Anyone have a recipe for a traditional Mild?

[IHN]

I really like mild, and you hardly see it nowadays. Eeh, I remember when all the pubs of my youth had a mild and a bitter on tap, and my mates would call me an old b@$tard for ordering mild, cos that's what old men drink, and all this was fields etc etc

Anyone have an extract-based recipe for mild they'd care to share?

[gobuchul]

Sorry it's not an extract brew but I did this AG one a while back. It was very good.
Ruby Mild
Pale 4.5kg
Crystal 150g
Chocolate 150g
Torrified Wheat 125g

Goldings 60 mins 30g
Goldings 0 mins 15g

[Mashman]

Graham Wheelers book. Brew your own British Real Ale 3rd edition has 16 mild ale recipes, all with extract details

M

[mjt68]

500g soft brown sugar, extract to 1.035, or higher if you like.... English hops (fuggle?) for 60 mins to 22 ibu. Lots of brewers' caramel to make it the 'right' colour. Important thing is taste of molasses, little hop flavour, subtle bitterness and getting colour from caramel not malt so as not to get too stouty.

[bitter_dave]

Hi there, I’ve made some extract milds adapted from Greg Hughes book that turned out pretty decent. I used 2.5 kilos of Pale DME (more than the original recipe), 500 gms of Dark Crystal, 100 gms of chocolate. The original recipe used northdown for bittering and brambling cross for late, but I’ve made versions just using just brambling cross or goldings. I went for about 20 IBUs. I did a half an an hour boil. I used empire ale yeast, which left it with a high FG (which I quite liked but might not be to everyone’s tastes). I can post the ordinal recipe from the book of you are interested.

My current beer is a mild type beer which Is quite nice which I did a partial mash for. I mashed about 5 lbs of pale malt on the stove with 2 lb of crystal (half light, half dark) for about 50 mins at about 69 c. I tipped the grain into a small fermenter with holes drilled in the bottom which was suspended over the boiler with a cake cooling rack to act as a kind of malt tube. I sparged it to rinse the grains. Added one kilo of pale DME in the boiler and boiled it for half an hour (with additional water obviously). Added 150 gms golden syrup during the boil. Boiled it for half an hour in total. Hopped to about 20 IBUs with fuggles at the start and goldings near the end. Fermented using S04 at 20c. it was a bit murky so cooled it and fined it, transferred to my king keg and primed it with golden syrup. A bit more effort than a simple extract beer but I think I’ll do the same recipe more or less next time - it’s an easy going beer. I know you are supposed to mash and boil for an hour if doing grain beers but I think it it came out decently. Not sure of the OG as didn’t measure it (I will next time).

The Wheeler book has loads of proper milds in it as well, as mentioned above, many of which you have extract versions.

[bitter_dave]

Here’s the original Mild recipe I mentioned in my last post from the Greg Hughes book (makes 23 litres):

1.9 kg Dried light malt extract
500g dark crystal
100g Chocolate malt

20g Northdown (at 8% AAU) for 60 mins
10g Brambling cross (at 6% AAU) for 5 mins

Ferment at 20 c (suggested yeast Wyeast 1318 London Ale if you want to gaff about with liquid yeast)

OG 1036 FG 1011 abv 3.3%

As I say, not made it exactly like that myself. I would up the DME a bit.

[IHN]

Thanks chaps. I've just bunged a bid in on an old copy of Graham Wheelers book on eBay, so that'll be an interesting read.

[gobuchul]

Thanks chaps. I've just bunged a bid in on an old copy of Graham Wheelers book on eBay, so that'll be an interesting read.

It's a must have.

So is the Greg Hughes IMO. Some great recipes and very clear information.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Home-Brew-Bee ... 0&sr=8-1

[bitter_dave]

Thanks chaps. I've just bunged a bid in on an old copy of Graham Wheelers book on eBay, so that'll be an interesting read.

It's a must have.

So is the Greg Hughes IMO. Some great recipes and very clear information.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Home-Brew-Bee ... 0&sr=8-1

Yes, I second that. It’s also got a recipe for a stronger Ruby Mild which looks decent

[k1100t]

Yes, I second that. It’s also got a recipe for a stronger Ruby Mild which looks decent

Thirded. I brewed the Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby recipe years ago, it was pretty good.

[IHN]

Does the Greg Hughes book have extract recipes in too?

[gobuchul]

Does the Greg Hughes book have extract recipes in too?

Most of the AG recipe's has an extract version summarised at the bottom of the page.

[Rookie]

I really like mild, and you hardly see it nowadays. Eeh, I remember when all the pubs of my youth had a mild and a bitter on tap, and my mates would call me an old b@$tard for ordering mild, cos that's what old men drink, and all this was fields etc etc

Anyone have an extract-based recipe for mild they'd care to share?

All extract? Extract with specialty grains? Extract with mini-mash?

[Northern Brewer]

I really like mild, and you hardly see it nowadays. Eeh, I remember when all the pubs of my youth had a mild and a bitter on tap, and my mates would call me an old b@$tard for ordering mild, cos that's what old men drink, and all this was fields etc etc

Anyone have an extract-based recipe for mild they'd care to share?

Ron Pattison is your man for mild, he's obsessed with the stuff and so has recipes from original brewery brewbooks going back to the 19th century. The Lees Best Milds of the 1950s are fascinating for how much they varied year to year, you can't really say there is a "typical" mild even in that narrow period, let alone when you're comparing the 8% pale milds of the 19th century with the classic <3% dark milds of the 1950s.

So what do you mean by mild?

As you can see from the above, there's all sorts of speciality malts you can add, it just depends how complicated you want to get - all-grain certainly gives you more flexibility with dark beers. If you want to keep it really simple, then for 10 litres final volume use :

1kg pale DME (replace 10-20% with amber/medium DME if you can find it at the moment)
1-2 tablespoons treacle
Brewer's caramel if more colour is needed

20IBU of whatever cheap English hops you have to hand (eg 15g of 4.5% Fuggles), maybe a few for 5 minutes as well.

[IHN]

All extract? Extract with specialty grains? Extract with mini-mash?

Errr…

I tend to brew by steeping some grains for a bit, whip them out, boiling the liquid with some hops at various times and some or all of the extract, into the FB, topped up with water (and the rest of the extract if it's not all gone in the boil). Dunno what that's called