Dark Mild recipe thoughts

[sictransit701]

I am looking for a good dark mild recipe. I’ve never had one myself. How does this recipe look?

 

[schmurf]

Have you looked in this thread? But I'm sure that the Crisp recipe is good too.

 

[brewbama]

Those hops will be difficult to find.

 

[schmurf]

Those hops will be difficult to find.

I guess it depends on where you are, here (Sweden) all but Pilot is available.

 

[AlexKay]

I’ve certainly had to hunt for Phoenix.

Further, I can’t see any reason to use four different hops in an 18 IBU session beer. Pick one of them, 60/20/5 it or something, and call it good.

The grain bill looks reasonable.

 

[eshea3]

That's very close to my recipe. I usually use #3 invert in place of a good portion of the crystal and oats instead of wheat. I also do just a bittering addition at the start of the boil but the IBU level is almost identical.

 

[ozpowell]

FWIW, this is my go-to dark mild. I especially like the residual body resulting from the use of Windsor yeast for such a light beer. You may find Nottingham too attenuative.

 

[Jack Arandir]

I brewed this recipe from Craft Beer & Brewing magazine several times, and it always turns out very good. (I have some on tap now!) It's similar to your recipe, but without the caramel malt (I'm not a fan of caramel) or wheat (which you won't taste behind the roast). Amber and brown malt are traditional and add some excellent deep malty flavors to bulk up the body, necessary for a low ABV beer. And the chocolate rye gives a rich roasty coffee flavor that's very pleasant.

Also, after much A-B testing, I settled on WY1968 London ESB as my favorite yeast for this style. It's important to keep esters low to avoid clashing with the malt, and to keep FG high to prevent it from tasting watery. It's also a very smooth yeast that lets the malt shine.

Bonus: this is especially excellent on nitro. Tastes like hot cocoa.