MILD

ALE
The Classic Beer Style Series is devoted to offering in-depth information on
world-class styles by exploring their history, flavor profiles, brewing methods,
recipes, and ingredients.

OTHER BOOKS IN THE CLASSIC BEER STYLE SERIES

Pale Ale: Second Edition
Brown Ale
Kölsch
Altbier
Barley Wine
Stout
Bock
Scotch Ale
German Wheat Beer
Belgian Ale
Porter
Oktoberfest, Vienna, Märzen
Lambic
Continental Pilsener
 MILD ALE
History, Brewing Techniques, Recipes

David Sutula
 Classic Beer Style
Series No. 15

A Division of the Brewers Association

Boulder, Colorado
Brewers Publications, Division of the Brewers Association
PO Box 1679, Boulder, CO 80306-1679
(303) 447-0816; Fax (303) 447-2825

© 1999 by David Sutula

All rights reserved. Except for use in a review, no portion of this book may be reproduced in any form
without written permission of the publisher. Neither the author, editors, nor the publisher assumes any
responsibility for the use or misuse of information contained in this book.

Direct all inquiries to the above address.

ISBN-13: 978-0-937381-68-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-938469-45-9 (ebook)

Unless otherwise noted, all interior photographs are by Shelley Sutula. All labels and coasters courtesy of
Brian Glover.

Permission for use of the following items on the cover photo is gratefully acknowledged: Avery Brewing
Company for the use of their midland Mild beer and It’s Your Move gaming store in Boulder, Colorado for
the use of the dominoes.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sutula, David.
Mild ale : history, brewing techniques, recipes / David Sutula.
p. cm. — (Classic beer style series ; 15)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-937381-68-3 (alk. paper)
1. Ale. I. Title. II. Series.
TP578.S88 1999
641.8’73—dc21 98-43604
CIP
In loving memory of my dad, Ted Sutula, who taught me that “wherever you go,
there you are.”
Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 Mild Ale: The Historical Perspective

Chapter 2 The Flavor Profile of Mild Ale

Chapter 3 Mild Ale Ingredients

Chapter 4 Brewing Equipment and Methods

Chapter 5 Conditioning, Packaging, and Dispensing

Chapter 6 Commercially Produced Mild Ales

Chapter 7 Mild Ale Recipes

Appendix A Producers of Real Mild Ale in Great Britain

Appendix B Further Reading

Appendix C Useful Information

Chapter Notes

Glossary

Index

About the Author

Acknowledgments

No book can get off the ground, much less get published, without the benefit
of an intricate support network. At the helm of my personal network are my
wife, Shelley, my daughters, Abbey and Kaitlyn, and my parents, Ted and
Marilyn (Sutulas all). They have always supported my writing, even though it
has often entailed long hours at my desk on evenings and weekends when I
should have been cutting the grass or finishing the deck I started two years ago.
Next, I have to mention my brewing colleagues—Brian O’Reilly of John
Harvard’s Brew House in Cleveland and Bill Bryson of Wallaby’s Brewpub and
Grille in Westlake—to whom I owe little thanks. Had they not led me astray with
promises of beer and merriment, this volume might have been completed far
sooner than it was. Seriously, though, they read the manuscript and offered a lot
of great advice and comment that has improved the book.
Then there are the people within the local brewing community who are always
ready to tackle a technical question, offer sound advice on the basis of long years
of experience, and tell me that I’ve lost my mind when I come up with a half-
baked theory. Thanks go to Tim Rastetter of Liberty Street Brewing Company,
Dan Maerzluft, formerly of Diamondback Brewing Company, Andy Craze and
Damon Smith of Western Reserve Brewing Company, Andy Tveekrem and Rob
Garrity of Great Lakes Brewing, Brad Unruh of Four Fellows Brewpub, Stephen
Danckers of Crooked River Brewing Company, and almost every other member
of the Northern Ohio Craft Brewer’s Association (NOCBA).
I must also thank many of the people in the extended brewing community,
including Tim Morse, Emperor of Brewing Operations for John Harvard’s, who
encouraged this project even though I threatened to turn one of his breweries
into a mild-only facility. Bill Morgan of Nippon Brewery in Japan and John
Mallett of Saaz Brewing Services in Arlington, Virginia, offered free advice
whenever I called and never sent me an invoice for consultation (I hope this
grateful acknowledgment will not serve as a reminder). Ray Daniels of the Craft
Beer Institute in Chicago lent a great deal of time and energy that could have
been spent putting together the Real Ale Festival; he willingly answered my
questions, allowed me to pick his brain, and helped me source some of the more
esoteric references in the history section.
William Crisp, of Crisp Malting, and Brian Glover of Cardiff, Wales, are to be
thanked for loaning me some original prose and artwork for use in this volume.
And last, but not least, a huge thanks goes to Roger Protz of the Campaign for
Real Ale in the United Kingdom, for doing some legwork overseas and debating
the “mild ale versus brown ale” conundrum with me.
Finally, there are the guys I started my brewing hobby/career with. I’m
grateful for the support I received from Brad Priebe, my good friend, with whom
I made some of my first homebrew; John and Jim Pastor of the Grape and
Granary (easily the best homebrew shop in the northern hemisphere); Ken
Bowmer and Dan Siko of the Dirt Floor Brewing Company; Mark Ward, with
whom I’ve shared the best beers in the world (some of which he brewed); Fred
Karm of the Thirsty Dog Brewing Company, and all the members of the Society
of Northern Ohio Brewers (SNOBS) and the Society of Akron Area Zymurgists
(SAAZ).
I would also like to extend a heartfelt thanks to one of the best people I’ve
ever had the privilege of knowing: Scott Eatmon, my fraternity brother and the
best damn bartender from Timbuktu to Portland, Oregon. Scott gave up a
substantial portion of his vacation and never complained as I dragged him from
brewery to brewery throughout England, Ireland, and Scotland (not to mention
Bontfein, Wales).
Introduction

It was during my first years as a homebrewer that I was introduced to the mild
ale style. I had recently graduated to all-grain brewing after only a handful of
extract and minimash attempts and was on a quest for the perfect pint of porter. I
had fallen in love with a local example—Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter
—that at the time was not being bottled and was available only at the pub; it has
since become a classic. I knew that porter was supposed to be dark and full of
flavor, but I had absolutely no experience in formulation. I had been working
with the only hop that I knew existed—Cascade.
My first all-grain attempt was a complete disaster. The beer was problematic
on a huge scale. In retrospect, I believe I had mashed at too high a temperature,
receiving a very low extract from the grains. But I would not have been able to
verify this even had I known what the proper temperature and gravity should
have been, as I owned neither a thermometer nor a hydrometer. In the end, what
little extract I did get was horribly infected and smelled of old sneakers and wet
dog.
This failed attempt led me to a local homebrewing shop, the Grape and
Granary, in Akron, Ohio, where I bought a thermometer and a new set of
brewing supplies. Sensing my desire to brew great beer and the limitations of my
budget, shop owners Jim and John Pastor gave me my first hydrometer. I left
with my new instruments and one more useful piece of the puzzle—my porter
should have a gravity of about 1.060 on the hydrometer.
Because I was still paying far too little attention to the details of my brewing
practices, my second attempt at brewing a porter came out a little thin (on the
shallow side of 1.035) but tasty. It may have been intuition, direct intervention
by the beer gods, or just a damn lucky guess, but I decided to lower my hopping
rate proportionately to the lower gravity. The resulting beer still had a definite
spiciness imparted by the Cascade hops, but it was nicely balanced by the
chocolate and crystal malts I had used.
Although I could not call it a porter, I was nonetheless proud of the beer and
brought a few bottles to a friend’s house. I was certain that he would tell me that
I’d botched the job and encourage me to find a new calling. (I’ve always needed
a bit of discouragement to solidify my goals.) My friend Ken Bowmer had lived
in England for most of his life and had taken up the hobby of brewing there
several years before moving to the United States.
Ken popped open one of my brews and poured it into the familiar dimpled
glass from which I had seen him sampling his own brews. He smelled the beer
and, after pausing to think a moment, took a hefty slug and swished it around his
mouth before swallowing. After another moment of contemplation he spoke: “If
you were to walk into a pub in Stourbridge and ask for a pint of dark mild, this is
what you would get.” He must have mistook the puzzled expression on my face
as one of pride because he was quick to qualify his comment. “Except for the
Cascades. If this beer had been made with a proper English hop, it would be
perfect,” he said.
At the time, I thought I was a very clever fellow because I had written down
exactly what I had done to get that beer to taste the way it did. (I did not yet
realize that any brewer worth his salt keeps meticulous records.) I went back to
the homebrew shop and picked up an identical set of supplies, except for two
small changes: This time, John suggested Fuggle as a “proper English hop” and
set me up with a gold-foil packet of liquid yeast. I set about the task of re-
creating the beer. Eleven hours of work, eleven days of waiting and worrying,
and . . . success! Ken pronounced this beer the perfect dark mild.
So, now I faced the big question—what was a dark mild? Was there such a
thing as a pale mild? light mild? For help, I turned to Ken. He said a mild was a
low-alcohol beer that several breweries in the Midlands of England make. Ken
knew a good mild—that was for sure—but he had a little trouble coming up with
the information I needed, so I turned to Charlie Papazian. He wrote that “mild is
a brown ale of low-alcohol strength . . . not particularly robust or hoppy. . . . A
small amount of black patent or chocolate malt adds color more than flavor. . . .
Milds are quick to mature and easy to duplicate authentically.”1
Besides being a little lean on the hard facts about mild ale, Papazian’s
summation was not what I wanted to hear. My beer, while not an intense flavor
experience, was certainly robust. The chocolate malt I added had definitely had
an impact on its flavor. To be honest, what hurt my ego the most was the little
comment about how easy milds were to make.
The next source I looked to was Roger Protz. He maintains that mild ales are
simply the draught version of brown ale.2 That just didn’t seem right. It was too
simple—and if it were true, why would Protz dedicate a whole chapter, separate
from brown ale, to milds?
Now more confused than enlightened, I finally turned to Michael Jackson. He
wrote, “porter’s sweeter, gentler young brother, mild was originally a London
style. . . . It should be low in hop bitterness (which is what mild means). . . .
Although a mild is not necessarily very attenuated, its low gravity makes for a
modest calorie count.”3 Although still a little weak on “news I could use,”
Jackson’s account did tell me that there are both pale (also known as light) and
dark milds, that there are still a good number of them being made, and that the
style is suffering from declining sales—even vanishing in some areas.

The general lack of information available about the style caused my interest to
fade nearly as quickly as that second batch of mild disappeared from my cellar.
Once the beer was gone, I was back full-time on my quest for porter. Since it
seemed from the little research I had done that mild was somehow connected
both to porter and to brown ale, I thought I might be able to learn more about
mild as I pursued the other two styles. I never found the perfect pint of porter. I
learned that there were far too many diverse and equally fulfilling interpretations
of the style to ever pronounce one the quintessential pint.
It was not until several years later, after turning my passion for beer into a
profession in brewing, when I was sitting in a pub in a small village called
Himley outside Dudley in the English West Midlands, that I had a flashback to
that bottle of homebrew I had shared with Ken Bowmer. I had ordered half a pint
of Highgate Dark Mild, which the landlord had informed me was made only a
few miles up the road in Walsall. With one sip, I knew that Ken had been right—
my porter-gone-awry had been an accidental mild ale success.
I questioned the landlord about the beer. He knew of only a few other
examples being produced, and most of them were being made within a few miles
of his pub. He said that milds were the “elixir of life for the salt of the Earth.”
Milds are low-alcohol beers with plenty of flavor and body, he said. They were
dwindling in number very quickly, and had it not been for the coal mining folk
of the Black Country, they might have died out entirely years ago.
 That half pint (and the subsequent two full pints) of Highgate Mild renewed
my interest in the style and, armed with my 1995 CAMRA Good Beer Guide, I set
out on another quest. (CAMRA is the Campaign for Real Ale, a consumer rights
group formed in the United Kingdom that advocates the brewing of real ales.)
This time I was not in search of the perfect pint—I was in search of the style as a
whole. I had to know what mild was about. Where did it come from, and where
was it going? Why was the style dying, and what could be done to save it? What
could I do to save it? What did the style do for the people of the Black Country
who loved it so, and what could the style do for Americans? How could I bring
it, as well as an appreciation for mild, back to my brewery halfway around the
globe?
What I found was that mild is a link to the past—a living relic from the roots
of the English brewing industry. It has existed for at least 300 years, and its past
is inexorably entwined with the histories of porter, stout, brown ale, and every
other English ale. It is a beer that embodies the genteel spirit and hearty culture
of the people who have brewed it and those who drink it. It is a restorative, an
aperitif, and a session beer. Mild assumes every role that a beverage can,
somehow transforming itself to fit the moment and the occasion.
Unfortunately, mild is at the same crossroad that its cousin, porter, reached in
the early 1970s—at the threshold of extinction. So, on to the second part of my
resolution—to do what I can to save mild as a style. The problems with mild, or
so I thought at the time, were twofold: it was only a sub-style of brown ale, and
there were very few original resources regarding the history and practice of
brewing mild. As it turned out, I was wrong on both counts. There is a clear case
for mild being a style on its own, and there are hundreds of references to it in the
canon of brewing literature.
This book is not meant to be the last word on mild ale. As you will discover,
the great thing about the style is that it offers unparalleled flexibility and
potential for varied interpretation. Therefore, only the brewer and the brewer’s
customers can truly have the last say. This book is merely a starting point—an
outline of the historical development, past forms, and modern-day identity of the
mild ale style.
I hope that after reading this book, you will be as convinced as I am that mild
is a style worth saving. Too many brewers are dropping mild from their product
lines or dropping the mild moniker in favor of less-meaningful terms like dark or
light bitter. How can the significance—even the identity—of such a historically
important beer style be lost to modern minds? The question defies easy answers.
It is, however, my ardent hope that mild will find new life, just as other beers
such as porter and stout are enjoying revivalist success.
An increasing number of American craftbrewers are now experimenting with
milds, and there are indications that traditional mild is making something of a
comeback on its native soil as well. With renewed interest in the art, science, and
business of small-scale brewing in the United States and Europe—as well as in
markets as far flung as Thailand, New Zealand, Costa Rica, and China—it seems
likely that mild ale will continue to enjoy a proud position in the line-up of
classic beer styles for years to come.
CHAPTER 1

