that he wanted to recreate a beer from his youth ... he'd studied in Liverpool in the late 70s-early 80s and drunk a LOT of Higgies back then ... so this came in very useful. I helped him put together a recipe from this and he brewed it up and fermented with S04 ... I finally got to taste a bottle of it last weekend ... and it's a cracker, definitely the sort of beer you'd have to go and get another pint of ... and my mate is in reminiscence heaven!!

On a homebrew scale it's a bit of a faff that you end up using small amounts of 3 different bittering hops, but I think this is the brew that has (absolutely) convinced me that, for these low bittered, small amounts of late hops brews at least, the "any bittering hop will do" argument is flawed ... I'm confident that the complexity from those bittering hops survives into the finished beer. I'd highly recommend this brew to anyone else considering brewing a dark mild

Cheers, PhilB

[seymour]

...I just wanted to come back and thank Critch for this detail around Higson's Mild
A friend of mine decided to have his first go at AG brewing just after Xmas and decided, for his inaugural brew, that he wanted to recreate a beer from his youth...I finally got to taste a bottle of it last weekend ... and it's a cracker, definitely the sort of beer you'd have to go and get another pint of ... and my mate is in reminiscence heaven!!...

That's great, thanks for letting us know. Sounds like a good one to put on the To Brew list then.

...On a homebrew scale it's a bit of a faff that you end up using small amounts of 3 different bittering hops, but I think this is the brew that has (absolutely) convinced me that, for these low bittered, small amounts of late hops brews at least, the "any bittering hop will do" argument is flawed ... I'm confident that the complexity from those bittering hops survives into the finished beer...

Well said. I agree, some of these old recipes have pretty elaborate hopping, but whenever I put in the extra effort to collect and measure all the different hops, I never regret the delicious outcome.

Cheers!

[barney]

Hey Seymour,

A victory for us Mild Lovers


93% Fawcetts Mild Ale Malt
4.7% Fawcetts Dark Crystal (320 EBC)
2.3% Fawcetts Roast Barley

OG target 1046
Bittered to 25 IBU with Progress, All Early.
Ale yeast to 77% attenuation

Four days after fermentation, racked onto a pound of pasteurised honey per 5 gallon(US). Bottle and prime to 1.75 vols. Super almost immediately but Age for Six Months if possible.

This Brew has just won the Northern Craft Brewers Best speciality Beer Competition at Saltaire Brewery, with 44 entries its one of the largest competition for this style of beer that has ever been assembled in the UK.

As an aside Seymour, this was my attempt at recreating Highgate Old Ember, after our conversations last year.


Cheers

Barney

[seymour]

Wow, Barney! Congratulations, that is awesome!

The recipe looks delicious, and it obviously was since you won the competition. We should all give that one a try. Thanks for sharing!

[Hanglow]

Well done barney

[timbo41]

Its nice to see this thread continuing...firstly Congrats Barney! A question if I may...to all....in many of these recipes there are very small % of various malts ie black,torry etc...do they really make a significant impact? A few grams in a fairly light bill just doesn't ,to me,seem worth it?

[DaveyT]

Hello
Hunting round for a recipe to that inc a lot of chocolate malt, I came across something called Becksider here:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2Cwq ... pe&f=false
(Apologies for the scrappy link; I'm rubbish at stuff like this.)
I used it on 5l of a Brewer's Gold clone. I drew off 5l then added 8% Crystal and 7% choc malt. It's really good. Mine's more of a bitter in it's character, but I think this recipe is robust enough to stand all sorts of tweaks. LIke the molasses addition I was recommended some posts above this one!

Cheers
David

[seymour]

...in many of these recipes there are very small % of various malts ie black,torry etc...do they really make a significant impact? A few grams in a fairly light bill just doesn't ,to me,seem worth it?

Yes, small percentages can absolutely make a significant impact. A few grams only seems insignificant in your context because the batch size is so small. But their inclusion in the recipe still matters, and eliminating them would certainly alter the final beer.

2-4% Black Malt in a grainbill can make it profoundly roasty. 2-4% Torrified Wheat can transform blah and watery to awesome head retention, lace, and well-rounded bready mouthfeel. These small percentages have the same impact whether the length is 5 gallons or 50 barrels.

Case in point: a local brewery makes a delicious English-style mild. It's one of my all-time favourite beers, and part of the reason I consider Mild my favourite beer style. Their latest batch was still good, but different, and not as complex. The brewer agreed with me, and said the only difference was Amber Malt reduced from 3% to 1%, a seemingly minor tweak which made an unintended major impact.