Classy XX Mild

[JKaranka]

Been looking at some ideas around XIXth century X ales (the olden milds). Should end up with an amber, slightly sweet ale with some interesting malt flavours and esters, with no particular hop aroma apart from a clean bitterness and a bit of a bite. Let me know if you can think of any potential changes (e.g., unsure whether to use light or medium invert syrup).

OG 1.069, FG 1.019. 51 IBU, 6.5% ABV.

Mash low:
11lb Maris Otter (88%)
3/4lb Brown Malt (6%)

Either 60 or 90 minute boil (unsure)

For 60 minute boil:
60 - 4oz Fuggles, 1oz Spalt
30 - 1oz Fuggles, 1/2oz Spalt
end of boil - 3/4lb Invert Syrup (6%)

Yeast: S33 for a slightly low attenuation.

 

[Cider123]

Simple and unpretentious. Looks like it would be a great old-style mild.

Wow, 4oz at 60? Is that to balance the sweetness?

 

[JKaranka]

Yeah, clean bittering using ~4% AA hops... could replace with an ounce of Columbus but not sure if it would be quite the same thing

 

[Hanso]

1.069 at anything over 40 IBU is going to not be slightly sweet, it will be bitter. At 51 IBU it will be a bitter bomb. I'd cut the IBU almost in half and your balance would be about where you want it- in the 25-30 range.

 

[Hanso]

I misunderstood a bit.. You are looking for a little hop bite, maybe go with 30-35 IBU range instead and don't mash as low.

 

[JKaranka]

The old recipes are quite high in hops (milds above 60 IBU), this export mild for example is 110 IBU based on estimates from brewery records: http://barclayperkins.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/lets-brew-wednesday-1879-whitbread-xx.html

Might be worth playing around with the hopping rate in a number of batches, but I'm expecting that starting high and letting it mellow for a while would be a start... the sweet spot is going to be somewhere between 35 and 100 IBU!

 

[Weezy]

1.069? I'd add another 'X' to the name This is one of those nice simple recipes you can almost taste just from reading it. Let us know how it turns out!

 

[Bob]

Hops amounts do look ridiculous in the old recipes, but when redacting historical recipes there are other things to consider.

How were the hops stored? These days we make pellets, ship 'em in nitrogen-flushed Mylar bags, and store them in the freezer. In those days they were whole flowers shipped in burlap and kept at room temperature.

Moral: Ridiculous amounts of hops but also ridiculously low alpha-acid.

Also, when scaling recipes hops amounts are never linear. I mean, you have to start somewhere, but differences in brewhouse design and boil dynamics mean often huge differences in utilization percentages.

Anyway, that all to say that it probably wasn't 100+ IBU. It was probably significantly less than that.

Cheers,

Bob

 

[patto1ro]

How were the hops stored? These days we make pellets, ship 'em in nitrogen-flushed Mylar bags, and store them in the freezer. In those days they were whole flowers shipped in burlap and kept at room temperature.

Hops weren't stored at room temperature - they were kept in a cold store. And they were packed as tightly as possible to keep out air.

Based on measurements taken in the 1930's, the deterioration in alpha acid of hops stored cold was remarkably low - almost none in the first 18 months.

The beers with the craziest amounts of hops - Imperial Stout, Pale Ale - were often brewed in the winter with all the hops from the most recent season, so they would have been no more than a few months old.

The alpha acid content of hops like Goldings doesn't seem to have changed much since they started measuring the alpha acid content - it's always 4 to 6%. There's more variation from one year to the next - presumably because of different growing conditions - than from one decade to another. As hops are propagated by cloning, modern Goldings are genetically the same as they were 100 years ago.

 

[Bob]

I did not know that. Thank you!

Have you references which I could examine? I crave data.

Thanks again!

 

[JKaranka]

I think you should check out Mild! Plus! I just need more IBU data in the next edition, even if they're guesstimates