Mild Ale: The Historical Perspective

Mild ale is one of the least-known and least-appreciated styles today. Unlike
other declining styles that have been rediscovered in the craftbrewing revival of
recent times, mild ale is continuing to lose market share. Brewers who still offer
a mild ale in their product line ask themselves almost every day whether it is
worth it. The reasons behind the rise and fall of mild ale’s popularity are more
obscure than the causes of waning popularity for its better-known brethren.
Mild ale had its roots in a time when most brewing was done by private
citizens for their own use or by publicans for the use of a small number of
patrons. The terms mild, old, and stock are among the oldest words used to
describe British beer. Any discussion of the history of brewing the style we
know today as mild ale must necessarily begin with an overview of the history of
brewing in Britain. The origins of mild ale are inextricably entwined with the
histories of brown ale, porter, old ale, and every other style of traditional British
ale.
The Roots of Brewing in Britain
The Roman technical and scientific writer Pliny the Younger (circa 61–113
A.D.) noted that the Britannic Celts brewed a beverage they called curmi.
Ignoring the hops that most likely grew wild throughout the forests of Britain,
the Celts seasoned their curmi with other plants, such as rosemary, yarrow, and
bog myrtle.1
When the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Danes invaded and settled England in
the fifth and sixth centuries, they brought with them a tremendous thirst for beer,
as well as their native language. Their word for malt liquor was öl, which is the
root for the modern word ale. Back then (and for centuries to come), the word
referred to a beverage made with malted grains, but without the benefit of hops.
In the first century A.D., the Romans brought plenty of wine along when they
invaded Britain. When that bounty ran out, soldiers frustrated by supply lines
that were long and hard to maintain in that northernmost outpost of civilization
began to manufacture and consume what was viewed by most as a thoroughly
uncivilized drink. The Emperor Julian’s disdain for beer was evident when he
wrote that this “wine made from barley” smelled of goat.2
Nevertheless, the Roman legions soon developed a taste for beer. A recent
excavation near the Black Lion pub on Fishpool Street in St. Albans,
Hertfordshire, revealed ancient floor maltings built by the Romans that no doubt
supplied brewers in the nearby town of Verulamium. Although the Romans ate
steamed hop shoots as a delicacy, they did not use the plant in their brewing
process.3
English Brewing 1066–1720: A Cottage Industry
When the Normans invaded Britain in 1066, they found that the Anglo-Saxons
had developed a very healthy brewing industry. The Domesday Book, a vast
ledger compiled by the Normans to catalog everything in England for taxation
purposes, lists numerous private breweries and specifies the standards by which
they were to be taxed. Although the infant brewing industry was sufficiently
organized enough to come under the scrutiny of the taxman, brewing methods
were still relatively unsophisticated. It was a “catch-as-catch-can” process;
brewers used methods handed down from generation to generation, making
modifications as they saw fit. Little regard was given to matters of sanitation or
science, as neither was understood by even the scholars of the time—much less
by the common people.
The raw materials available to these early brewers were often of low and
inconsistent quality. The brewing water was frequently infected or laced with
undesirable trace elements. The only analytical method available, other than
tasting the water to check its flavor, was a simple hardness test. If the brewer
could easily bring a small quantity of soap to a thick lather, the water was soft; if
not, the water was hard.4
The nuances of genetic selection were unknown, so the malted barley used to
produce these early beers would have been made from locally grown varieties
that had been domesticated from the available wild stock. It is likely that the
disease-resistance and yield of these crops would have been poor and the malting
process poorer yet. The simplest malting method still in use has been briefly
described by Michael Jackson, who has seen farmer-brewers in Norway
germinate their barley by tying a sack of unmalted barley corns to a rock in a
swiftly flowing stream.5 Alternatively, the malt may have been sprouted on the
stone floors of farm outbuildings. This is almost certainly how the barley in the
first beers was malted, and simple methods like these were part of the malting
process until the sixteenth century. In fact, poor drainage and a lack of control
over the environment, coupled with general ignorance of the mechanisms behind
the malting process, probably resulted in poorly modified barley until the
seventeenth century.
Kilning was another problem. The wood fires used for kilning rendered a
significant proportion of the malt useless due to charring and burning, in
addition to giving a pronounced smoky character to the grain and the ale. Curing
the malt over wood fires or over burning straw and peat was an inexact and
uncontrollable method. No malt lighter than nut brown could be produced
because the intense heat caramelized the outside of the kernels. Attempts to roast
malt to darker colors would have caused a chain melanoidin reaction that would
have turned the malt into charcoal.6 With the possible exceptions of sun-drying
malts and kilning over low-intensity straw fires to produce lighter colored malts,
there would have been very little variation in the color of ales—the vast majority
were brown.
One of the earliest references to a product known as mild ale comes from a
rental agreement recorded sometime in the late twelfth century. Ceolred Abbot
of Medeshamstede (modern-day Peterborough), Wales, charged his tenant,
Wulfred, 1 horse, 30 shillings, 15 mittan of clear ale, 5 mittan of Welsh ale, and
15 sesters of mild ale for a one-year lease to an estate at Sempringham.7 We
cannot be sure what the clear ale was, although it is logical to assume that it was
a strong product made of malted barley, with no seasonings whatsoever, that had
been aged in wooden containers. The Welsh ale would have been a heavy, pre-
Norman, pre-Saxon drink laced with expensive spices and often sweetened with
honey. The mild ale of twelfth-century Britain was simply an ale—either strong
or relatively weak—that was intended for present use and did not exhibit the
earthy, woody roundness that is imparted by a secondary fermentation involving
the wild yeast Brettanomyces. This character, along with a lactic acid sourness
from the action of lactobacillus and other acid-producing microbes, were the
hallmarks of the older, aged stock or stale ales and were almost certainly a facet
of both the clear ale and the Welsh ale Coelred was referring to.
Between the eleventh and eighteenth centuries, the prevailing brewing method
was a system known as parti-gyle brewing, in which three or more successively
weaker worts were drawn from a single mash. The brewing equipment or
utensils used were primitive and unsanitary. Often made solely of wood, they
teemed with wild yeasts and bacteria, both of which would have had a profound
effect on the beer. In fact, beer so spoiled as to be unfit for use must have been
commonplace, as wooden vessels did not lend themselves to boiling or other
methods of cleaning.
 A primitive mash tub.

When a metal kettle (later called a copper) was used, it was almost certainly
accompanied by wooden mash tuns, fermentation tuns, and, worst of all in terms
of sanitation, cool-ships—large, shallow wooden vessels in which the
unfermented wort was allowed to sit, exposed to the air and the wood, while
cooling to a pitchable temperature. The mash tun was the most specialized of the
brewing utensils, yet it was usually little more than a large container with a tap
fixed near the bottom.
The brewer’s art was based upon empirical observation and traditional
methods. For the first gyle, a quantity of water was raised to a boil and then
allowed to cool until the steam escaping had subsided and the surface of the
water turned from a turbid shimmer to a reflective and glasslike calm.8 The
brewers knew that this was the temperature at which they could gain the most
value from their grain. The grains were stirred into the hot water, and the
resulting mash was left to stand for some time. After the concoction turned sweet
to the taste, the stick or plug jammed into the hole at the bottom of the mash tun
was knocked out, and the sweet liquid was run off, with little regard given to
clarity or to anything else.
 A small brew house, circa 1747. Notice the empty wooden casks that were used as fermenters. The beer
would later go to the market in these same casks.

The wort was then transferred to a boiling vessel, which might or might not
have been made of wood, and boiled by any means the brewer could manage.
This may have been accomplished by heating stones (or, later, pieces of iron,
bronze, or other metals) and dropping them into the liquid, or by placing
superheated coals underneath the tun. Boils conducted in one of these imprecise
ways would necessarily be weak and under-productive.
The second gyle would be started as soon as the first was out of the mash
vessel. More water would be brought to temperature and mixed with the grains
left from the first gyle. As before, the valve would be opened (or the plug
removed) and the liquid would then be boiled. Each successive wort drawn from
the grain would be lower in specific gravity, producing a beer that was weaker in
alcoholic strength.
The first gyle, being the strongest wort, was fermented and stored in wooden
vats or barrels where it could mellow and age. Beers resulting from this first gyle
were known as old, stale, or stock ales. The second gyle produced a beer still
high in alcohol, but less-suited to long aging in a wooden container; it was
usually blended with the old or stock ales.
The most common ales of the Norman period were undoubtedly of the stale or
stock variety blended with a portion of the beer produced from the middle and
subsequent gyles. In addition to being brewed and fermented in wood containers,
these stock or stale beers underwent a substantial aging period in wooden casks.
There, the harshness of the spices used and the smokiness of the malt would
mellow as the beer picked up the hallmark “horsey” aroma and flavor of a wild-
yeast fermentation. Despite the long aging period, stock beers were still harsh,
and they benefited from being blended with the beer from the weaker gyles.
Because refrigeration was unknown and because the role of yeast and other
microflora in the fermentation and spoilage of beer was not understood, brewing
was a seasonal activity that typically took place in the cooler months of the year.
A very high alcoholic content was needed to prevent airborne microorganisms—
and those colonizing the porous wood of the brewing utensils—from rendering
these beers unfit for consumption after long periods of storage during the
summer months.
The last and weakest gyle produced a beer with a much lower alcohol content.
Those beers were known as small, table, or family beers. Although the last gyle
was certainly the weakest of the lot, the strength of those family beers was
considerable. They would make today’s strong and old ales pale by comparison.
Although big beers by today’s standards, the beers from the third gyle—and in
some cases even fourth or fifth gyles—lacked the sugars to produce ales of
sufficient strength to keep for very long. These beers, called small, present-use,
or running beers among other things, were meant to be consumed as quickly as
possible, before the infectious organisms had time to run wild and turn the ale
into vinegar. The present-use ales were undoubtedly harsh with the flavor of
green apples and perhaps turbid with yeast cells and microbes when first tapped,
and they must have turned sour and acidic just before they were run out. Even
so, they were the first mild ales.
Sometimes the three different worts were treated as separate products and left
to ferment on their own. Other times they were mixed, either all together or in a
specified combination with one or more other worts to produce the desired
effects. Mixing the three products from separate casks at the publican’s house
immediately before serving customers was a popular practice in Britain until the
early nineteenth century.9 The resulting product, sometimes called three-threads,
is believed to have spurred the development of porter. Until very recent times,
the practice survived in a few pubs in Ireland, where customers were offered a
strong, well-aged beer mixed with weaker, fresh beers from two different
casks.10

Mild in Popular Literature: An Early Reference

The theory that mild ale was, at first, used to designate the beers made
from the lower-gravity runnings and served relatively young (as opposed to
the higher-gravity “old” beers) is evidenced by this excerpt from a
sixteenth-century poetic epic. Note that the phrase “new and old” in the
chorus replaces “mild and old” in the refrains.

I can eat but little meat,

My stomach is not good;
But sure I think that I can drink
With him that wears a hood.
Though I go bare, take ye no care
I am nothing a cold,
I stuff my skin so full within
Of jolly good mild and old.
Back and side go bare, go bare,
Both foot and hand go cold;
But, belly, God send thee good ale enough,
Whether it be new or old.
I have no roast but a nut-brown toast,
And a crab laid in the fire;
A little bread shall do me stead—
Much bread I not desire.
No frost, no snow, no wind I trow,
Can hurt me if I wold,
I and so wrapt and thoroughly lapt
Of jolly good mild and old.
Back and side go bare, go bare,
Both foot and hand go cold;
But, belly, God send thee good ale enough,
Whether it be new or old.
And Tib, my wife. That is her life
Loveth well good ale to seek,
 Full oft drinks she, till ye may see
The tear run down her cheek;
Then doth she troll me to the bowl,
Even as a malt-worm should,
And saith “Sweetheart, I took my part
Of this jolly good mild and old.”
Back and side go bare, go bare,
Both foot and hand go cold;
But, belly, God send thee good ale enough,
Whether it be new or old.

—William Still, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1566

The term mild, then, was used to designate a whole class of beers rather than a
distinct and separate style throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
and even into the nineteenth century. It is therefore likely that most seventeenth-
and eighteenth-century beers existed in both a stock (or stale) form and in a mild
form, and that both stock and mild ales could be found in a wide range, albeit a
high range, of gravities. Prior to the advent of porter brewing, beers were
classified not by their color, flavor, or other attributes, but rather by their age and
by the methods with which they were brewed and conditioned.
 It is at this point—before 1720—that all of the traditional English styles of
beer have become intertwined, and it is from this point that they all diverge. It
was difficult to draw a distinct line between the various styles offered prior to
1720, much as it is difficult to define the differences between many stouts and
porters today. Three-threads, it is believed, gave rise to porter. And when porter
hit the market in the 1720s, the usefulness of the other styles as components in a
mixture was outlived, but they found a strong following on their own.
Hops—and, by extension, the term bier or beer—did not come into use until
the middle of the sixteenth century.11 Hops were first used for brewing in
England after Dutch traders brought cultivated strains of the plant to Kent and
Sussex, along with examples of the Germanic beer brewed with it. It was at this
time that English brewers began to use the hop to spice their ales, using
relatively little of the spice and often in conjunction with other spices. They used
a larger quantity of hops for a stronger beer.12 Today, some British revivalist
brewers are experimenting with herbs like anise and ginger in their brews; some
Nordic and Baltic brewers never abandoned the old methods, and they regularly
use spices like juniper and bog myrtle.13
Beer—that is, malt liquor spiced with hops—did not replace the traditional
unhopped ale right away. Because hops were brought by traders and were mainly
available to people with easy access to the marketplace, brewing with hops
became popular in the cities, but the traditional methods were still commonplace
in the country.
Writing in 1868 about the merits of hops as a preservative in beer, George
Stewart Amsinck tells us that he had “tasted Ale brewed in Devonshire, a
twelvemonth old, with only 6 lbs. per quarter, perfectly sound, in fact mild, and
on the other hand, I have met with East India Pale, from one of the largest
Breweries in Burton, with 30 lbs. to the quarter, at the end of the month of
August quite sour.” Amsinck confirms that beers that did not exhibit the lactic
sourness common to beers aged for many months were called mild. (For the
record, Amsinck was refuting the then-popular belief that hops had a latent
preservative effect on beer. This has since been proven to be true, but Amsinck
was far from convinced.)

Boddingtons is one of many U.K. breweries that calls the bottled version of their mild ale a “brown ale.”

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, English country brewers
began producing and selling pale beers. To distinguish their products from those
of the competition, London brewers used the term brown beer to describe their
products, which seem to have included porter, stout, brown, and all types of
darker beers in both their stock and mild forms. One of the earliest references to
a product called brown ale is in The London and Country Brewer from 1750, and
the Private Brewer’s Guide of 1822 says that “the consumption of brown beer
became confined to London . . . a mixture of stale, mild and pale, which was
called three threads . . . Being the beverage of laboring men, . . . it obtained the
name porter, and was called intire [sic] butt beer.”14 It is clear that brown beer
was not used to designate a particular and distinct style of beer, but rather to
identify any beer that was not of the new pale variety.
Mild Ale’s Cousins: Porter and Stout

I sing, I sing of good times older,

When men than women were the bolder;
When bills were short and credit shorter,
And when from malt they brew’d the porter;
When lawyers were too proud to pillage,
And Horselydown was but a village;
Christmas had its Christmas carols,
And ladies’ sides were hoop’d like barrels;
When drinking ale made men stronger,
And doctors made folks live longer;
When our grand-dads brew’d the stout October;
And thought it a sin to go to bed sober.

Chorus
Sing hey, sing ho! I can but grieve
for the good old days of Adam and Eve.
—Eighteenth-century song

The origins of brewing as an art and practical means of producing a potable

beverage are obscured by the mists of time, but the date at which brewing ceased
to be a cottage industry and became a technological industry is easily pinpointed.
The story goes that one afternoon in the autumn of 1722, a partner in the Bell
Brewhouse in Shoreditch, an entrepreneurial chap named Ralph Harwood, grew
tired of delivering three separate casks to each of his publicans so that they could
mix them in the customer’s tankard as three-threads. Harwood’s solution was to
brew a beer that exhibited all the characteristics of three-threads but could be
served from a single cask. The new beer was called entire butt or intire, as it was
a single beer that could be served “as is” from one cask or butt.
This new dark, nourishing, thick, and bitter beer found favor with porters and
other manual workers who were attracted to it because of its greater apparent
strength.15 There are several variations of this story, which first appeared in The
Curiosities of Ale and Beer by John Bickerdyke, but what is certain is that porter
brewing, and by extension stout brewing, eventually pushed the brewing
industry into the modern era.
It is probable that Harwood’s achievement, while very romantic, was only a
small part of the real story. During this time, when the technical advantages of
thermometers and hydrometers were not yet available, brewers were reluctant to
share their secrets with competitors. An achievement the magnitude of
Harwood’s would surely have been worth keeping secret. But beginning in 1726,
a product called “porter” is referred to in many sources. This seems to indicate
that just four years after Harwood invented it, porter had become a widely
produced style.
If one were inclined to believe that Harwood was simply a beer philanthropist
who divulged his secret in a selfless campaign for the advancement of the
industry, he must have surely been a martyr as well, because at no time is
Harwood mentioned as a leading porter brewer. By 1758, he was only brewing
about 21,000 barrels of porter a year, while the leading enterprises—including
the future industry giant, Whitbread—were producing between 55,000 and
65,000 barrels. Just two years later, he did not even produce enough to be
included in the published list of important brewers.16

What is more likely is that Harwood was one of the first to produce a single-
gyle beer—a beer that was designed to withstand maturation and to be pleasing
to the palate as served from a single barrel. All of Harwood’s blending was done
at the brewery, in much the same manner as modern large breweries blend their
beers to be consistent in terms of flavor and appearance.
 This was a very important development because the mild ale producers of the
time almost certainly followed suit, designing single-gyle beers to resemble the
popular parti-gyle products they formerly produced. For the first time, lines
could be drawn between distinct styles of beer.
Technological Innovation
Porter brewing gave rise to a whole new set of problems. In the years
immediately before the advent of porter, the brewing trade mainly produced mild
ales. These ales were formidable in strength by today’s standards, 1.070 to 1.080
specific gravity (SG), but they were not as strong as the new porters.
Consequently, the milds could be brewed, fermented, and aged in the trade
barrels—the casks or butts in which they would be carried to market in about a
month and a half. Porter and other strong beers had to be aged in the casks for up
to a year or more. In 1743, Robert Huck’s brewery, Thrale’s and Truman’s,
owned several thousand butts each (1 butt = 108 imperial gallons).17 Because of
the enormous storage capacity required, brewers had to store their butts in every
conceivable nook and cranny. When there was no more room on their premises,
they were forced to incur the added expense of renting space elsewhere. In
addition, they bore the considerable expense of repairing and replacing the butts,
which typically lasted no more than 15 years.18

The porter vats at Barclay and Perkins in London, circa 1850. The brewery had well over 100 vats that
held from 500 to 4,000 barrels each.

