Were there actually any pre-prohibitions milds brewed in America? I mean, is there actual historical evidence that there was an American version of mild ?
Not trying to be argumentative...just wonderin'
If you mean an amber/brown beer that wasn't particularly aggressively-hopped and sold fresh, then yes.
The first thing you have to learn when you start studying historical brewing - okay,
one of the first things - is that there's no such thing as a convenient set of style sheets into which you can pigeonhole beers. The words brewers used to describe different offerings are often the same, but the offerings from brewer to brewer could be wildly different. Moreover, the meaning of the words themselves could change over time; 'mild' is a perfect example.
The word didn't get much use in America, if any. However, the English beers the word 'mild' (in the 19th-century sense) describes are very, very similar to American ales commonly called XXX ales. A British 'mild' could be ale, porter or stout. The important thing is not a specific recipe or grist, etc., it that they are delivered fresh, having undergone no long-term storage or 'secondary fermentation'; 'mild' beers were commonly shipped 7 days to ta fortnight after the primary ferment was finished. This is in comparison to 'stock' or 'keeping' beers, which were drier and more often than not had a discernible tart, acid 'twang'. 'Mild' ales were brewed to 13-14 degrees Plato (1.048 to 1.056 OG) and hopped with 1 to 2 pounds of hops per American barrel (0.5 to 1 ounce per gallon!). English 'mild' ales also usually got dry-hops of around 4 ounces per cask (hogshead).
In America beers brewed to the English idea of 'Mild' were commonly referred to as 'cream', 'present use' or 'table' beer. The major difference is that, according to Wahl and Henius, American 'mild' had a proportion of adjunct (usually maize, but sometimes sugar) usually 25-30%, where the British version was all-malt.
You dig?
Cheers,
Bob
