Is this a good idea?

So just got finished with a successful APA and would like to brew something to just rack onto the yeast cake. Since it's warming up and I'd like a beer that will mature quickly, I figured mild ale. I wanted super malty flavor, rather mild hops, and something on the cheap side. Tell me what you think... will the specialty malt flavors clash too much?

Ingredients

Amount Item Type % or IBU
6.00 lb Pale Malt (6 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 77.42 %
0.75 lb Brown Malt (65.0 SRM) Grain 9.68 %
0.75 lb Victory Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 9.68 %
0.25 lb Special B Malt (180.0 SRM) Grain 3.23 %
0.50 oz Fuggles [4.50 %] (45 min) Hops 8.6 IBU
0.50 oz Fuggles [4.50 %] (10 min) Hops 3.4 IBU


O.G 1.037 IBU 12.0 Color 13.5

The malt bill looks aloright, you will be surprised at what the brown malt brings to the table if you haven't used it before. I won't make a mild or brown without it.

The issue I see, is your yeast. You don't have it listed, but say you just did an APA, and typically you want to increase the size (OG) of the second beer if you are pitching onto a yeast cake (Actually, harvesting the yeast and repitching the proper amount is the preferred way). You are going to have WAY too much yeast for that beer, and it will leave it with a pretty plain profile, none of the flavors you would get from the proper sized pitch of a British yeast. Also, yeasts typically used for APAs are usually much cleaner fermenting anyway, and have higher attenuation numbers than most British strains, which will leave your beer drier than you may want.

Okay, yeah. I still have some harvested yeast available, some Wyeast 1099 (whitbread.) Love the stuff. Should add some mild esters that hopefully won't overpower the malty goodness. Thanks for the quick reply, BarleyWater

1099 is a fantastic yeast for Mild ale. You want a proportion of esters in the beer, and your grist won't be overpowered by English yeasts. Hell, most commercial Milds lack the complication of your grist! Most all I've seen are Pale Malt, Dark Malt (one type), Maize/Sugar. No aromatics, no crystals.

In other words, you'll be fine if you pitch the appropriate amount of Whitbread yeast. Your recipe sounds lovely. The only thing I'd drop is the second hops addition. I don't like flavor/aroma hops in Mild, though I do like the impact of First Wort Hopping.

Bob

NQ3X, thank you for the advice. I really wanted something complex... I started out with the recipe you described: 2-row, chocolate and brown I believe. But I felt it needed something more.

On the note of dropping the second hops addition, if I do so I will drop to a meager 8.5 IBUs. That seems too low, especially considering it breaks the style boundaries. Does FWH really make that big of a difference on IBUs? What would I be looking at if I FWH'd only 0.5 ounces of Fuggles?

AH! Sorry, just got the answer to my question... the detail in Beersmith actually surprises me on a regular basis.

I set 0.5 oz Fuggles to First Wort Hops and just cranked up the time setting until the IBUs wouldn't raise anymore... I got 11.1 IBU. Am I on the right track?

Looks like you're on the right track.

Mild has an interesting history. In the past, Mild was a higher-OG beer than Pale Ale; it was called Mild because it was fresher than the aged Porter or Pale Ale. Weird. Currently, many small UK breweries brew a Mild which is really their Bitter with a touch of dark malt and no finishing hops.

Bob

Gotta love beer history.

I also read that Milds (meant they were served young) were cheap and available en mass for the English port workers (porters...hmmm.) So in order to deter the green beer flavor, they mixed milds with olds (or "stales") and it was still cheap enough for the porters to afford it. From that mixture came the birth of the porter style. Aaaaaand porters begat stouts, etc etc. Like friggin bible genealogy...

That's one hypothesis of the genesis (har!) of Porter. Unfortunately, it's probably not true. But we'll never really know, because the primary sources don't tell us.

Really, you should never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Bob

*bump*

So we FINALLY got around to make a beer... finally. It's essentially the recipe with a bit of alteration:

Mild
8# 2-row
0.8# Victory
0.75# Brown
0.3# Special B

0.5oz East Kent Goldings (5% AA) (First Wort Hops)
1 pkg re-hydrated Nottingham yeast

OG 1.049 (which is awesome because we got 5.5 gallons at .049 when our usual efficiency called for 5gal @1.049... WOO!)

First brew with new cooler conversion toys! Got the BEST sparge and was able to vorlauf to a crystal clear product. Also, how come nobody told me stainless steel pots get to a boil SO MUCH faster than aluminum?

As a side note, the Ladyfriend and myself were by far the tipsiest we've ever been while brewing. Several DFH 90minutes and Sierra Nevada Kellerweiss made the brew day seem much shorter than usual

Now all I need is a good name so I can post the recipe!

Hrm... actually aluminum transfers heat more efficiently.

Rick500 said:

Hrm... actually aluminum transfers heat more efficiently.

Click to expand...

YEAH that's what I thought..... well it just occurred to me that the SS pot is wider and the aluminum is taller, but they're both 4gal. Maybe the SS one has more contact to the heating element?

Update:

Wow... we've never used Nottingham before but I've heard it's fast. However, I didn't realize how frackin fast it was! I meant to post this yesterday when I took a gravity reading but things got in the way.

Beersmith predicted the FG to be 1.012 (OG 1.049.) Brew day was Sunday, and it was bubbling like 5-6 bubbles a second on Monday with a nice healthy krausen. *Disclaimer: I don't brew based on bubbles! I know hydrometer readings are the only way to tell for sure.* So, now that's all out of the way, yesterday around 2pm I noticed the bubbles severely slowed down so I decided to take a gravity reading... 1.014!!!

Day and a half to be almost done. Now all there is to do is leave it the heck alone for another 3 weeks ^_^ Yay beer!