The first innovation spawned by consumer demand for porter was the
installation of vats for aging instead of trade barrels. Parson’s Brewery in
London’s South End was the innovator behind this advancement. Great oaken
vats that could hold 1,500 barrels each were constructed there in 1736; those
same vats were still in use as late as 1774. The vats cost far less per barrel of
beer and quickly became a source of pride and point of competition between
neighboring brewers. By 1784, the newest Whitbread cisterns held 2,400 barrels
of beer; one hundred people dined inside one of Thrale’s new vats in the year
1800, and in 1809, one vat at the Golden Lane Brewery held 7,000 barrels.
All of this one-upsmanship finally led to disaster on the evening of October
17, 1814. A vat at Meaux’s Horse Shoe Brewery in St. Giles containing 7,600
barrels of porter burst, washing away the brewery walls, crushing buildings
across the street, and flooding basements all along Bainbridge Street. Eight
people died of “drowning, injury, poisoning by the porter fumes or
drunkeness.”19
Other innovations also had sweeping effects on the brewing industry. Since
the late sixteenth century, maltsters had been experimenting with coal-fired kilns
and indirect curing of the malt, giving rise to the first pale malts. These new
malts were very expensive because coal was difficult to mine at first, and it
produced huge amounts of soot and noxious fumes when it burned. Not until the
late seventeenth century did the less-costly coke become readily available. At the
same time these new fuels became popular, brewers were increasingly interested
in selecting hop cultivars for their flavor and bittering properties; they also had
gained a better understanding of the role of water hardness in brewing. All of
these factors came together to boost the production of pale ales—the beers that
would eventually dominate the British beer market and claim the lion’s share of
the market for mild ale.
In 1817, David Wheeler invented the cylindrical drum roaster. Grain (or
beans, as in the case of coffee) could be roasted while water was added in small
amounts to control the process.20 This patented process allowed the maltster or
brewer more control over the curing of his malt, making it possible to produce a
broad spectrum of malt colors—and flavors—more easily and more consistently
than in the past. The still-popular black patent malt traces the origin of its name
to Wheeler’s patented process.
 An early hydrometer.

Two more great innovations in British brewing were made in the late
eighteenth century by James Baverstock, who experimented with the
hydrometer, and by John Richardson, who devised a method of calculating the
extract potential of a given sample of malt. Their findings led to the decline of
brown malt. Brewers discovered that they could expect more yield per pound of
malt with the pale varieties than with the brown varieties. Cost per pound was no
longer the determining factor—cost per percent sugar revealed that pale malt
was the cheaper way to go.
These discoveries had the greatest impact on the porter breweries. Until this
time, porter had been made exclusively of brown malt. But with the new malts
and confirmation that pale malt was the more cost-effective commodity, porter
brewers began using a blend of the cheaper pale malt and the new colored malts.
Porter was the first beer not to be defined by the characteristics of the raw
ingredients. The first beer to be mass produced, porter was designed by the
brewer to fit a certain profile and fill a certain consumer niche, rather than being
driven by the available raw materials and processes.
This simple base- and specialty-malt method of formulation was quickly
adopted by all segments of the brewing industry, and today it is still the standard
practice. Ironically, the very technology and innovation that spawned the porter
style eventually destroyed it and cleared the way for mild ale to replace it.
What’s in a Name?
It is important to remember that in the middle of the nineteenth century, the
original ale—the unhopped malt liquor of the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Normans,
and the indigenous people of the British Isles—had been completely extinct for
almost two centuries. Likewise the term beer no longer identified the hopped
malt liquor as opposed to an unhopped ale. In the 1800s, all malt liquors were
hopped, and the original designations were lost and became almost synonymous.
The meanings of ale and beer further mutated in the later eighteenth century,
when porter and stout became popular, especially in the cities. With the rise of
these new beverages, ale (which had almost entirely fallen from popular use)
was resurrected and used to identify the common malt beverages still widely
produced and consumed in the country. Although brown in color, these country
ales were not nearly as dark as the mass-produced porters and stouts. However,
they were neither as bitter nor as light in color as the “pale ales” that were
gaining favor in some parts of the country. The term beer was commonly used to
refer to porter and stout, while the term ale referred to the brown, mild products
of the country and the newer pale beers.
The ambiguity of these definitions was further compounded by the way pubs
used them to identify contemporary brews. Somewhere along the way between
the decline of porter brewing and the rise of pale ale and subsequently bitter, the
terms mild and ale seemed to have been used interchangeably, with the term ale
predominating. Mild was used when there was a possibility for confusion
between a “mild ale” and a “pale ale.” This is evidenced by the use of the terms
ale, porter, and stout together on pub signs. In a slightly later period, the terms
pale, mild, porter, and stout were often used together, but ale and mild were
never listed as two separate products on the same sign.
 Although it’s called a dark ale, Northerner No. 1 was a very popular mild in West Yorkshire.

These differences and similarities in beer styles silently mutated throughout

the centuries. Today, the term beer is an umbrella term used to describe all
nondistilled malt liquors. Ale is a class of beer that is hopped and fermented at
relatively warm temperatures, typically with a top-fermenting yeast—the main
feature that differentiates it from lagers, the newcomers on the scene. Mild ale is
typically, though not always, the lowest-gravity beer in a brewery’s portfolio.
Both porters and stouts are generally classed within the ale category because
they are usually made with a top-fermenting yeast, although some porters and
stouts are made with a bottom-fermenting yeast.21
Beer, ale, porter, stout, pale, mild, bitter. The stylistic and categorical lines are
hazy at best. Each term can imply a different commodity, yet they are often used
in common conversation as generic terms referring to the same types of products
under the broader genus of malt liquor.
The Road to the Modern Mild
There can be no greater challenge in the study of history than understanding
changes in public tastes over the centuries, and the brewing industry has
certainly proved that axiom to be true. The sources clearly show that there were
fluctuations in consumer preferences significant enough to inspire both major
and, presumably, minor brewers to change their product lines. Changes in social
habits, the economic climate, temperance reforms, and taxation policies all
impacted these shifts. But the degree of change in the characteristics of the
primary beers—porter, stout porter, strong, stale (or old), mild, and pale ale—
and the specific factors that motivated these changes are next to impossible to
pin down and any explanation offered would be necessarily incomplete.

Porter, the beer market behemoth of the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, was to be confronted by a critical stumbling block in the very
technology that helped create it. The rise in the popularity of gin was part of
porter’s fall from favor, but the black malt that the porter brewers were using as
a coloring agent may have introduced a harsh, charcoal-like dry taste to the beer
that had not been there before. The altered taste was surely instrumental in
hastening the general shift in consumer preferences toward other beverages—
including the new rival, pale ale.
So loathed was gin consumption by the legislators in Britain that they tried to
enact laws to encourage the drinking of beer instead. The Beerhouse Act of 1830
entitled just about anyone to sell beer from a public house or even from their
home under a license that cost just under £2. Suddenly pubs were everywhere.
This helped boost beer sales over those of the rival gin, but it hurt porter as a
style. The large porter breweries like Whitbread and Barclay and Perkins owned
large numbers of pubs where their products were sold exclusively and the
proliferation of free-trade outlets diluted their in-house market.22
Despite the decline in popularity that porter experienced, it still had a firm
hold on the market. In 1833, Charrington’s, one of the great mild producers of
the time, began brewing porter, and as late as 1863, porter still made up 75% of
all beer drunk in London.23 This is not to say that the big brewers did not see the
writing on the wall: The largest brewers, who owed their size and profitability to
porter and the technology that came with it, began to produce mild ale. A witness
to the 1833 Committee on the Sale of Beer observed that the typical London beer
drinker was having “nothing but what is mild, and that has caused a considerable
revolution in the trade, so much so that Barclay and Perkins and other great
houses, finding that there is a decrease in the consumption of porter, and an
increase in the consumption of ale, have gone into the ale trade; nearly all the
new trade is composed of mild ale.”24
From such accounts we can speculate that these ales were simply unaged
beers of every hue. If it is true that Londoners of the time were demanding mild
ales with such ferocity, even though porter still held a great portion of the
marketplace, perhaps porter underwent a significant shift in flavor profile during
those years. It may be that the porters of the mid–nineteenth century were more
akin to the mild ales of that period than to the porters of a century before.
Until the 1870s at least, porter and mild battled for supremacy in the London
area. A visitor to Cobb’s Margate Brewery in 1875 remarked, “It is strange how
the taste . . . for old stale beer has turned to the opposite extreme in the liking for
mild and sweet by the present generation.”25 But by 1890, the trend turned away
from vatted porter (which itself was becoming more and more “mild,” in that it
was vatted for a much shorter time—sometimes for as little as two months)
toward the sweeter and less tart mild ale. One chronicler of the brewing industry
noted that “the fickle public has got tired of the vinous flavoured vatted porter
and transferred its affections to the new and luscious mild ale.”26
The next great shift in public taste was the rise in popularity of pale ale—the
beer that would at first compete with and finally replace mild ale as the beer of
choice in Britain. As the use of glass drinking vessels became more widespread,
the consumer began to place a high value on the brightness of the beer instead of
its strength. The railroads that spanned Britain in the 1840s made the bright
Burton ales far more accessible to people living in the cities, especially London.
This new ale was very pale in color as compared to most mild ales and certainly
to porter. Selling at prices one-third higher than porter or mild, the new pale ale
was not a cheap drink; it found favor with the growing middle class. Although
these beers—both mild and pale—were as heavily hopped as the vatted porter
they replaced, they were not as strong and were not aged for long periods like
porter. This trend in British beer was unique, as the rest of Europe and even the
United States and the colonies switched from strong ales to weaker, bright
golden lagers.
By the 1870s porter and strong beer had almost entirely lost favor in the cities,
except among the older folk who had been weaned on the drink. Rural areas like
Southwest England, the Midlands, and Suffolk also remained loyal to the old,
strong ales. As the turn of the century approached, customers were increasingly
demanding bottled beers, and brewers began to filter and carbonate their
products for packaging. The brewers tried to capture as much of the market as
possible by offering as many as ten or twelve different products in varying colors
and strengths—stout, pale, bitter, porter, and mild ales. The weaker end of this
range was still very high in gravity by present standards. In the Art of Brewing,
published in 1875, the typical gravity of a mild is listed as 1.070, higher than the
average gravity of a porter!27
A 1905 treatise of the brewing industry described the beers that were available
in Edwardian Britain:

. . . they may be divided into strong, medium and light. In the strong,
we may include stock or old ales, and heavier stouts. The medium,
comprises the lighter stouts, superior bitter beers, mild or four [pence]
ale, which the latter is still the beverage of the working classes, and
porter. The light beers . . . A good example of this type of beer is the
so-called “family ale,” and cheap kinds of bottled bitter beers and
porters.28

From 1880 on, the trend toward paler, weaker, less-heavily hopped beers from
the sweeter and heavier milds is driven by increased taxation, which by then was
based upon the original gravity of the wort. Frequent wars necessitated the
rationing of raw materials and drove taxes even higher. Writing in 1909, one
observer noted that the average gravity for mild ale worts was 1.057 SG in 1880.
By 1889 it had dropped to 1.055 SG, and by 1907 it had dropped even farther to
around 1.048 SG. This drop of 15 to 20% over a 27-year period led the writer to
conclude that “British working-man’s beer of to-day is already practically a
temperance beverage.”29 In 1902, Truman’s brewery compared the gravities of
its mild to those of its competitors. The gravities ranged from 1.038 SG to 1.059
SG, with an average of 1.048 SG.
Also, beginning in the 1870s brewers were quickly catching on to
technological advances, and suddenly they were able to brew a wider range of
fast-maturing beers nearly year-round. “Improved systems of brewing cause
beers to mature in a period that would have astonished our grandfathers,” wrote
a visitor to Northampton Brewing Company in 1875, “and old ales are now
drunk that have been brewed in less time than was of old required to make the
sweetest and mildest ales even moderately drinkable, and men of the time of the
Whitbreads, the Meaux’s and Calverts . . . would turn in their graves could they
learn that their successors have their beers fit for consumption in less time than it
took to fill their gigantic tuns.”30
Modern Mild: The Last Hundred Years
Mild ale was to take another significant turn in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. As the practice of aging ales for long periods of time fell
from popularity, the term mild ale began to refer to beers that were malty and
brown in color.31 The American Handy-Book of Brewing, Malting and Auxiliary
Trades, which was published in 1908, describes milds as having a “more
sweetish (mild) taste, containing more unfermented malto-dextrines and less acid
[than stock beers].” The text goes on to list “London four ale (mild)” at 13–14
°Balling (1.053–1.057 SG).32

Welsh miners–their faces black with coal dust–enjoy a few pints after a long day in the pits near
Cwmback. In Wales, mild ale is simply called “dark.”

