OK back to Hombrewing Without Failures, the best homebrewing guide money could buy back in 1965.
The recipes in this chapter are 4 gallon ones, not 5 gallons as I previously assumed, which only increases their horror.
Here's the recipe for Mild Ale (which will be mashed for 7-8 hours as usual)
4 lb crystal malt, 3 lb demerara sugar, 1 lb flaked maize, 5 oz hops, teaspoon salt (it's yeast nutrient so gotta have it), 1/4 oz citric acid, dessertspoon (since when it a dessertspoon a unit of measurement?) of caramel.
He also tells you to mash in a bucket by pouring the hot water in there and then putting an electric heater in the bucket. Gotta have lots of time to mash all of those crystal malts (aaaaargh!).
For the hops you should boil two oz for 1(!) minute and then "simmer gently" for 40 and then add the remaining three ounces and simmer for 10. I suppose with 5 oz hops in a 4 gallon batch you'll get at least some IBUs that way.
When it's fermenting, don't forget to skim off the krausen and then bottle when it gets to 1.005 gravity. Although with all of those crystal malts, how the **** you're supposed to reach that gravity.
So entering in all of that into a beer recipe program (putting in the yeast as English safale, the hops as whirlpooled fuggles, the caramel as an oz of amber Belgian candi sugar and making a wild ass guess about what kind of crystal malt he means (guessing "United Kingdom cara malt") we get:
Original Gravity of 1.068, a final gravity of 1.017(!), an ABV of 6.7% (after he gave a long lecture about how beer shouldn't be that strong), 42.13 IBUs and an SRM of 15.31.
Except for the color that misses all of the benchmarks of a mild ale by a mile.
Anyone want to brew this one? It's for history!
This makes me curious about his instructions of simmering the hops instead of boiling them. It seems that avoiding boiling the hops much and doing stuff like dry hopping, hop stands, first wort, etc. etc. are getting more popular. Could he actually be onto something with his instructions to simmer the hops?
