1955 Whitbread XXX Best Mild

I usually write my own recipes for my beer; not that I'm a genius at formulating recipes, it's just that I like to keep things simple and much of the time I barely even think of them as recipes. I can't remember why exactly but I decided to brew an old recipe instead. If you go over to Shut Up About Barclay Perkins you'll get a load of old beers excavated directly from the archives, along with a shedload of other historical information—everyone interested in beer should read this blog from start to finish.

This is one of them, a 1955 Whitbread Best Mild, aka XXX. Here's the make-up as given there:

80.6% Mild malt
4.9% Crystal malt
3.2% Invert No1 sugar
11.3% Invert No3 sugar

Like many contemporary mild ales, the XXX relies on dark brewing sugar for flavour and colour. Modern milds from microbreweries tend to use chocolate malt instead. I like both styles and if you're ever lucky enough to be in a pub that has several milds on at once, it can be fun to note the difference in flavour between an old-fashioned mild and a new-wave one.

This makes things a bit tricky because the invert sugar syrup that professional brewers use is not available to the home brewer (the stuff sold as "brewing sugar" in homebrew shops is not the same thing at all). But they are all essentially a mixture of refined sugar and unrefined sugar in different quantities, so I attempted to fake it.

As I understand it, No. 1 is a light coloured syrup and No. 3 a dark one. I substituted golden syrup for No. 1 and for No. 3 I used a combination of three parts golden syrup to one of treacle. I might have erred on the light side with the treacle because it does have a very distinctive flavour and I didn't want it turning up recognisably treacley in my beer.

So my approximation of the recipe is:

2346g Maris Otter (the original is mild ale malt)
141g crystal
93g golden syrup
330g "No. 3" (83g treacle + 247g golden syrup)

Mash 45 minutes at 67ºC; I hate sparging so stopped sooner and ended up with slightly less wort at a slightly higher gravity: 1.038 as opposed to 1.034 in the original.

Hopping: 20g East Kent Goldings (5.8%) at 60 minutes and another 10g at 30 minutes. My hops were a bit higher in alpha acid than the recipe assumes, so I dropped the quantity a little, though it should still be a tad bitterer than the original. Yeast was White Shield which has pretty much become my house yeast at the moment.

The finished beer has an aroma and palate more reminiscent of light honey than anything else. Hops barely discernable, just enough to stop it getting that weird blandness that under-hopped beer often has. As you can see from the picture, it's a light amber and not very dark at all. This matches the expected colour from the recipe, so I'm not unhappy with it. There's no treacliness though, so I might risk increasing the proportion in the next beer I make with sugar.

What's it taste like? Well, I don't expect a 1950s mild to be that exciting, and it isn't. My friends liked it more than I did, though. But look at those ingredients. Damn, this is a cheap beer to make. I wish I liked it more.

KKKK

I brewed this months ago thinking it would be nice to have a strong ale around for Christmas time. Now it’s nearly Christmas time already and I opened a bottle to test it.

Sadly, due I think to my sloppy bottling practice, it’s quite badly oxidised. If you can ignore that, it’s alright. It’s quite syrupy but I deliberately hopped it quite highly to avoid it being sickly sweet. Lovely whisky aroma (or, if you dislike whisky, I guess you would say a harsh alcohol aroma) with floral, woody notes.

Can’t quite decide whether it’s good enough to offer to my friends. I poured most of the bottle into the roasting tin for the roast pork I’m cooking.

Mild

I have been brewing recently, just not as much as I'd hoped. I still need to get my electric boiler and coolbox mashtun built and ask my local breweries if they'll flog me some malt.




Mild. Mashed warm at 70ºC. Mostly pale malt with some chocolate malt and 10% Coco Pops.
Hopped with Challenger and Bramling Cross and fermented with White Shield yeast.

Another attempt at hoppy, hoppy pale ale

I got hold of some Chinook hops – I'd wanted to try them for a good while – and used them in a nice bitter beer. They're 12% alpha acid, so well suited for the task.


Brew length 10 L

2 kg pale malt
10g crystal malt

25g Chinook 12.7% 90
25g Chinook 12.7% 0

Mash 67ºC, 1 hour

Yeast: US-05
Original gravity: 1050

I made a hop tea from the bittering hops before throwing them into the brew, and held it back to add to the fermenting bucket with the cooled wort. A full pint of hop tea is a pretty intense thing.

Update: 1st August this has reached 1.010, but hasn't cleared, so I'm going to dry hop it for another week.