Whether these beers gradually became lighter in body and alcohol because
brewers sought to reduce their costs or because consumers genuinely preferred
them over higher-gravity beers is subject to debate. However, by the 1920s, the
brown beers known as mild ales were so different from what they had been, only
decades before, that Newcastle revived the term brown ale (which had fallen
from popular use) to distinguish their higher-gravity product from the lower-
gravity products being marketed under the name mild ale. The great success of
this bottle-only product prompted a mad rush by other brewers to capitalize upon
it. In this period between the World Wars, a great many British brewers
introduced bottled beers under the name brown ale, though very few actually
brewed a separate product for marketing under that name. Rather, they simply
bottled their mild ales under the new moniker. The effects of this somewhat
deceptive practice are still being felt today. Many breweries still bottle their mild
ale under the name brown ale.
Even during the last half of the twentieth century mild lost ground both in
gravity and in market share. In 1940, the popular English treatise Brewing
Science and Practice listed grist bills for two mild ales: one at 1.040 SG, and one
at 1.045 SG.33 The Second World War delivered another blow to the average
gravity and market share of mild ale. In 1940, mild accounted for almost 50% of
the beer produced and consumed in England, but the consumption of bitter had
been on the rise for decades, and it appeared that it might soon replace mild, just
as porter had been replaced by mild a century earlier. When the British economy
was forced to gear up for war in mainland Europe in 1941, the government once
again restricted the flow of raw materials to the brewers, severely rationing
barley. Large companies that operated several different breweries received the
same allocation of barley for each of their plants as singular companies with
only one plant. The larger companies that operated many breweries with
different brand names, like Bass Charrington’s and Whitbread, were able to
redistribute raw materials among their individual breweries, thereby saving some
brands and sacrificing others by lowering their gravities. Bass Pale Ale, for
instance, remained at the same gravity as it had been prior to the war, but a
smaller Bass-owned brewery, Tadcaster Tower Brewery, was forced to reduce
the strength of their mild and bitter to make up for it. The brands that suffered
were, of course, those whose market shares were already declining—such as
porter and mild, which were losing out to bitter and pale.
This reduction in strength prompted the few consumers still drinking mild to
switch to bitter simply because mild was no longer the drink they were used to.
In isolated pockets, however, like the West Midlands, Greater Manchester,
Southern Wales, and Northern England, mild remained popular with the manual
laborers, who could quaff great quantities of the low-gravity beer after a hard
day in the mine or factory and still be able to make conversation with their wives
after the pub closed. By 1960, the average gravity of mild ale was 1.038 SG, and
it would eventually fall farther yet.34
Ironically, the staunch loyalty of the working class to mild ale dealt what
might be considered mild ale’s final blow. Rebelling against their parents and
grandparents’ cloth-cap mentality, the newest generation is reaching for the new
imported or domestic lagers. Lagers are bright, straw-colored, and fizzy; they are
the alcoholic antithesis to the older generation’s way of life. In 1980, mild
accounted for 11% of draught beer sales in Britain, behind bitter at 44% and
lager at 24%.35 Today the sales of mild ale account for less than 4% of the beer
bought and consumed in Britain.
Mild Today—And into the New Millennium
It is interesting to note that, although today’s mild ale accounts for only a
small fraction of the world’s beer production, in the historical sense, mild
accounts for nearly every beer in the world. Almost categorically, modern beer is
served young, without the lactic sourness and Brettanomyces character that was
the hallmark of the aged beers of centuries past.
With the exception of a few Belgian styles that are aged for long periods in
wooden containers, the only remaining true “stale” ale is produced by Greene
King of Bury St. Edmund’s in Suffolk. This beer, called Old 5X, is aged in
untreated, unlined 120-barrel oak vats covered in the local soil, called Suffolk
Marl, which acts as a natural anti-microbial, anti-fugal agent during a year or
more of aging. The beer is then blended with a younger product called BPA and
marketed as Suffolk Strong. It is the closest thing contemporary drinkers have to
an authentic eighteenth-century strong ale. Gale’s Prize Old Ale is another
excellent example of an aged stale beer, but the aging usually lasts only six
months at the longest, and it does not take place in unlined wood containers. The
flavors are nevertheless authentic, with a very delicate maltiness punctuated by a
horsey sourness from lactic bacteria and wild yeasts.

As we have seen, the mild ale style has evolved dramatically over the
centuries. At first, it referred to the entire class of beers that had not undergone a
long aging process. Then it was used to differentiate a beer from a pale or old
ale, when contemporary beer culture no longer required the original designation.
Finally, it lost gravity due to political, social, and economic forces and became
the low-gravity, but flavorful, malty session beer we know today.
Mild continues to lose ground at an alarming rate. It is now confined to small
pockets in England and to craftbrewing circles in the United States. It seems that
one British brewer or another makes the decision to discontinue its mild ale
every couple of months. Especially in this era of revivalist brewing, it would be
a shame if mild ale—arguably the style from which all other English beers
sprang—should disappear. It has made the trek down a long road pitted against
lagers, marketing departments, and world wars only to reach this crossroad. Will
mild take the road less-traveled and begin an upswing to newfound popularity or
will it slowly fade into history?

Fortunately, the future looks bright for mild ale. There are still a good many
interesting examples of mild ale available, ranging from the viscous and
caramelized Dark Ruby Mild from Sedgley’s Sarah Hughes Brewery to the
chocolatey, full-bodied Dark Mild from Walsall and Highgate in Dudley or the
pale, malty Original AK from McMullen’s in Hertfordshire. And the number of
new milds appears to be growing. There were more mild entries at the Great
American Beer Festival and the Craft Beer Institute’s Real Ale Festival in
Chicago in 1998 than in previous years. In addition, the 1998 CAMRA Good Beer
Guide lists more milds being produced in the United Kingdom than in previous
editions, and the legions of dedicated craft- and homebrewers are making more
milds than ever.
The beauty of mild as it exists today is in its simplicity. The lighter side of
dark beers, it is light in body and alcohol, yet full of flavor and complexity. It is
a simple beer to make, but an extremely difficult style to pin down. And while it
is not likely that mild will become the top-selling beer in every brewery’s
portfolio any time soon, it will survive, thanks to the dedication of a few brewers
who are as passionate about the style as they are about their craft.
CHAPTER 2

The Flavor Profile of Mild Ale

Mild ale as it exists at the latter half of the twentieth century is a difficult style
to define. It has existed in one form or another for the whole of British brewing
history. It has evolved into three distinct subcategories, each of which covers a
great deal of territory: dark mild, which accounts for the vast majority of mild
ales produced both in the United Kingdom and elsewhere; pale mild; and
throwback mild, which includes milds that are more characteristic of the milds
of years past. Indeed, it is difficult to describe a beer that can be at once light or
dark, very low or very high in alcohol, and either rich in dark malt flavor and
mouthfeel or light and crisp with a touch of hop flavor and aroma.
The first and second categories of mild ale are both modern. The first, the dark
milds, are by far the most common commercially available milds. These ales use
one or more dark specialty malts in their grist bill in addition to crystal malt, a
pale base malt and, very often, a nongrain adjunct like brewers’ caramel or invert
sugar. The second category, the pale mild, is best exemplified by McMullen’s
Original AK. Pale milds are characterized by their maltiness and lack of dark
malt in the grist bill. Typically, a pale mild will be in the same color range as a
bitter or pale ale, but it will have less gravity and certainly less bitterness.
The original gravities of dark and pale mild ales are always below 1.040 SG;
they average out at 1.034 SG. The color of dark milds generally falls between 11
and 100 degrees Standard Reference Method (ºSRM), with an average of 43
ºSRM.1 Pale milds fall under 11 ºSRM, with an average of 6. Bitterness levels in
both pale and dark milds fall between 15 and 33 international bitterness units
(IBUs), with an average of 23.2
The final category and, I believe, the truest category in terms of the historical
roots of the style is that of the throwback mild. These milds exhibit one or more
of the characteristics of milds as they existed decades or centuries ago. The most
famous throwback mild is certainly Dark Ruby Mild from Sarah Hughes
Brewery in Sedgley, West Midlands. With an original gravity (OG) of 1.058 or
higher, a deep russet color, and a thick, sweet character, this mild is surely a clear
depiction of what milds were like at the turn of the twentieth century. Throwback
milds can be representative of any period in British brewing history, but they
should be based both upon the raw materials available to the brewers of the time
and upon the technology that was being used then.
As with most modern English beers, a significant proportion of the
fermentable sugars in most milds comes from straight sugar added to the copper
or from adjunctive grains. This means that these milds will have even lower
body and flavor profiles than their original gravity might suggest. These are low-
alcohol, low-bodied, yet full-flavored beers (see table 1).
Color and Clarity
Unlike other beer styles, mild ale can assume any color in the spectrum. The
palest examples like McMullen’s Original AK measure as little as 3 degrees
Lovibond (°L) and the darkest—Highgate Mild, for example—are upwards of
100 °L.

TABLE 1
Mild Ale Profiles

Throwback
Specifications Mild Dark Mild Pale Mild

Original gravity 1.040–1.100 1.030– 1.030–

1.040 1.040

Apparent final gravity 1.012–1.030 1.006– 1.005–

1.008 1.008

Apparent degree of 60–80% 75–85% 75–85%

attenuation

Real degree of attenuation 50–70% 58–70% 58–70%

Color (°SRM) 12–120 11–100 4–11

Bitterness 20–60 15–33 15–33

Alcohol % ABV 5.5–12% 3.5–4.3% 3.5–4.3%

As is often the case in the modern British brewing world, the color is imparted
by artificial coloring agents, rather than solely by dark malts and roasted barley.
Holden’s Mild and Banks’s Mild are both darkened with the addition of caramel
coloring at the end, as is the mild offering from Batham’s—which the brewery
admits is simply a colored version of their bitter. This is particularly sad because
the brewery tap is the famous Bull and Bladder pub, on the facade of which is
painted the most famous tribute to mild ale. Sarah Hughes’s Dark Ruby Mild and
the Highgate Mild are both rather dark and made without the use of coloring
agents. These two beers are fuller-bodied and more flavorful than Batham’s mild
with far more dark malt character, as one would expect.
As for clarity, modern mild ales are most often found on draught, served cask-
conditioned. This means that the beer has undergone a secondary (or tertiary)
fermentation in the cask from which it is served and has been fined or clarified
by means of an added fining agent like isinglass or gelatin. I will discuss cask
conditioning and fining in greater detail in chapter 5.

In rare instances, mostly in the United States and Canada, mild ales are served
after having been filtered and force-carbonated, but in either case, modern mild
ale, like most British beers, is meant to be served bright, without any turbidity
from yeast or protein haze.

Defining Mild Ale

English-Style Pale Mild Ale

English pale mild ales range from light amber to light brown in color.
Malty sweetness dominates the flavor profile; there is little hop bitterness
or flavor. Hop aroma can be light. Very low diacetyl flavors may be
appropriate in this low-alcohol beer. Fruity-ester level is very low. Chill
haze is allowable at cold temperatures.

English-Style Dark Mild Ale

“English dark mild ales range from deep copper to dark brown (often
with a red tint) in color. Malty sweetness and caramel are part of the flavor
and aroma profile while licorice and roast malt tones may sometimes
contribute to the flavor and aroma profile. These beers have very little hop
flavor or aroma. Very low diacetyl flavors may be appropriate in this low-
alcohol beer. Fruity-ester level is very low.”
—1998 Great American Beer Festival, Guidelines to Beer Style Guidelines
and Medal Categories

“Mild is a brown ale of low alcoholic strength . . . that is not particularly

robust or hoppy; rather it is thirst-quenching, low in alcohol, flavorful and
light- to medium-bodied. A small amount of black patent or chocolate malt
adds color more than flavor.
Original gravities: 1.032–1.036 (8–9 °P). Alcohol: 2.5–3.5 percent.
Bitterness: 14–30 IBU. Color: 22–35 °SRM.”
—Charlie Papazian, The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing

“[In Brewing and Malting Science] Hough et al. gives ‘draught mild’ at
1.031–1.037 (7.5–9.1 °P); alcohol 2.5–3.6 ABV, with 14–37 IBU bitterness.”
—Fred Eckhardt, The Essentials of Beer Style
Flavor, Body, and Aroma
Dark Mild
Dark mild is always tawny to black in color, perhaps with a garnet tint, and,
therefore, most often has some caramel, chocolate, and coffee flavors, along with
the associated roasted aromas. Because dark milds are frequently brewed with
some adjunctive source of sugar, this tends to thin the body and diminish the
malt flavors, though not to the point of making the beer insipid. Hop bitterness is
most often very low so as to take the edge off the malty sweetness without
affecting the overall malty character of the beer. Hop flavor and aroma is very
light to imperceptible, with a few notable examples having a very pleasant floral,
fresh-tobacco aroma imparted by Fuggle or Styrian Golding hops.

AK: The Roots of Pale Mild

In the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, up to 100

breweries produced pale milds under the moniker AK. Today there are only
two left. The most famous is McMullen’s Original AK. Although many of
the breweries that at one time produced an AK are still in business (Young’s,
Fuller’s, McMullen’s, and Ind Coope among them), they seem to have all
forgotten what the name meant.
Theories, folklore, and humorous local appellations abound, however.
Before and during the First World War, it was popularly believed that AK
stood for “Asquith’s knockout,” after the British Prime Minister Herbert
Asquith, who imposed the heaviest-ever tax on beer in Britain as a means
of financing the war. Others believed that it stood for “after killing,” as it
was common for slaughterhouse workers to quaff a good many pints after a
long day at work. Perhaps it is a bastardization of “ale conners” (konners),
who were the first official beer inspectors.
What is more likely is that the moniker was first used by the brewers to
distinguish the ale as suitable for a specific trade. It might have been an
abbreviation for “amber-kitchen,” to distinguish it as lesser-quality ale
intended for the servants. Or, it might have stood for ale kyte, Flemish for
“small beer.”
 Perhaps the best explanation harkens back to the days when all breweries
used Xs to indicate levels of strength. The ales with the lowest alcohol
would have had the fewest Xs. The beer with the lowest mark, but of
premium quality, might have been marked with an “A” for quality, but only
half an X —which would have looked an awful lot like a “K.”
A nineteenth-century advertisement for Waltham Brothers Brewery (see
page 60) seems to support this theory. It lists prices for X, XX, XXX, and
even an XXXX Strong Mild Ale, along with a product designated “AK” that
was among the lowest in price.

Pale Mild
Pale mild, as the name suggests, is very light in color as compared to the dark
milds and is often very similar to the color of bitters and pale ales. The
difference here lies both in the character of the beer in terms of maltiness versus
hoppiness and, most substantially, in terms of the beer’s gravity. Pale and bitter
ales are typically in the range of 1.040 to 1.055 SG, whereas beers termed or
considered pale milds are always of lower gravity than that. Where this line
becomes hazy, as in the case of Federation Special Ale from Tyne and Wear,
England, which weighs in at 1.033 SG (clearly inside the mild ale gravity
parameters), hoppiness becomes the defining characteristic. Federation has a
wonderful bouquet imparted by Brambling Cross hops that is reminiscent of
Boddington’s Pub Ale from Manchester, England—another, more popularly
known ale that has often been listed as a pale mild.
 Pale milds, of course, lack the chocolate and toffee flavors of their dark mild
counterparts; they also have a crisper, sometimes biscuit-like pale malt signature.
The aroma—lacking the overpowering roasted notes associated with dark malts
—is fruitier and more subtle than the darks. Hop aroma is not unheard of, but it
is always secondary to the malt.
It should be noted here that many brewers of pale mild have succumbed to
marketing forces and have begun to call their products by the more market-
friendly moniker bitter. McMullen’s of Hertfordshire, England, which makes
Original AK—known for well over a century as a pale mild—has recently begun
calling their ale a light bitter. And Boddington’s is calling its pale mild, at 1.035
original gravity (OG), simply a pub ale.

Throwback Mild
There are a few examples of mild ale that have not changed with the times—
they have become living examples of mild ale’s potent past. By far the most
famous is Sarah Hughes’ Ruby Mild, which is brewed with a recipe that dates
back to the first quarter of the twentieth century. This beer is very fruity, with a
bold body and mouthfeel. Cooked fruit, vanilla, and caramel round out the
palate, with a slight buttery note from trace diacetyl. The aroma is at once floral
and spicy, from Fuggle and Whitbread Goldings hops, and the beer finishes with
a pleasant bitterness and a touch of acidity. Though it is likely that Dark Ruby
Mild would have been at home among the milds of a century ago, it is most akin
to some of the modern old ales produced by Northeastern English breweries like
Greene King and Nethergate.

