Is this getting close to a proper Mild, or not trashy enough?
(I started to specify Maris Otter for the pale malt, but thought that might be pretentious since what I really have is Rahr)
5 oz - Cane Sugar (4.8%)
Hops: 0.5 oz - First Gold, Type: Pellet, AA: 7.5, Use: Boil for 60 min
Yeast: Fermentis / Safale - Safbrew S-33 - General/Belgian Yeast
You're certainly there in spirit for a mid-20th century one. It's a tough one on the malt, brewers would use the cheapest malt to hand, but at the same time UK maltsters roast their pale malt a little higher than US ones do - which would point towards a basic UK pale malt - and if you're looking to recreate a mid-20th century one then that is a time before modern barleys had the flavour bred out of them. 80% of British barley in 1940 was either Plumage-Archer or Spratt-Archer, by the late 1950s it was 70% Proctor, the offspring of Plumage-Archer and a parent of Maris Otter. So while we now think of Otter as a premium variety, it's probably closer in taste to the kind of cheap barley they were using then.
I wouldn't use white sugar if you can - if you look at Ron's recipes you're typically seeing a mix of invert #2 & #3 or even #3, you need the flavour from those darker sugars. I guess a darkish raw sugar would be a start.
It's a real shame that there's no West Midlands yeasts readily available, but really any charismatic yeast that doesn't attenuate too much will do, you need a bit of yeast character since you're not getting much from the hops or grist. So unless you're plundering Brewlab's catalogue, I guess Windsor/S-33 (they're close relatives) will do, otherwise look at liquid yeasts like WLP023, 1469, even Ringwood. Mangrove Jack M15 specifically mentions using it in dark beers, I've still not got round to trying it, and it may well be just repacked Windsor, but maybe worth a try if it's easy for you to get.
You see flaked barley a bit around WWII due to government orders, but wheat just about never. Sometimes you could get up to 40% mild malt, occasionally up to 10% amber. But it's worth emphasising that otherwise it's one of the most loosely-defined styles, so it's good for using up odd bits of malt (albeit not very much!) - or as a partigyle off a porter or Belgian dark. CAMRA like to promote mild in May, which is a good time to brew something big and dark for ageing 6 months to have at Christmas, and partigyling a mild off it gives you something to drink in the meantime, it means it's not all about delayed gratification!
Have a look at
this table of post-WWII Lees Best Milds for an idea of how complicated and varied they could get in the real world, albeit during a period when the country was emerging from rationing. I quite fancy one of the early 1950s ones when the total sugar was still below 20% - if you poke around Ron's site he's done full recipes for several of those beers. But if you've never had a mild before and are wanting to get a feel for the "real and authentic" experience of the mid-20th century, then I'd stick with something along the lines of the above, mostly just malt and sugar with something to colour it. And in the meantime read
Ron's description of mild's place in the culture of the time alongside a somewhat atypical recipe for 1969 Truman LM :
Ah, the happy hours I spent drinking this type of beer in the 1970’s. Ordinary, watery Mild. It’s sad that it’s become such a rarity.
Mild – especially cask Mild – is a cracking long drink. A beer to accompany, rather than dominate, an evening down the pub with your mates. I was reminded just how much I missed that sort of beer and that sort of session when I spent a Saturday evening with Jeff Bell in The Royal Oak in Southwark a couple of weeks ago. Sometimes you need to down at least half a gallon....
It’s quite an odd one in several ways. For a start, it’s coloured with roast barley, which isn’t a very common ingredient in Mild. In fact, it’s not a very common ingredient in English beer at all. Nor are roast malts that common in Mild. Not unheard of, but not that common. A spot of black or chocolate malt occasionally....
You may have assumed that brown sugar is a substitute for some other type of sugar. It isn’t. The original really did contain Tate & Lyle brown sugar. Though it did make up slightly less than half of the total sugar. Most of the rest was liquid cane sugar. There was also a touch of something called B.C.L., which I’m guessing is some sort of dark sugar. I’ve substituted No. 4 invert....
I know nothing about the hops, other than that they were English. Fuggles, which were the commonest hop grown in England, probably isn’t far wrong. They probably wouldn’t have wasted Goldings in a Mild. Feel free to use any traditional English hop variety.
I'd disagree a bit on the hops - Fuggles had taken a real beating from wilt by 1969, but the second-generation Wye hops like Challenger and Target hadn't yet hit the market, so I'd guess something like WGV or Northern Brewer or just random wild hops....