KK Sulphury Bitter

I'm fairly sure I'm in a minority on this among beer drinkers, but I do like a decent whack of sulphur in my beer. The legendarily hard water of Burton-on-Trent historically gave a sulphury character to the beer brewed by Bass, Allsop's, Ind Coope and Marston's among others. People say that this so-called "Burton snatch" is far less prominent in the likes of Marston's Pedigree than it used to be, but in the bottle it's still pleasantly noticeable (I haven't drunk it on draught recently). Can't say I can get it in Worthington White Shield though.

I've also detected sulphur in certain Franconian beers, though I shall have to look into which areas of Franconia (if any) have hard water.

There's a passage in one of Michael Jackson's books where he is tasting a Japanese microbrewery's beer and remarks that it's rather sulphury. The head brewer replies "Yes, that is intentional. We want the beer to smell as fresh as a bath-house." Which just goes to show that there's also an element of cultural context involved in whether you find it pleasant or not.

I wanted to make a souped-up beer inspired by the famous Burton bitters. For me these are about being about to taste the minerals in the water, about an intensely dry bitterness and a nice deep red colour, but not too dark (it's a pale ale after all). It's not really about hop aroma or full, malty body, although a bit of toffee is not bad.

So that means adding a stupid amount of gypsum to the brewing water, hops mostly for bittering, and crystal malt.

5L water heated with 1 tbsp gypsum

200g crystal malt
1800g pale malt

Mash at 68º for 180 minutes (they did long mashes in the 18th century … oh, all right, I went back to bed and fell asleep)

Sparge with 4L @ 80º and another 1 tbsp gypsum in the sparge water.

Boil for 90 minutes.

30g Challenger (5.1%) 90 minutes
10g Challenger 0 minutes

The wort doesn't taste sweet because of all the minerals and hops, but the OG is right at 1050.

It wouldn't be right without a Burton yeast, so I kidnapped the sediment from a bottle of Worthington White Shield and cultured it up. I was very impressed with how well the yeast recovered.

The temperature according to my thermometer is still under 23ºC, but I don't believe it. We shall see – the last couple of brews seemed to do quite well despite the heat in my flat.

Peanut butter beer

So: I had this poll a few weeks ago, about which adjunct I should use in a forthcoming beer.
I'm not sure this was a good idea.

Marshmallows : 1 (16%)

Cornflakes: 0 (0%)

Coco Krispies: 0 (0%)

Peanut butter: 2 (33%)

Ready Brek (honey and cinnamon flavour): 2 (33%)

McCowan's Highland Toffee: 1 (16%)

Joint winners were as seen above, peanut butter, and honey and cinnamon Ready Brek. Peanut butter wins by default since Ready Brek doesn't actually come in that flavour (I was quite surprised to discover that).

It's definitely the weirdest option in the list. The others sound strange in association with beer but are basically just cereals and sugar when it comes down to it. Aw no, I could have used Turkish Delight as well.

All I did was make a bog standard pale ale and bung a jar of peanut butter in with the boil. It didn't dissolve as I was hoping, but instead disintegrated into lots of tiny greasy smears. Nonetheless, I cooled it and set it to ferment.

I finally bottled this the other day. As usual with experimental beers, fermented in a demijohn, it was an awful mess trying to syphon stuff out again, made more difficult by avoiding the thick layer of peanut oil that had collected on the surface of the beer.

It's not good. Lots of high alcohols in this, not unpleasant but not pleasant either. Not much peanut flavour either. I don't know if the taste is down to the peanut butter or the high temperature. It's been pretty warm here lately. My thermometer is only showing 23ºC air temperature but it feels like more than that. Fortunately, I don't have to drink it; Anders does.

Smokebeer #2, and new poll

The last poll I had asked what kind of beer I should brew next. The winner was Smokebeer with one vote. Good luck that I just bought a bag of smoked malt at the weekend and I brewed this last night. It's nice to know that I can get a full-mash brew done on a school night – one of the advantages of doing small batches.

Brewlength about 9L

1.9 kg Rauchmalz
40g black malt (for colour only)
25g Northern Brewer 12%

The original gravity turned out at 1052 and I used Safale S-04 yeast. There seems to be an awful lot of trub, which happened the last time I used smoked malt too. I think I may have over-hopped it slightly, but we shall see. I've noticed in the past that the smoked character doesn't really appear until the beer is finished.

So I also have a new poll, which already has twice as many votes as the last one, and there are still five days to go! Please vote for which mad additive I should put in a beer. Remember, you don't have to drink it.