Another throwback mild is Merrie Monk from Marston, Thompson, and

Evershed in Burton-on-Trent. The deputy head brewer, John Cheetham, calls
Merrie Monk (one of the offerings in the Head Brewer’s Choice line of beers) a
dark mild, it is fuller in body and higher in gravity than other Midlands milds.
Merrie Monk is chocolatey and sweet, with only the faintest hint of hops and a
rare oakiness—no doubt a quality attributable to the Burton Union sets still in
use at the brewery. It is in those unions that Merrie Monk and Marston’s other
mild, Walnut Mild, are wholly fermented.
Several other British breweries make products they call milds that do not fall
in the realm of low-gravity beers. Perhaps the most extreme example of a
throwback mild is brewed by the Bull Mastiff Brewery in Cardiff, Wales. Their
Ebony Dark Mild, weighing in at 1.073 SG—18.25 degrees Plato (°P)—and 7.0%
ABV is almost opaque black but reveals a garnet tinge when held to the light. One
expects the first sip of this mighty brew to be awash with coffee and roasted
flavors but, strangely, the flavor is incongruous with the color, revealing only
pleasant toffee and licorice notes, with a nice hop balance from what is almost
certainly a heavy dose of Golding.
Because mild ale is found in such a wide spectrum of colors and flavors, it is
among the hardest styles to pin down to well-defined style guidelines. This
difficulty is among the chief reasons for the decline of mild ale. As the flavor,
aroma, and color profiles of other styles such as bitter, old ale, and brown ale
have become more easily definable and those styles have become lower in
gravity than their earlier versions, the style parameters for mild ale are being
absorbed by these other styles. What was once clearly a pale mild might today
be just as easily termed a bitter (for example, McMullen’s Original AK, at 1.033
OG), and what could have twenty years ago been called a dark mild is today
known as an old ale (for example, Adnam’s Old Ale, at 1.037 OG).
CHAPTER 3

Mild Ale Ingredients

Malt, water, and hops are the three requisites for brewing ale.
—Alfred Barnard, The Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland,
Vol. II

Because mild ale is essentially English, it only makes sense to use raw
ingredients that are English as well. And although it is true that some of the
strains of barley grown and malted in Great Britain are also grown and malted in
the United States and elsewhere and that some varieties of hops cultivated in the
United States and elsewhere are descendants of original English stock, the
simple fact is that it is not the same. This is not to say that British raw materials
are the quintessential ingredients for beer or that American raw materials are
intrinsically inferior; rather this recognizes that because mild ale has such
delicacy of flavors that the brewer must take great care in ensuring that the
ingredients used are employed by design and not as a matter of habit or
convenience.
Malt
The best malt will make the best ale, and it is cheapest in the end; as
by using it, there is but little danger in the process of brewing good
beer.
—Alfred Barnard, The Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland,
Vol. II

Mild ales of all types should feature malt as the signature flavor. Even those
examples that have a noticeable hop presence should not forgo malt in favor of
hops. At the risk of sounding overly poetic, the malt should be the tree from
whose branches all other flavors hang from like ornaments. Because of the
typically low gravity and delicate profile of mild ale, the types of malt you use—
with no exception made for the base malt—will profoundly impact the final
character of the beer.
Mild ales typically consist of a pale malt base, some crystal or caramel malt,
and, in the case of dark milds, a colored malt such as chocolate, black, or
roasted. In addition to these products, we will consider mild ale malt and brown
malt, as well as some adjunctive grains like corn and oats.

Pale Malt
As with all other British styles of beer, pale malt is the soul of the grist bill. It
is, by far, the main source of fermentable sugar and a significant factor in the
flavor profile. Pale malts of British origin are highly modified; conversion takes
place quickly and yields as much fermentable sugar as possible given the amount
of malt used and the temperature of conversion. Pale malt made by some
American maltsters from six-row barley should be avoided, as the modification
possible with this barley does not lend itself to single-temperature infusion
mashing. It produces a definite difference in flavor and texture as compared to
British two-row malts. Also, because we do not have the benefit of a protein rest,
a malt with low protein levels is recommended.
British pale malts are readily available, and most maltsters produce their pale
malts to very similar specifications in modern, highly controlled maltings. The
exception to this rule is the traditional floor maltings that most agree produce
some of the best malt in the world.
 Rather than the typical American concern with the manufacturer of the malt,
British brewers seem to be more particular about the variety (or cultivar) of
barley that is used. Depending upon the maltster and the preferences of its larger
customers, your malt may be of the Pipkin, Halycon, Plumage Archer, or Golden
Promise varieties. Marris Otter, a winter barley, is the type most commonly
selected to malt by hand in a floor maltings. Floor-malted barley has found few
critics; in fact, it is widely held to be the best malt available to both the British
brewer and the American home- or craftbrewer. While there is a romantic quality
to using malt that has truly been handcrafted, there is a better reason to use it—
flavor, the simplest and most important malt analysis.

Pale malts are generally crisp and biscuit-like in flavor. Any sour notes or
stale flavors indicate that the malt has gone bad, and it should not be used. Floor-
malted Maris Otter is even more biscuit-like, and although it tastes similar to
regular pale malt from Crisp, Muntons, or Paul’s, it possesses more depth of
character. This difference does, without question, translate into the finished
product, especially when the product is intended to be malty—like a mild ale.

Crystal or Caramel Malt

Caramel and crystal are used interchangeably to describe malt that is made by
taking properly germinated green malt, soaking it to near 50% moisture,
subjecting it to conditions that cause the endosperm to sacchrify and liquefy
(basically the equivalent of mashing the grain), and heating the entire kernel so
that the sugary liquid caramelizes and becomes unfermentable. As it cools, the
liquid center of the barley corn hardens into a crystalline structure (hence the
British name for the malt) that can be dissolved into the wort via the mash later
in the brew house. (See the section “Kilning and Roasting Your Own Grains”
later in this chapter.)
 Depending upon the quantity of this malt in the formula, the brewer can
achieve colors from a slightly orange-gold through copper and into the realm of
brown. In addition to being a coloring agent, crystal malt also imparts quite a bit
of flavor and body to the character of the beer. Crystal malts are available from
20 to 120 °L. The lightest malt in the crystal category is dextrin or CaraPils.
Dextrin is about 1 to 10 °L in color and is used in relatively small quantities
when little color or flavor is desired but the increased body and heavier
mouthfeel that crystal malt imparts are.
Used in the proper amounts, crystal malt will impart a malty sweetness that is
difficult to achieve otherwise. Also, because the sugars extracted from crystal
malt are largely unfermentable, they will be present in the product after
fermentation is complete, improving the beer’s overall body, mouthfeel, and
head retention.
Crystal malt is perfect for extract brewing. Because the malt is essentially pre-
mashed in the malting process, the sugars are already available for dissolution in
water. Steeping the malt in hot water (165 °F, 73.5 °C) before adding the extract
will produce nearly the same effect as adding it to a full mash profile.

Chocolate and Black Malt

Chocolate and black malt are prepared in much the same way, except that
some of the starches in malt destined to become chocolate malt are allowed to
sacchrify before the grain is roasted to a very dark color (400–500 °L) in a drum
roaster. Temperature, moisture, and the mixing action of the cylindrical drum
roaster are essential to the successful production of these malts because the
intense heat and prolonged roasting time can induce a runaway reaction that
turns the barley into charcoal. Black malt (500+ °L) yields an acrid, burnt, but
not unpleasant flavor, while chocolate malt imparts more sweetish, roasted notes.
Each of these malts should be employed in small amounts in a dark mild, more
for color than for the flavor they will invariably impart.

Roasted Barley and Roasted Malt

Like chocolate and black malt, roasted barley is prepared in a cylindrical drum
roaster. Although the color of roasted barley is similar to that of black malt
(450–600 °L), the barley is both unmalted and roasted with a greater moisture
content, producing a drier, sharper flavor than found in other dark malts.
Roasted malt is chiefly made by continental maltsters who wish to offer a
product with the characteristics of roasted barley that still conforms to the
Reinheitsgebot—the German beer purity law of 1516. That law mandated that
brewers may only use four ingredients in making beer: malted barley, water,
hops, and yeast. Though the law was later expanded to include malted wheat, it
has continued to exclude unmalted cereal grains. The malt used in the production
of continental roasted malt is called chit malt. Steeped for a very short time and
kilned very lightly, it is quite undermodified.
Guinness has used roasted barley and roasted malt interchangeably in their
recipes for some markets. So far, the brewers have not been able to detect a taste
difference between the two.1

Mild Ale Malt

Mild ale malt is something of an enigma. The maltsters who make a product
under this name say that it is used specifically for the production of mild and
brown ales, but I have been unable to find a single mild ale brewer who will
admit to using it. One of the brewers I spoke to was so puzzled when I
mentioned mild ale malt, that he spent 20 minutes trying to explain that pale
malt was not just for pale ales—that it was used in their mild ales as well. In
retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have gone on to ask whether he had ever used
Baird’s stout malt.

I can find one reference to mild ale malt in Michael Jackson’s Beer
Companion where he lists it as an ingredient in a milk stout.2 Beyond that, I have
found very few references in modern brewing or malting texts, and even these
offer scant information. One British maltster claims that the product was
developed for the British market, but didn’t sell, and it was revived for the
American small-scale brewing trade, where everyone is always waiting for the
next big thing from Europe.
Mild ale malt does, nevertheless, fill an interesting niche in the world of base
malts. The typical analysis suggests that it is a little more dextrinous than the
average pale malt and perhaps a bit darker. Unlike CaraPils or dextrin malt, mild
ale malt retains plenty of diastatic power for sacchrification. It is usually malted
from the Triumph variety of barley—a barley of slightly lower quality for
malting.

Brown Malt
If mild ale malt is an enigma, brown malt is a complete mystery. Brown malt,
sometimes also called “blown malt,” is the malt most closely associated with the
porters of the past. It was most assuredly used in the mild ales of earlier times.
The best description of the malting process for brown malt can be found in a
mid-nineteenth-century English brewing text.3 The passage describes laying the
malt out at a depth of about one-half inch on the floor of the malt kiln—which
was constructed with a steel false bottom with a fire box below it. A hardwood
fire was lit in the fire box, and the temperature of the grain would rapidly rise to
180 °F (82 °C). This passage also suggests that the malt picked up a great deal of
flavor from the fire.

Roasting Your Own Grains

One of the biggest problems with brewing recipes converted from old
recipe books is that the main ingredients (malt and hops) are unavailable
today. Although the best we can do for antique hops, short of cultivating
and selecting our own varieties, is to use the modern standards that have
replaced them, we can closely approximate the malts brewers of past
centuries would have used in their beers.
Home-roasted grains add a depth of flavor, aroma, and color that would
be otherwise unachievable in a beer brewed only with stock malts.
Roasting grains involves spreading a layer about 1 inch deep on a baking
pan that easily accommodates at least 1 pound of grain. The simplest roast
of pale malt in a 350 °F (176.5 °C) pre-heated oven for 10 minutes will
 bring out a light caramel, malty flavor. Roast the malt for longer (20 to 30
minutes) to produce an amber-colored malt with some, albeit very little,
diastatic power. Remember to monitor the roast for aroma and flavor, and
stir the grains frequently to avoid burning.
A long roast will turn the malt brown. This is somewhat similar to
modern brown malts in that it produces a brown color with no diastatic
activity. However, the flavor and aroma is far more complex than the
commercially available variety.
My solution to the historical brown malt dilemma is to use a mixture of
home-roasted malts: 40% lightly roasted, 30% medium-roasted amber
malt, and 30% heavy-roasted brown malt. The brown malt of past centuries
was cured over a hardwood fire and invariably picked up some of the
smoke reek as a result. To add another dimension to your approximation of
historical brown malt, smoke the entire 40-30-30 blend over some
hardwood in a home smoker, or add a small percentage (5% or so) of
German Rauchmalz or peat-smoked malt.

During this kind of curing, three things are almost certain to occur. First, reek
from the fire would settle on the malt and impart to the beer made from it a
characteristically smoky flavor and aroma (although no source actually uses the
term smoky when describing the “peculiar flavor so much esteemed by the porter
drinker”).4 Second, a significant proportion of the barley corns would pop, or
torrify, like popcorn, no doubt giving rise to the moniker “blown malt.” Third,
and central to the mystery of brown malt, is that kilning as described above
would almost certainly destroy any enzymatic potential the malt might have had.
At best, the enzymes would have been severely reduced in quantity.
Because brown malt is listed in numerous sources as the bulk of the grist
charge in early porters—if not the sole constituent—there must have been
another mitigating factor. It is reasonable to guess that the brown malt may have
first been wetted and the endosperm allowed to sacchrify and liquefy, as in the
modern production of crystal malt. If the heat were not allowed to become too
intense, it is possible that a significant amount of fermentable sugars would have
survived and remained in the malt, in which case only minimal amounts of
diastase would have been required.
Also, it is possible that the wort resulting from a brown malt mash would have
been quite glutinous—full of dextrines and perhaps some starch. These
compounds, unfermentable by normal beer yeasts, would have been easily
attacked by invading lactic bacteria and Brettanomyces during the aging process.
This would have reduced the unfermentable sugars into alcohol and produced
the sour tartness that was the hallmark of ales before the end of the nineteenth
century. A very good approximation of historical brown malt can be made at
home in your oven (see the sidebar, “Roasting Your Own Grains”).
A few words about modern, commercially produced brown malt: It has no
diastatic power and imparts a nice brown hue not unlike that obtainable with
chocolate malt, but with a different flavor profile. In small proportions (no more
than 10% of the total grist charge), it produces light biscuit flavors with perhaps
a hint of roastiness. This is an interesting malt to experiment with, but as
explained previously, do not attempt to use it as a base malt.
A number of sources have suggested that using some modern peat-smoked
malt or German Rauchmalz would result in a better interpretation of the brown
malt of yore.
Adjuncts
Most modern milds, like most modern British beers in general, are produced
using adjunctive sources of sugar including corn grits, oats, pure cane and invert
sugar, and brewers’ caramel. The historical reasons for using these adjuncts is
largely economic in nature, but it would be short-sighted to say that they are
categorically evil products that have no place in the brewing world. Adjuncts
with low nitrogen contents, like corn and rice, can be used to correct malt with
an unusually high nitrogen level; adjuncts with high protein contents, like wheat,
can aid head retention. As with different malts, hops, and the use of spices in
some beers, adjuncts impart to the beer their own characters, which are not
necessarily undesirable.

Adjuncts can be divided into three categories: those that are added to the
mash, those that are added to the copper, and coloring adjuncts that are added to
the finished beer. We will deal with all three in this section, limiting discussion
to those adjuncts that are either typical in a mild ale brewery or that lend
themselves well to the brewing of mild ale.

Mash Tun Adjuncts

The typical brewers’ grist bill has not changed much in the last 50 years.
Specialty beers and the philosophies of some breweries aside, the typical grist
bill consists of approximately 75% malt, 10% mash tun adjuncts, and 15%
copper adjuncts.5 These figures are not meant to be a prescription for British
beers in general nor for mild ale specifically; they are only meant to be
representative of British brewing. Any brewer would be doing himself a
disservice by mistaking the figures mentioned here for gospel truth and by
failing to experiment with malts and adjuncts on his or her own. Adjuncts can
give a whole new dimension to brewing mild ales—or any other style of beer,
for that matter.
One note on the use of grain adjuncts: With the exception of wheat, whole,
unprocessed grains cannot be used directly in the mash. These grains must be
cracked (as through a mill) and cooked (mixed with water and boiled) to
gelatinize their starches before they are added to the mash.
Flaked and rolled grains, on the other hand, are not cooked. The starches in
these grains are gelatinized as a product of the heat and pressure of the roller
mill. They are ready for the mash with no further preparation.

Corn and wheat. Corn is not indigenous to the British Isles. It does not grow
well there, accounting for less than 12% of all acreage dedicated to raising crops.
Therefore, it would not have been the first choice of adjunct among the British
brewers of old. In modern times, a product called brewers’ corn has found its
way into many bitters and a few milds, but it is used only occasionally. It is
commonly a mixture of smaller, British-grown kernels and imported kernels.
Because a great deal of the corn must be imported, usually from the Americas,
the mixture tends to be expensive. Nevertheless, it is a good adjunct that works
well in a mild ale.
Corn, or maize, contributes fermentable sugars while lightening the character
(color and body) of the beer. It adds a grainy sweetness and helps accentuate the
character of the hops. Flaked maize is the best form to use because it is
pregelatinized and ready for conversion. (It is a popular misconception that
flaked corn can be used without the benefit of enzymatic action, such as the
steeping of specialty grains. This is not true. However, for similar results, one
can use corn sugar—that is, dextrose—added directly to the wort before boiling.)
Corn makes for a good, crisp beer, but I recommend reserving the use of this
adjunct to beers of at least 1.036 SG (9 °P) and above. The lack of unfermentable
sugars in the wort to create body and mouthfeel can cause the resulting beer to
be thin and watery.
Wheat, like corn, lightens the body and color. Unlike corn, though, the typical
protein levels are very high and may cause unwanted haziness. Wheat starch
gelatinizes at relatively low temperatures (122–130 °F, 51.5–54 °C), so cooking
unprocessed wheat is not necessary. Wheat is typically extraordinarily high in
beta glucans (a sticky compound that is notorious for sticking mashes), so be
careful. Although wheat (malted) is used for up to 80% of some grist bills for
German weizens, and unmalted wheat is used for up to 50% of the grist bills
(along with about 5% oats) in Belgian wit beers, I would not recommend
anything above 10% for a mild ale.

