There seems to be a lot of messages about mild mixed up with Beer Festival prices! Perhaps the subject is worth a thread of its own! Milds can be a little bland , but most aren't and some are very tasty indeed. What is often overlooked is how well it goes with food. Surprisingly , it is brilliant with a curry! Doesn't try to fight it or cut through , just settles down nicely alongside.
In message , Vale of Belvoir drinker writes
It's tempting to generalise about mild, but they vary a lot, even when you leave out the very strong ones. Brakspears mild used to be made by adding caramel to the bitter at racking - it must've been the bitterest mild on earth but we liked it, and it's certainly influenced our local small brewers' milds.
(No, it didn't taste exactly like the bitter, it had a very distinct character of its own. We though this was weird, and didn't really believe the brewer when he told us how it was made!)
Mild goes down a treat with death by chocolate!
Brian
Hi
According to "Brew your own British Real ale at home" by Roger Protz and Graham Wheeler, the ingredients of "Brakspear Henley Dark mild" - claimed to be obtained from the brewery and scaled down to make 5 gallons are as follows:-
Maris Otter Pale Malt 2,450 gm Crystal Malt 88gm Black malt 80 gm White Sugar 290gm
Goldings hops 35gm (90 min boil) Fuggles hops 42 gm (90 min " )
Fuggles hops 10 gm (15 min " )
Strength 3.3% by volume
Tasting notes "A red-brown mild ale with a sweet fruity character...Pleasing chewy malt in the mouth, dry finish with chocolate and hop notes and a hint of black cherries"
The same book states; the term mild means "not bitter" and has nothing to do with strength. In the modern sense it means "Mildly hopped", although in the old sense it means "not sour"
The book goes on to say "Brakspear use No 2 invert sugar (a 65 EBC dark invert) colouring, and hop oil in this recipe. They also claim to dry hop the beer, unusual for a mild, presumably with the hop oil. The (above) recipe has been adjusted to colour using black malt and the late hops added to compensate for the hop oil."
Regards
KGB
I wouldn't like to spoil my enjoyment of a pint of Batham's Mild with a curry, though, thank you very much.
I'm not sure when you spoke to the brewer or which brewer, but I'm guessing it was before my time at Brakspears (1998-2000) by then the regime had changed slightly - we liquored back (ahem...watered down) the bitter to make the lower gravity of the mild, and added a roast barley extract (principally for colour, but also gives some roasty flavour) to the small batch near the start of the ferment, I presume this was to allow the RBextract to ferment out a bit as well, and appear a more natural part of the whole flavour, to my knowledge the mild was not dry-hopped (with hops or extract). As you can guess, this particular part of the job was not exactly the pinnacle of my brewing career, but the regionals & other big boys are definitely not the only ones to parti-gyle or use colourings & hop extracts.
IIRC No.2 Invert was used in all of the standard brews as a traditional ingredient for flavour & a source of fermentables - not for colour particularly as it wasn't all that dark; and not for cost-cutting as it was more expensive than the excellent maris otter malt we were using.
I remember there was a bit of a fuss at the brewery when someone saw Brakspear's recipes on the internet, with some of the less praise-worthy practices outlined - we were asked if we knew how they might have got hold of it & I brought my copy of Wheeler's book in, which no-one had seen before; I think some time previously one of the brewing staff had been more forthcoming than some others at the brewery might have liked :~) (BTW it wasn't me - the book predated my time there) cheers MikeMcG
Hydes Dark Mild in the Grey Horse, Manchester City Centre, was superb last night!
Dom
oh yes, i forgot the subject line - a week or 2 back I had a lovely fresh, roasty, hoppy (not bitter), inky black pint of Cain's Mild at their other Dispensary, (Chester Street, near the Woodside Ferry Terminal, Birkenhead).
When in good nick this beer is just heavenly.
This is a decent, if oddly skinny little pub, refurbed under Steve Holt's reign at Cain's in 1990s; previously in GBG, not currently, presumably due to change of landlord (hope the new manager does something about the noise - both of MTV-type music & pi**ed-up customers). cheers, MikeMcG.
No, I thought curry might swamp the subtle character of a decent mild (malt, chocolate & not much hop-bite) - it's also a tricky one to do, unless you've got a decent pub and curryhouse nearby which don't mind you bringing one's produce in to be consumed on the other? It might have to wait until I'm next in the West Midlands, or maybe Bradford for the Beehive/Sheesh Mahal experience? cheers MikeMcG
Apropos of this, did anyone see the Richard Ehrlich article in the Indep. on Sunday where he was pouring scorn on the idea that alcohol can be married to curry, because India has no indigenous tradition of serving alcohol with food? I agree actually. I've had lager with curry and it's always been a mistake. The drink and the food are just fighting with each other.
Lager is certainly the wrong accompaniment to curry. The best is a really hoppy India Pale Ale - not a sham IPA like Greene King's but something like Freeminer's Trafalgar.
You will find that the high hoppiness and the spiciness of the curry blend together beautifully.
Roy Bailey West Berkshire.
Try something with a hoppy "bite" instead of lager.
In message , MikeMcG writes
And we thought Brakspears' non-textbook practices were traditional there! It seems the mild must've changed quite a bit over the 30+ years I've been drinking it - or at least, drinking it whenever I could get any.
That's the one. At its best it was lovely.
That at least did seem to be traditional. Until quite recently local brewers in seaports and big cities often put sugar in, and although Henley's a country town the beer style isn't at all rural. Brakspears were quite conservative, a friend who went there said they'd told him they'd hesitated to get covered fermenters because "the yeast might not like it" ! It was easily the dirtiest brewery I ever saw - very traditional - I bet they don't keep up that tradition at Whitney.
In article , Sue writes [snipped]
They haven't had time to get dirty yet! But the Brakspear fermenters at Wychwood are now covered.
I started the thread because we had a Branch meeting at the Marquis of Granby at Granby , (this year's CAMRA runner up POTY by the way) which serves a range of 7 or 8 real ales . They put on a curry - not a fiery one but very flavoursome - and the consensus of all present except one ( who doesn't like it!) was that the mild went better than any of the others.Unfortunately I've been to sleep since then and forget which one it was! But it would have been from a micro because they sell nothing else there.
Next time you are in Uppermill pop into the Church Inn and try their (own brewed) Saddleworth Mild (ABV 3.8!). When on form (which the local CAMRA tell me isn't always) it's quite mind-blowing! More like a Porter. Nobody could possibly describe this mild as "bland".
Whilst on my hobby horse, one of my favourite late lamented milds was Boddington's. In a different league from the bitter IMO. Of course such a good beer had to be allowed to wither on the vine.
Brian
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