Odd pale beer

I woke up early this morning and since I'm recovering from a heavy cold and not planning to go anywhere, I thought I might as well get a brew on.

It's a simple recipe, all pale malt, as that's all I have left.

0.5kg Belgian pale
1.7kg Maris Otter

Mash at 67ºC
1/2 tsp gypsum in the mash.

Batch sparging at 72ºC
Forgot the gypsum.

Added another 1/2 tsp gypsum. Filled my brew pot, sparged too much so had to split over two pots. This eventually all boiled down enough that I could combine back into one pot.

Hops:
20g Northern Brewer 90min
10g Styrian Goldings 90min
8g Styrian Goldings 0min
8g Styrian Goldings -10min

OG was 1062, but I think this might be a bit off as there's a fair bit of crud in the sample glass.

I don't know how to classify this. If I'd used C-hops it would be run of the mill american pale ale, but I used Styrians and Northern Brewer.

It's pretty odd brewing when you have no sense of smell. I hope it turns out all right.

Brown Beer #2

This is the first beer I've made for quite a while – I think it's been almost two months. I've been paralysed by trying to decided whether to get an electric boiler or keep on with the small stovetop batches. But my stocks are running low, so it's about time to get some more on.

510g Maris Otter low colour
2kg Belgian pale
100g chocolate malt

Mash at 65°C 60 min
Mash started 1345
Boil 1610
Finish boil 1738

40g Bramling Cross 90
10g First Gold 90
6g Styrian Goldings 5
8g Styrian Goldings 0

Hop tea made from 10g First Gold

Yeast: Muntons Gold

OG was 1050.

I just realised I forgot to add any minerals whatsoever to the water. Oops.

Mint Beer and APA (A Pale Ale)

I've just bottled my APA and mint beer, and both are tasting quite promising. The mint beer is intensely minty, more so than I expected. The APA is not hoppy enough, and a bit on the sweet and heavy side. Perhaps I am mashing too hot.

And no mould! I shall add bleach to my cleaning routine every time in future.

Tasting my first two all-grain brews

Unfortunately my Broken Scales Guesswork Ale developed a thin layer of mould on top. I went ahead and bottled it anyway and I seem to have added a goodly amount of sugar, as it's well carbonated after less than a week. It tastes strange, but not bad. It has sort of creamy, vanilla-y flavours and a little bit of hot alcohol, although that may be me projecting and associating the vanilla with whisky. It's very full in body, perhaps I was mashing too hot after all. Because I know it has Bramling Cross hops in it, which are notorious for blackcurrant aroma, I wonder if what I called vanilla is actually the hops.

Meanwhile, Pale Ale with Hops and Dimethyl Sulfide is calming down; it's drinkable if heavily chilled. I'm in two minds as to whether to drink it up and get rid of it, or push it to the back of the shelf and see if it gets any nicer.

Attempt #2 at US-style Pale Ale

This is what the DMS disaster was intended to have been, my second attempt at this style. This time, instead of lager malt I used low colour Maris Otter and I approximately doubled the amount of hops (First Gold and Cascades for bittering, more Cascade for finishing, of course). Rather than sparge and end up with too much wort, I just diluted the first runnings with water and kept the second for my experimental mint beer. I still ended up with a starting gravity of 1060, just what I was looking for.

Mashing went more smoothly that my first couple of attempts, I think because I actually bothered to calculate what temperature the hot water should be so that I get my target mash temperature without adding cold or boiling water.

I brewed this on Saturday and peeked in the fermenting bucket yesterday. The yeast head has formed and subsided again already! That S-04 yeast is mental fast. That's actually a bit of a pain as I was hoping to harvest some of the yeast.

I hope the mould that got at Brown Bitter Beer has been vanquished. I gave the bucket a good long soak in bleach before using it again.

Brewing equipment at the fabric store

I'm quite excited about my visit to Remnant Kings yesterday. Remnant Kings is helping me move to all-grain brewing.

Up until now I've been using malt extract, which is fun and easy, but the extract is quite pricey. Malt is dirt cheap and by all accounts the difference between extract and all-grain beer is like night and day. So I've always had the intention of moving to all-grain, but the way most people do it needs a bit of investment. You need a mash tun and a boiler, both of which cost money and take up space. I brew in a tiny kitchen so the space is even more of an issue than the money.

Until the other day when I read about brewing in a bag – which is exactly what it sounds like. On the teabag principle, just have your grain in a bag in hot water, and that's your mash.

I now have two metres of polyester voile fabric and once I have sewn it up I'm ready to go. I can't wait.