Oats. Oats are most commonly found in oatmeal stouts and a few oatmeal pale
ales, but I have seen a large quantity of oats used in other breweries, including
one very large brewer of Irish stout and at least one mild ale brewery. The latter
makes perfect sense. The oiliness or silkiness that oats impart to a beer is
perfectly suited to mild ales, where perceived body and mouthfeel, along with
wholesome flavors from grain, are of paramount importance.
Flaked oats are easiest to use and can be added directly to the mash, but the
quantity should not exceed 15% of the grist weight. Oats, like wheat, contain
high levels of beta glucans and can stick the mash rather handily. I am a great
proponent of single-temperature infusion mashes, especially when brewing a
mild ale, but if you find that using oats is too costly in terms of time and effort
because they cause your mashes to stick, try a low-temperature rest (at 122–125
°F or 50–51.5 °C) to denature beta glucans before raising the mash temperature
to achieve sacchrification.

Copper Adjuncts: Sugar and Invert Sugar

Copper adjuncts are water-soluble additives that typically represent up to 15%
of the total original wort gravity. They usually take some form of sugar, and they
are added to the wort sometime after the boil has started.
Sucrose is derived from the sugar cane, a giant tropical grass, and from the
swollen root of the sugar beet. Refined, white sucrose and its hydrolysis product,
invert sugar, are used in the vast majority of British breweries. Pure cane sugar
and pure beet sugar have almost identical compositions and are indistinguishable
from each other in their refined state and in a finished beer.
Impure, partially refined grades of beet sugar impart unpleasant flavors and
aromas and are not used in brewing. Partially refined cane sugars, on the other
hand, have pleasant flavors and aromas and might be desirable in a dark mild
ale. These products include demerara or turbinado sugar, molasses (treacle), and
golden syrup. These are common copper adjuncts in a variety of beer styles and
have been used in the commercial brewing of mild ales in Britain and the United
States. The fermentability of these adjuncts varies, though, and one might expect
to yield about 90% for turbinado or demerara, 60% for molasses, and 80% for
golden syrup.

Adding invert sugar to a batch of Dark Ruby Mild at Sarah Hughes. The sugar, which arrives at the
brewery in 5-pound chunks, is put into a mesh basket and suspended in the open-top copper behind. The
wood-insulated vessel in the foreground is the mash tun. Notice the wort shooting out of the bottom and
into the copper.

Brown sugar was originally taken from the refinement process before the final
bleaching, like modern turbinado sugar. In the United States today, however,
brown sugar is simply refined cane sugar with a small percentage (less than
10%) molasses added back in.
Invert sugar is prepared by hydrolysis of disaccharide sucrose into its
constituent monosaccharides, glucose and fructose, with a dilute acid solution or,
rarely, by the use of the enzyme invertase. Invert sugar may be supplied to the
brewer in the form of a syrup, or it might be even further reduced into a block.
Each of these forms contain about 83% solids. Those solids are about 91 to 95%
fermentable, depending upon the color; the darker, the less fermentable they are.
In order to be fermentable, sucrose must first be hydrolyzed by the yeast,
which secretes invertase to do the job. Pure sucrose and invert sugar are equally
metabolized by yeast, with no effect on beer flavor or aroma, but sucrose is often
the preferred product because it is cheaper. Some brewers, however, still like
invert sugar for priming because less yeast is needed in suspension to hydrolyze
the sucrose. Often a mixture of 55% invert to 45% sucrose is used for this
purpose.
All completely fermentable sugars, like sucrose or invert sugar, yield about
1.045 SG per pound of sugar to a U.S. gallon of water.

Coloring Adjuncts
It should be noted that many mild ale breweries in Britain use coloring agents
to darken their mild ales after fermentation is complete and the beer is ready for
packaging. Although this practice does not directly reflect poor character on the
part of the brewer, I cannot recommend the use of coloring agents for this
purpose. In fact, I wholeheartedly discourage it—it is tantamount to adding
green food coloring to beer on St. Patrick’s Day.
I suspect that this practice may be one of the many reasons that the
consumption of mild ale has declined so dramatically in recent years. A good
number of breweries, including one of the leading brewers of mild ale, is by all
accounts guilty of brewing one beer and calling it bitter in its unadulterated form
and mild if it is colored. The brewery claims that its customers don’t know the
difference and simply want a dark beer as opposed to a pale beer. Some have
lamented this brewery’s recent decision to drop the mild moniker as another
chink in mild ale’s haggard armor, but I think that mild ale as a style and those
dedicated to saving it are better off without those who would cheapen and
disrespect it.
Some breweries use caramel after fermentation to add some color and some
sugar to the beer. I would not categorize this approach as belonging completely
in the adjunct color column because the caramel does add to the beer’s flavor
profile as well. A tasting of beers before and after the addition of caramel
confirms that the flavor is not the same—it actually benefits from the addition of
caramel.
Hops
Foreign hops are out of the question, as the finest of that description
will taint the Ale with an unpleasant twang, however carefully used. I
tasted a sample of Ale brewed with the finest Bavarians, at the rate of
twenty pounds per Barrel in the cask, to my surprise the bitter was
scarcely perceptible, but it contained a most unpleasant bite on the
throat, which lasted some time after being drank, it was deficient in
that beautiful aroma to the nose; now with English hops you have a
most agreeable smell, and no taste is left after being drank.
—George Stewart Amsinck, Practical Brewings: A Series of Fifty
Brewings

There can be little doubt that hops of English descent have ideal
characteristics for use in mild ale. Although hop presence is traditionally
minimal in mild ale, this does not mean that the selection of hops is unimportant.
The hops should round out the flavor of the beer, offset the cloying sweetness of
the malt with bitterness without masking the maltiness, and provide a
background character to ensure that the beer has sufficient depth. We will
explore here the main varieties that are appropriate for use in mild ales.

The Golding Family: East Kent, Kent, and B.C. Goldings

A good Kent beats all.

—George Stewart Amsinck, Practical Brewings: A Series of Fifty
Brewings

Look strictly to the marks, East Kent, Mid Kent and Kent (Kent only,
means Weald of Kent) . . . each of these marks carry more value than
the other in the market. I have seen, not a few times, marked Mid
Kent, from the following parishes, Tonbridge, Cranbrook, Hadlow,
Brenchley, not one of these belong to Mid Kent, they are Wealds and
ought to be marked Kent, naturally the purchaser is paying more than
he ought to do, or if they are sold at Weald price, he imagines that he
has got a bargain, at all events he is not buying what he supposes he is.
 —George Stewart Amsinck, Practical Brewings: A Series of Fifty
Brewings

Hops, as discussed previously, were first brought to the British Isles in the late
fifteenth century. Until the eighteenth century, hop varieties were of strictly local
significance. These crops, often bred from wild stock and the descendants of
continental strains, were probably harsh and astringent.
By the mid-1700s, English farmers began selecting strains of hops for their
aromatic, flavor, and bittering properties. Hundreds of varieties, still only locally
grown and locally known, had been selected by 1750. In 1790, a farmer named
John Golding chose a particular set of plants and based his entire hop-farming
enterprise on that type of hops.
Today, the Golding family of hops consists of eight very similar varieties,
including Brambling, Early Birds, and Mathons—each named for the farmer that
selected them or the parish in which they were grown. Although similar in
character, each of the varieties either matures at a different time or is more or
less resistant to hop pests. When you purchase Goldings hops, whether they be
East Kent, Kent, or some other type, you will be getting one of these varieties.
Regardless of the actual variety you get, if they were grown in the Eastern part
of the County of Kent, they will be called East Kent Goldings (the variety that is
widely considered to be the best). If they were grown elsewhere in Kent, they
will be labeled simply Kent Goldings. If they were grown in British Columbia,
Canada, they will be labeled BC Goldings. Grown anywhere else, they will
simply be called Goldings.
Hops grown in each of these regions will produce a slightly different character
even though they stem from the same stock. You must be aware of exactly what
you are using in order to be sure that you can repeat the performance should you
be happy with the results—or not repeat it, if you are unsatisfied.
Goldings are the pinnacle English aroma hop, with a gentle, floral aroma that
is perfect for milds. Please note that Styrian or Savinjski Goldings are not a
Golding variety but are instead descended from a Fuggle stock.

Fuggle
Pronounced fuh’-gull, this hop is second in popularity to the Golding
varieties. First propagated from a seedling in 1875, it soon became the most
popular hop in Britain. By 1950, it accounted for 78% of the British hop crop.
Unfortunately, a widespread attack of Verticillum wilt later made production
almost impossible, and today it represents only about 10% of the crop.
A large portion of the Fuggle crop is grown in the West Midlands, and
therefore, it is used as the primary hop in a great many mild ales if for no other
reason than that of proximity. English Fuggle are better than the American or
Canadian varieties, contributing a tea-like or tobacco-like character that is very
pleasant in a low-gravity, malty beer.

Brambling Cross
Bred from a Brambling (a Golding variety) and a wild male hop from
Manitoba, Canada, Brambling Cross is an aroma hop with black currant and
citrus notes. Brambling Cross has a deceptively low alpha-acid content and
aroma in its fresh, whole-flower state. If used correctly, in small amounts for
mild ale, Brambling Cross is a fantastic hop with very distinctive aroma and
flavor characteristics.

Northern Brewer
Northern Brewer is a great mid-alpha hop for bittering. It does not add the
harsh flavors that some other hops in this category can.

Willamette
 Willamette is a seedless (triploid) American-grown hop cultivated from
Fuggle stock that has a slightly different, but very good character of its own. It
has a mild, sweet, and spicy character, not unlike and perhaps even preferable to
that of English-grown Fuggle. I would recommend Willamette as one of the two
non-English hops suitable for dry-hopping a mild ale. When used sparingly,
Willamette imparts a very pleasant fresh-tobacco aroma and flavor.

Styrian Golding
Recent research shows rather conclusively that Styrian Goldings are also
grown from Fuggle stock (in combination with the American Tettnanger) despite
their misleading name.6 Although analytically identical to Fuggle and American
Tettnanger, Styrian or Savinjski Goldings have developed a distinctive mild and
floral character of their own since their importation to Slovenia. This is a hop to
be used often, but sparingly. I have had very good results using the whole
flowers as a dry hop.
Brewing Liquor
For ales, well water, of the Burton type, bored down to the rock, like
that at Springfield, is the most suitable for every decoction or
maceration. The purer the water—that is—the freer from all organic
substances, the better is the ale, and for this reason, modern brewers
prefer using spring, to river water.
—Alfred Barnard, The Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland,
Vol. II

Possibly much the best Water in all England is that at Castleton in

Derbyshire, commonly called The Devils Arss, &c. Which Owzes
from a great Rock, covered over with a shallow Earth and short Grass
a top.
—Richard Bradley, A Guide to Gentleman Farmers and Housekeepers
for Brewing the Finest Malt Liquors

Being the largest constituent ingredient by both weight and volume, the
quality of the brewing water will have a dramatic effect on the resulting beer.
Although in direct disagreement with the information from the first passage
above, the classic water for all brown, malty beers is London water. However,
water treatment for mild ales differs significantly from brewery to brewery. Mild
ale, being intrinsically entwined in the British brewing heritage has, over the
course of centuries, been brewed in every corner of Britain and from every
conceivable composition of water. Highgate and Walsall’s water is very soft, so
they do not treat it; they add salts for all their other beers. Marston’s in Burton-
on-Trent uses the same classically hard water for their milds as they do for their
famous Pedigree Bitter.
Basically, if your water tastes good, you can brew with it. Brewing water
should always be selected primarily for its purity and secondly for its mineral
composition. You can reduce some of the hardness in your water by boiling it to
precipitate calcium carbonate.
From a historical perspective, brewer and author Gregory Noonan quotes
Robert Wallace of the Bass Crest Brewery in Alloa, Scotland, who recorded
what he considered an ideal water analysis for mild ale in 1873. The analysis
lists 288 mg/l calcium sulfate (gypsum), CaCO3 (calcium carbonate) at 151 mg/l,
NaCl (salt) at 4 mg/l, and a total hardness of 439 mg/l.7
This analysis is a bit harder than the classic London water at 235 mg/l
hardness, but far softer than Burton water, which has 875 mg/l hardness.
Do not fret about your water—as I said earlier, if you can drink it, you can
brew with it. If you want to toy with the composition of your water more than
simply boiling it and adding a little gypsum for your pale ales, consult Gregory
Noonan’s New Brewing Lager Beer and Scotch Ale, as well as the other books
listed in appendix C.
Yeast
I saw in print somewhere, an opinion from some scientific gentleman,
that pressed yeast would not do for the purpose of fermentation,
because when the globules of the yeast are broken, the fermenting
power was destroyed. I have used pressed yeast, and I know many who
have done so, and the only difference I and they experienced, is, that it
is necessary to take less in weight per Barrel, because there being no
beer, there is more solid fermenting power, this does not prove the
aforesaid theory, or perhaps the globules, whatever they are, in the
instances I quote above, have not met the same fate.
—George Stewart Amsinck, Practical Brewings: A Series of Fifty
Brewings

Whenever two or more brewers meet in the name of beer, the conversation all
too often turns to the ancient question of which ingredient is the most important.
“Water!” someone will exclaim, citing the nuances of hard versus soft and
sulfate levels. Another will invariably argue for malt and another for hops, each
extolling the merits of European-grown as opposed to American-grown varieties.
It may seem obvious even to the casual observer that this question is just
another version of that classic conundrum: Which of your internal organs is the
most important? But a clear case could be made for yeast as the ingredient that
has the most direct impact on the flavor of the final beer.
Give me five different yeasts, and I will produce five different beers from the
same wort. Imagine using a Belgian abbey strain, a German wheat beer strain, a
Munich lager strain, an English ale strain, and a lambic culture on the same
wort! Would any two of the resulting beers be remotely similar? The brewer’s
choice of yeast is of paramount importance to the final character of the beer.
And, as with malt and hops, British is the way to go when selecting yeast for a
mild ale.
A number of very good, readily available British ale yeast strains have been
extensively researched and written about, so finding a quality source should not
be a problem. Select a moderately attenuative strain, being careful not to let the
ale become too dry, as this can rob your beer of character. Because of the
relatively low gravity of most mild ales, even mid to highly flocculant strains
should do well.
In my experience, the Wyeast London III strain is one of the best for open
fermentation. It lends itself well to malty beers, accentuating them with very
pleasant bready notes. If you have access to relatively cool—up to 65 °F (18 °C)
—fermentation temperatures, another great strain is Wyeast Scotch Ale #1728.
Of course, #1056 is always a safe choice. It is very neutral and lets the qualities
of the specific ingredients used really come through. Wyeast #1028 is very
British in character, but it can easily produce unwanted diacetyl. In truth, any of
the London ale yeast strains will do nicely, as will some of the Scotch ale strains.
But be careful with Scotch ale strains; some tend to produce a tremendous
amount of fruity esters when fermented at high temperatures.
If you are using the more-traditional open fermentation, you would do well to
select a strain that is known to be a true top cropper—that is, one that can easily
be harvested from the top of a fermenter.
CHAPTER 4

Brewing Equipment and Methods

Much good ale has been drunk out of pewter tankards, old brown jugs,
and silver cups; yea, and quaffed in Odin’s ghostly hall from the skulls
of enemies, in preparing which, no philosophical instrument or
mechanical appliance was ever used; the modern brewer, however,
would never think of trusting to the rule of thumb, but prefers to
confide in the dip of the thermometer.
—Alfred Barnard, The Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland,
Vol. II

Because mild ale is produced by so many breweries in Britain—and has been

throughout the history of the brewing industry—the equipment is not specialized
and the techniques used to produce it are common to most traditional British ale
breweries. Therefore, this chapter offers a description and analysis of the
standard British brewing equipment and methods. Where applicable, those
methods are analyzed as they pertain specifically to the production of mild ale.
A six-roller mill from the World War II era. According to the staff at Holden’s brewery, the rollers on this
mill have not been adjusted for 25 years.

The traditional British brewery is organized so that the entire process flows
from the top of the building to the bottom. This system, known as the tower
system, is designed to mitigate and limit the need for pumps, which in the past
were considered costly, unsanitary, and unreliable.
Equipment
The Mill
In days gone by, the brewer had to be concerned with every aspect of the raw
materials as well as those of the brewery and the process. The brewer was often
the landlord, if not the actual farmer, of the land where his barley was grown. He
malted it and brewed with it on the same premises. Today, a brewer need only to
be concerned with the analysis of the raw materials that are purchased; the
growing and malting are left to the specialists.

Typical wooden grist hoppers on the uppermost floor of Marston’s Victorian tower brewery in Burton-
upon-Trent, England.

The brewer’s specialty is brewing, and the process begins on the top floor of
the brewery. Typically found in the attic rafters of a tower brewery (or as they
are sometimes called, the Victorian tower), the grist mill is fed by a malt silo, by
large sacks of malted barley, or by a combination of the two. The whole kernels
often pass through a shaker screen to remove any foreign matter—such as shards
of metal or clumps of dirt—that may have been delivered from the maltster. The
kernels are then sent on to the rollers in the mill, which is usually located in the
same room. The four- or six-roller apparatus dumps the milled grain into the
grist case located directly below.
 The grist shaker at Highgate Brewery, known affectionately as the coffin, has been in use continuously
since the brewery opened in 1898. Note the wooden legs that act as springs.

The Brew House

The grist case is situated between the floor of the mill room and the ceiling of
the mash tun room, directly above the grist hydrator. The hydrator infuses the
ground malt with hot water, limiting the need for excessive stirring of the mash
to remove any dry clumps. It is often of the Steele’s masher design, in which a
worm-drive archemidian screw mixes the malt with the incoming grist. Other
designs include a simple conical “china hat” that spreads the incoming grist and
water out in a cone-shaped fan into the mash tun.

A mash tun at Young’s Ram Brewery in London. The conical top is made from stainless steel, but the old
mash tun itself is cast iron, with wooden staves for insulation. Also note the manometer directly in front
of the vessel.

The typical British brew house includes a mash tun with a false bottom; a
copper kettle (often simply referred to as the copper), perhaps with an internal
colandria; a hop back; and a counter-flow heat exchanger. The mash tun is often
made of cast iron and clad with wooden staves for insulation. The false bottom is
usually made of copper or brass, with 10% of the total area of the plates being
perforated. The mash tun frequently has multiple draw-off points, though it is
not uncommon to find tuns with a single draw-off point located directly in the
center of the vessel.

Inside the mash tun. The false bottom is made from copper, with slits no more than 1/32 of an inch in
width.

Especially in older, independent breweries (which most mild ale breweries

are), few mash tuns have any sort of automatic spent-grain disposal or even a
manway to pull the grains out by hand. In most of these breweries, a man must
physically enter the tun after the liquor is drained and remove the spent grains
with a shovel, filling buckets by lifting the shovel loads over the side of the
vessel. Some breweries also operate without the benefit of mash rakes to
facilitate the run-off, although most breweries now have them.
Located on the floor immediately below the mash tun is the brew kettle, or
copper, where the collected wort is boiled and hopped. Coppers come in a
variety of configurations. Some are large, open copper pots with gas or, in rare
cases, coal fires raging beneath; some are covered with nautical-looking copper
domes; and others are designed to boil under pressure. All but the most primitive
systems are equipped with an internal colandria—an internal tube designed to
increase the ratio of heated surface area to wort.
 These side-by-side coppers at Highgate date from the 1950s. They are nearly identical, but the brewers
prefer the one on the left. They say that they get a better boil in that one.

The copper at Holden’s Brewery. This vessel is somewhat unique to mild ale breweries, in that it is
designed to boil under pressure.

Most brew houses in Britain are not equipped with a whirlpool, but those that
are, call it a swirl tank. By far, the more common method of wort clarification is
the hop back. Usually little more than a cylindro-conical tank with a screen fitted
about halfway down the cone, the hop back uses the screen to catch the hop
flowers in the wort, later using them to filter the whole of the wort after the boil.
This method both clarifies the wort and allows the brewer to add fresh hops for
added aroma to the hop back before running the wort through.

Fermentation Systems

I am a firm advocate for rousing, Light Ale commence 24 hours after

pitching, until within 12 hours of skimming or cleansing, Strong Ale
36 hours after pitching, until within 12 hours of skimming or
cleansing.
—Professor George Stewart Amsinck, Practical Brewings: A Series of
Fifty Brewings
 I will briefly discuss several traditional fermentation methods that are
commonly used in breweries that produce mild ales. Each system is designed to
keep the yeast in suspension and to facilitate harvesting the healthiest and most
viable cells after primary fermentation is complete. Whether these systems have
produced yeasts of the non-flocculating or highly flocculant type through the
process of natural selection or whether the systems themselves were designed
around the yeasts available to the brewer can only be a matter of speculation.
The common systems of fermentation are characterized by the degree to which
they facilitate rousing.

Mild ale at high kraeusen in an open square fermenter.

Open squares or rounds. Fermenting in open squares or rounds is the

simplest system of ale fermentation and is the method most commonly used in
independent British breweries. It is simply a matter of running the hopped,
cooled wort into vessels that are shallow (6 to 13 feet deep), oversized, and open
to the air. These vessels are often made of wood (oak, fir, and American cedar
are favored), with the rounds fastened by iron hoops, as is common with barrels.
The squares are usually made of planks up to 2 inches thick that are either fitted
together by a carpenter with dovetails joints or held in place by nuts and bolts.
Both rounds and squares were traditionally coated with pitch or varnish.
Nowadays, the old vessels are more likely to be lined with stainless steel or
plastic.
A sufficient quantity of yeast is pitched into the wort, and fermentation begins.
In the deeper cylindrical and cylindro-conical vessels, where there is a low
volume-to-surface-area ratio, the yeast works up very little top-crop and is
mainly harvested at the base. In these shallow, open fermenters, the yeast rises to
the top of the beer after fermentation and is harvested from there.

Open wooden rounds. These vessels date from the early twentieth century; they are now lined with
UHMW plastic.

The philosophy of fermentation divides into two camps at this point—the

skimmers and droppers. The skimming system is the oldest and most basic
method of conducting fermentation. Its has its roots in a time when all yeast was
considered to be an objectionable by-product of fermentation and was therefore
discarded. In this system, the entire fermentation and maturation is done in a
single vessel.
 Open stainless-steel fermenters of both square and round design at Holden’s.

After primary fermentation has begun and the yeast is at high kraeusen—that
is, the most viable yeast is at the height of its activity, and a thick, rocky or
cauliflower-like head has formed on the wort—the yeast is removed from the top
by sliding a long board across the whole surface of the vessel within a few
inches of the liquid beneath the head.
The yeast is skimmed every 10 to 12 hours. The first skimming, contaminated
by albumin, hop resins, and the most unattenuative yeast, is discarded, as is the
last, which is often full of dead or mutating yeast cells. The middle skimmings,
which contain the youngest, healthiest, most attenuative cells, are collected in a
yeast back and stored, usually open to the air, at a cool temperature or
refrigerated until needed for pitching. The skimming is continued until the
brewer judges that the fermentation has just enough strength to throw up one
more thin head to act as a barrier to the ambient air for the short maturation
period.
 Open oaken squares at Highgate. These vessels were lined with stainless steel in 1995.

The skimming system is equally effective with flocculant and nonflocculant

yeast strains. Often, when using the former, a brewer will elect to rouse the yeast
directly after skimming. Before the 1940s, this was frequently done by dropping
a tethered bucket pierced with hundreds of holes into the wort, letting it sink, and
then pulling it up from the bottom several times. Today it is standard practice to
employ an immersible pump to keep the yeast in suspension.
Any variation of the skimming system in which the wort is run down into a
second vessel for yeast harvesting is known as a cleansing system. The simplest
method of cleansing is the dropping system, in which the fermenting wort is run
into vessels of the same general description as the first—that is, from one 50-
barrel round into another 50-barrel round. The goal is to leave behind most of
the sediment (made up of hop particulates and cold break), as well as the hop
resins and dead yeast cells that make up a significant portion of the first head on
fermenting wort. Dropping serves to mix and further aerate the wort, virtually
eliminating the need for rousing, except in the case of a few breweries that must
rouse anyway because of the highly flocculent nature of their yeast.
In some breweries, dropping is done at 24 hours into fermentation; in others, it
is done when the wort gravity has dropped halfway to the expected final value.
That is, when it is at high kreusen, and the temperature has reached its
maximum.
 Burton Unions. The Burton Unions constitute the rarest system of
fermentation in Britain, with only one traditional brewery still using it and only
one American microbrewery using a variation of it. Although once widely used,
especially among the pale ale breweries of Burton-on-Trent, the unions have
been replaced by more efficient and more cost-effective methods by all but
Marston, Thompson, and Evershed of Pedigree Bitter fame.
Marston’s produces two beers known as milds, each of which is a member of
their Brewer’s Choice line of specialty products and, as such, are some of the
only beers produced entirely in the union system. (Marston’s other products,
including Pedigree Bitter, are blended beers, and unlike the Head Brewer’s
Choice beers, are made up of only a small percentage of beer fermented in the
unions blended with a large amount of beer fermented in stainless steel open
fermenters.)
The union system is an ancestor of the oldest fermentation methods, in which
the beers were fermented entirely in the casks from which they would eventually
be served, or they were cleansed in these casks after primary fermentation in
larger vessels. This ancient method of fermentation is still used in some very
small, artisanal breweries in Belgium, but it has gone entirely out of use in the
rest of the world. Known as fermentation in loose pieces, the approach was
effective when brewing was a cottage industry, but it is far too wasteful, time-
consuming, and expensive for use in larger breweries. Those constraints led
brewers to develop a more effective variation.

The Old Union Room at Marston’s in Burton-on-Trent.

 In the Burton Union System, the wort is initially pitched in a large, open tun
and allowed to begin fermenting. Just as the first signs of a yeast head begin to
appear (after 5 to 15 hours) the wort is dropped into the union sets. These sets
consist of a number of 4-barrel casks, usually in two rows of 12 casks, fitted on a
stillage (or trunnion), underneath a long trough called a barm back or a top
trough. The bung holes on the bulge of the casks are fitted swan necks that
empty into the barm back, as shown in figure 1. The top trough is kept at a
cooler temperature than the unions to facilitate sedimentation of the yeast. The
trough is slightly tilted to one end, where several holes at different levels allow
the beer to flow into a second back, called a feeder, which in turn directs the
flow back to the casks via the side rods. Each cask is fitted with an attemperator,
as is the barm back and the feeder.

FIGURE 1
Diagram of the Burton Union System

This method is most effective when used with a nonflocculant strain of yeast.
There is no need to rouse the wort, as the yeast will remain in suspension
naturally. In fact, the purpose of the barm back, in addition to providing a place
from which to harvest yeast, is to facilitate the cleansing of the beer.
During early fermentation (the first 5 to 15 hours in the union), the wort is
allowed to flow back into the casks via the lowest hole in the barm back. This
permits the maximum amount of yeast to remain in the bulk of the fermenting
beer. During the middle of fermentation (15 to 36 hours), the wort flows through
a hole just above the sedimented yeast in the back, ensuring that only clear
product flows back into the casks.

Unions at high kraeusen. Note the foam spewing from the swan necks atop the wooden casks.

This system is so effective as to render the beer virtually bright as it is

dropped through valves in the bottom of the casks into a racking tun. From there,
the beer will be racked into the trade casks.

Yorkshire stone squares. Among the rarer methods of fermentation, the

Yorkshire stone squares are designed to keep the highly flocculant yeast strains
typically used in Yorkshire and Lancashire breweries in suspension. The system
is characterized by the relatively small capacity of the fermenting vessels (50
barrels or less). It consists of a fermenting square surmounted by a barm back
with a manhole cut in the center of the separating deck (see figure 2). This
manhole is generally about 18 inches in diameter and surrounded by a lip 5 or 6
inches high.
The deck is also pierced by up to three additional holes. The first is usually
fitted with a long, stainless steel or copper “organ pipe” that reaches nearly to the
bottom of the lower square. The second pipe is fitted with a pump to transfer
fermenting wort to the top square, and the third serves as a drain for the top
square. The vessels are traditionally made of impervious stone or slate, as is the
case at the most famous stone-square brewery, Samuel Smith’s of Tadcaster.
Temperature control was originally achieved by means of a water jacket, but
today it is now exclusively managed by means of an attemperator.
Historically, yeast was mixed with the wort in the upper square and allowed to
run into the lower square via the manhole. This falling action sufficiently
aerating the wort. In modern breweries, the wort is first run into an open vessel,
where it is pitched with a highly flocculant yeast strain before being dropped
almost immediately into the Yorkshire squares. The action of fermentation forces
the yeast head through the manhole and into the top square, where the run-off
back into the bottom square via the organ pipe is regulated with a valve.

FIGURE 2
Diagram of the Yorkshire Stone Square System

Between 20 and 30 hours after pitching, the brewer begins to pump the
fermenting wort from the lower to the upper squares before allowing it to run
back into the lower square. This action is designed to keep the yeast in
suspension and to attain proper attenuation. This pumping typically occurs for
periods of 5 to 10 minutes every 4 to 6 hours until the proper degree of
attenuation is achieved. When the fermentation is almost complete, the valve
into the bottom square is closed, and the remaining yeast is harvested for
repitching.
Because of the highly flocculant nature of the yeast and the almost continuous
pumping that is required to facilitate attenuation, these beers often exhibit a
pronounced diacetyl character. That is not objectionable in lower concentrations
in some bitters and pale ales, but it is not part of the typical modern mild ale
profile.
The Burton Union and the Yorkshire stone square systems would probably
have been completely abandoned due to the labor and waste involved if it were
not for the fact that they have special claims with respect to the quality and
character of the beers produced in them. The cost of the union system is so
prohibitively high that all save one brewery has discontinued their use and only a
few remain true to the squares. As it is, only a very few brewers continue to use
them.

Dual-stage closed fermentation. A very common method of fermentation in

modern ale breweries and the most common form among homebrewers is closed
dual-stage fermentation. Closed fermentation allows for greater sanitation and
retention of more CO2 than open fermentation. The process entails pitching yeast
into one vessel and then transferring the cooled wort on top of it.
The temperature is controlled by glycol- or water-filled jackets surrounding
the tanks or, in the case of homebrewing, by the ambient temperature.
Fermentation is allowed to continue until complete attenuation has been
achieved. The beer is then typically allowed to sit at fermentaion temperature for
another 24 hours.
At the end of this period, which is intended to give the yeast time to reabsorb
and metabolize the undesirable by-products of fermentation, the temperature is
dropped to around 50 °F (10 °C) to encourage flocculation. The beer is then
transferred off the yeast sediment and into another vessel of the same or similar
design for cold maturation. Last, it is either racked into trade casks, bottled, or
filtered and kegged.

Uni-tank or cylindro-conical fermentation. Developed by the Rainier

Brewing Company in the 1940s, the uni-tank system is by far the most common
method adopted by American microbreweries, as well as by many larger
breweries. The advantage of this system is that the same closed vessel can be
used for primary and secondary fermentation as well as for lagering. The system
is comprised of a tall, cylindrical tank with a conical bottom. Although earlier
tanks had cones as shallow as 25° from horizontal, modern research suggests
that an angle of 70° is optimal.
The uni-tank system is quite similar to dual-stage fermentation, with the
important difference being that there is no transfer after primary fermentation.
As the beer in the tank is cooled, the flocculating yeast fills the cone and
becomes quite compact, which makes it easy to harvest and drain excess yeast
from the bottom of the cone. By the end of this process, the beer is relatively free
of yeast.
However, not all yeasts flocculate well. That means that there can be a
significant possibility that not all of the yeast will not be removed through the
bottom of the cone. This is especially true if there are any ledges inside the
fermenter, such as those often found around a manway or a temperature probe.
This excess yeast remaining in the beer may produce off-flavors due to autolysis
of the yeast during extended maturation.

Grundy tanks. The American craftbrewing industry has always been

characterized by the innovation of its members. Dairy tanks, being more
affordable than new tanks, were often pressed into service for anything from
brew house vessels to fermenters to serving tanks in a brewpub.
A Grundy tank. This tank is converted for use as a serving tank in the cellar of Quarry Ridge Brewery in
Berea, Ohio.

One other tank has gained such popularity both in America and abroad that it
deserves mention here as common brewery equipment. The Grundy Company of
Great Britain manufactured tanks for the growing bulk beer market in the 1960s,
1970s, and early 1980s. The tanks, holding either 90 U.K. gallons or 220 U.K.
gallons, were installed in the cellars of pubs, which were rapidly moving away
from selling real ale. The breweries then filled tanker trucks with their filtered,
carbonated product and these trucks filled the Grundy tanks.
With the growth of the craftbrewing movement in the United Kingdom,
Grundy tanks fell from use as receptacles for bulk beers and became useful to
small breweries for a variety of uses. Sarah Hughes’s brewery in Sedgely,
brewers of the famous Dark Ruby Mild, use converted Grundy tanks for open
fermenters while scores of American brewers use them for various tasks
including hot and cold liquor tanks and serving vessels.

Fermentation in the home brewery. The information provided in this section

should give you a good sense of the main methods of fermentation used in mild
ale breweries today. As interesting as these methods are, though, the fact is that
brewers—small or large—tend to ferment in whatever they have at hand. Small
breweries are limited to the tanks already in place; they must select temperature
curves and yeast strains with these vessels in mind.
Very few small breweries can afford the luxury of tailoring their equipment to
the beers they intend to make. The ones that can afford to do so are breweries
that have decidedly special circumstances. For example, the Firestone-Walker
Brewery in Los Olivos, California, uses 60-gallon oak barrels set up much like
the Burton Union to ferment their Double Barrel Ale. The typical homebrewer
has very few options, for it is unlikely that he or she will opt to undertake the
extreme measure of replicating Yorkshire squares or Burton Unions in the
livingroom or garage.
Most homebrewing texts describe in detail how to use a closed plastic bucket
or a glass carboy with an airlock as a fermenter. This method works well for
mild ales. Because of the relative low gravity of modern mild ales, it is easy to
turn out a completely fermented batch in very little time.
The Brewing Process
As one might expect, in terms of equipment and procedures, brewing mild ale
is very much the same as brewing any other sort of British ale. What is different
is the extra vigilance required to keep beers of such modest strength fresh and
clean throughout fermentation and beyond. Some of these beers, especially the
modern interpretations of the style, have such a delicate flavor profile that even
the lowest levels of off-flavors can be very noticeable and unpleasant. Almost
neurotic attention must be paid to cleanliness and gentleness throughout the
brewing process.

Grinding the Malt

I prefer grinding low than otherwise, there need be no fear of bad

draining from the mash tun, if the malt is made as above, and the first
liquor not taken to high, a great deal of extract is sacrificed from
grinding too high, merely for the purpose of ensuring safe spending,
one tap is quite sufficient in the tun.
—George Stewart Amsinck, Practical Brewings: A Series of Fifty
Brewings

If all the mild ale brewer were concerned with during mashing were the
extraction and conversion of starches into sugars through the simple act of
infusing the malt with hot water, then grinding the malt into flour would be
universally accepted as the method of choice. But finely ground malt particles
would form a dense, water-tight cake in the mash tun, that would make any sort
of filtration and run-off prohibitively slow, if not impossible. If the grains are
ground too coarsely, or not at all, too much of the starchy interior of the malt
kernel would be left unconverted and unrecoverable.
Malt should be ground so that the husks, for the most part, remain unshredded
—cracked open just enough for the maximum amount of the starchy endosperm
to be exposed to the hot water of the mash. The malt must remain intact enough
for the grain-bed of the mash to be airy, and porous enough for the wort and
sparge water to easily trickle through it. It must be tight enough to act as a filter
bed that will trap the unwanted proteins and particulate before the wort enters
the copper to be boiled.
 In order to achieve this goal with the typical two-, four-, or six-roller malt
mill, the malt must be of high quality—well modified and very dry. High-quality
malt is of uniform size and modification. It stands to reason that one can only
mill malt to equal quality if it is already of equal kernel size. Malted barley that
is not uniform in size and color cannot be evenly modified and kilned. The hard,
granular grits in a poorly modified malt will tend to adhere to the husks and
therefore be unavailable for conversion.
If the malt is slack—that is, becoming stale because of exposure to moisture—
the malt will tend to stick to the rollers during milling and, at worst, gum up the
rolls or, at best, compress and fail to crack. Either way, the results will be
unsatisfactory. Some of the malt will merely squeeze between the rolls instead of
cracking as it passes through. Before malt mills became as advanced as they are
today, it was common practice to lightly sprinkle the malt with water before
milling; some brewers still do it. The water leaves the interior of the malt brittle,
while giving the husks some elasticity, making it less likely that the malt will
shred during milling.
The ideal mild ale grist is composed of 75% grits, 18% husks, and 7% flour. A
grist composed of more than 9 or 10% flour is likely to yield poor extract, and it
may even lend an unfilterable haze to the finished beer. The excess flour balls up
during the mash, isolating a significant amount of the convertible starch from the
enzymes responsible for conversion. If any of this starch makes its way into the
kettle during sparging, the beer will have some degree of protein haze.
It is best to brew with your malt as soon as possible after it is ground. The
flour and grits are very hygroscopic and will absorb any available moisture. And
that can turn your malt grist into an ideal growing medium for acid-producing
bacteria.
If you wish, you can test the breakdown of your grist with a set of malt
screens, which can be purchased from one of several professional brewery
suppliers. The screens generally consist of five or six standard mesh-bottomed
dishes of decreasing coarseness. However, the screens are quite expensive.
Unless you are able to befriend a professional brewer and borrow the screens as
needed, you might be better off with a simple visual inspection followed by
empirical observation.
In any case, it makes sense to keep track of the yield you get from your malt
to be used as an indicator of how good your crush is for your particular
arrangement.
Doughing In

A mashing machine is of great advantage to the modern brewer, as by

its use, the mass becomes uniform in consistency, and the goods are
less liable to be converted into a paste, from which the impregnated
water could not be separated.
—Alfred Barnard, The Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland,
Vol. II

A large brew house capable of producing thousands of barrels per year, circa 1764.

The correct heat in the first wetting the malt, stamps the character of
the whole gyle, the heat most adapted to open the pores of the grain
must be correct, and after that is done, a higher heat can be added,
without prejudice to the flavour of the Wort, a rich flavour of the Malt,
is what we seek to obtain in the Beer.
—George Stewart Amsinck, Practical Brewings: A Series of Fifty
Brewings

Professional brewers of mild ale typically use some sort of grain hydrator as
they mix hot water and malt for the mash. In British breweries, it is not
uncommon to find a Victorian device known as a Steele’s masher mounted
above the mash tun. A Steele’s masher takes the grist and sends it through a
cylinder by means of an archemedian screw. At this point, hot water is added and
mixed with the grist as it travels down the cylinder and drops into the tun below.
In smaller breweries and homebreweries, the tun is simply filled with water at
the appropriate strike temperature and the grist is dumped into it. The brewer
then stirs the mash with a paddle until no dry spots remain. It is important to
remember that, when employing the single-temperature infusion method, the
strike temperature has to be higher than the conversion temperature you are
aiming for. That is because you are mixing a huge quantity of malt with water
that is at a much lower temperature, which will push the overall mash
temperature down. In my brewery, the strike temperature needs to be about 16–
20 °F (9–11 °C) above the required mash temperature, depending upon the
temperature of the malt. (We have to raise our strike temperature a little more in
the winter because we store the malt in a cold warehouse.)

Stirring the mash. The absence of a mechanized apparatus necessitates the laborious task of stirring with
a canoe paddle.

The Mash

The first process in brewing is just like making tea on a gigantic scale,
the copper being the tea kettle, the mash tun the teapot. The proper
degree of heat of the water with which the crushed or bruised malt is
mashed is of the utmost consequence. Too cold, it would fail to extract
the virtues of the malt; too hot, the whole would be apt to run into a
sort of starch.
—Alfred Barnard, The Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland,
 Vol. II

As with most beers made from well-modified British-style malts, the optimum
method for brewing mild ale as it existed three hundred years ago—or as it exists
today—is the single-temperature infusion mash. Because the temperature at
mash-in is the temperature at which we convert, there is no mixing required and,
therefore, no further shredding of the malt and husks.
The proper conversion temperature for brewing a mild ale is a highly
debatable question. Most of the commercial breweries willing to share such
information report that their typical mash temperature is between 151 and 155 °F
(66 and 68 °C), with one noteworthy exception—Highgate and Walsall mashes
their dark mild at 158 °F (70 °C). The lower end of this range yields more
fermentable sugars and will finish drier, with a higher alcohol content; the higher
end will produce fewer fermentable sugars and more unfermentable dextrins,
resulting in a final product with more body and mouthfeel and less alcohol.
For the well-modified, batch-consistent pale malts available from British
maltsters today, complete starch conversion can take place within 45 minutes
and is almost certainly complete after one hour at the conversion temperature. A
simple iodine test will reveal how long to allow for complete starch conversion
in your brewery. The test takes only a minute or so and is well worth the effort
until you get to know the malt you are working with.

Iodine Test for Starch Conversion

The simplest way to know whether all of the starches available for
conversion in your mash have indeed converted into sugar and dextrins is
to use tincture of iodine as an indicator. Iodine will turn starch granules a
very dark purple color; if all of the starches in your mash have converted,
the iodine will not change color.
To perform the test, take a small amount of liquid from your mash (about
one tablespoon or so) and place it on a piece of white glazed porcelain (a
tile square or a saucer). Be certain that there are no actual grains in the
sample, as the starches in the husks will invariably turn purple and
invalidate the test. Place a small drop of iodine in the mash liquid and
observe. If the iodine turns purple or black, you should continue mashing at
the conversion temperature. Redo the test every few minutes until you
 obtain negative results.

Recirculation
After conversion has taken place, a significant portion of the mash liquid must
be drawn off the bottom of the mash tun and placed back on top of the mash.
The idea here is to use the settled mash as its own filter bed, removing
particulate that has slipped through the false bottom and putting it on top of the
grain bed so that the particles get caught up and the wort runs clear. This process
is crucial in mild ale brewing, as the off-flavors that can arise if too many grain
husks make it into the boil will be especially objectionable in these low-gravity
beers.
This process must be done gently. The wort must be drawn off the bottom
very slowly to avoid setting the grain bed, and it must be reintroduced at the top
without causing a hole to be drilled into the mash and without creating too much
aeration. Most professional breweries have diffusers of some sort built into the
mash tun for this purpose, but homebrewers can achieve the same results by
placing a small saucer on top of the mash and pouring the wort onto it as a
diffuser.
The recirculation should last as long as necessary to ensure as bright a wort as
possible, without compromising the mash temperature. Most professional
breweries have well-insulated mash tuns, but unless you are mashing into a
cooler at home, it is likely that your mash will cool off rather rapidly. Don’t feel
that you are being too neurotic if you find yourself putting an old blanket around
the mash tun while you are recirculating in order to keep from losing too much
heat. Once the wort is sufficiently clear, you are ready to begin running off into
the kettle.

Run-off and Sparge

Because of the relatively small mash required for brewing a mild ale, it is
tempting to run off too quickly. Although compacting, or setting, the bed is not
as likely as it is when producing a higher-gravity beer, it can become a problem
when brewing a mild ale if any adjunctive grains like oats, corn, or wheat have
been used. Even if there are no adjuncts and the mash is light and airy, and there
is no risk of setting the bed, running-off too quickly will result in a poor yield.
 The run-off of first wort should continue until the top of the grain bed is
visible through a very thin layer of wort. At this point, the brewer should begin
to sparge with hot water. Sparging—the process of washing the last extractives
from the mash—is generally performed by sprinkling water hotter than the mash
(up to 176 °F or 80 °C) over the top of the grain bed and allowing it to trickle
through. This will leach the last sugars from the grain.
I have personally achieved outstanding results by sparging with water at or
only slightly above the conversion temperature, both in professional brewing
environments and as a homebrewer. There are many advantages to this lower-
temperature approach. It requires less hot liquor, but more importantly, there is
less risk of leaching unwanted tannins and silicates from the grains; the former
produces objectionable off-flavors, and the latter can cause an irreversible haze.
It allows enzymatic activity to continue throughout the sparging and run-off
time, which can help complete starch conversions that may not have occurred in
some small pockets of the mash. In addition, lower-temperature sparging tends
to decrease the chances of leaching unwanted silicates, tannins, phosphates, and
unfermentable polysaccharides from the grains. These compounds will impart
undesirable flavors and aromas either in and of themselves, or as precursors to
an objectionable flavor.
In theory, lower-temperature sparges are supposed to reduce your brew house
yield by failing to solubilize all available sugars. However, I have found this loss
to be so minimal as to be merely academic. The benefits, in my opinion, vastly
outweigh the minuscule loss of yield.
This practice is a very good way to save your mild ale—in particular, pale
milds, with their delicate aromas and flavors—from being too harsh in tannic
astringency. In fact, I can find no reason, either practical or theoretical, not to
extend this practice to the brewing of all other styles of beer, except where the
elevated temperature might mitigate slow run-off in very high-gravity beers such
as barley wine, old ale, and imperial stout. (However, in these cases, the flavor
profile is so intense that any off-flavors resulting from a sparge that is too hot
will be easily masked.)
If you decide to disregard everything I have said about the brewing process up
to this point, please heed this single axiom of mild ale brewing: DO NOT OVER-
SPARGE!
One sure way to dissolve a detectable amount of tannins and silicates is to run
wort of too-low a gravity into your kettle and boil it. Stop collecting wort when
the specific gravity of the run-off reaches 1.012 (3 °P). Collecting more will only
slightly increase your yield, but it will most assuredly lend your mild an
unfilterable and unfinable haze, as well as an unwanted tannic astringency.

Boiling and Hopping

With only a few very esoteric styles of beer excepted, a properly conducted
boil is essential to the brewing of all styles of beer. A vigorous, consistently
maintained, and lengthy boil can very well make the difference between a world-
class beer and a mediocre beer. Boiling destroys all the enzymes that are left
over from the mash, in addition to stabilizing and sterilizing the wort. It extracts
hop resins and isomerizes bittering alpha acids, concentrates the wort, coagulates
and precipitates unwanted proteins, and lowers the wort pH for optimal
fermentation. It also drives off harsh hop oils and off-flavor precursors like
dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), which leads to dimethyl sulfide (DMS)—the signature
cooked corn flavor found in Rolling Rock, which is not desirable in mild ale.
Boiling can commence as soon as the first wort covers the heated surface. In
the case of direct-fired gas kettles, this is as soon as the wort fully covers the
surface that is in contact with the flame. For steam-jacketed kettles, this is as
soon as the wort covers the bottom steam jacket (if that jacket can be isolated). It
is important to observe these details. There will be significant color pick-up and
caramelization of sugars if the wort is allowed to sit against the heated surface
and burn. This is actually desirable for some styles of beer (namely Scotch ale),
and it might be an interesting exercise in a mild ale, but heating your kettle
without any liquid in it is ill-advised because it tends to weaken the metal. This
is especially true of direct-fired kettles where the temperature of the fire far
exceeds the 230 °F (110 °C) that is common with steam.
The rate at which water evaporates from your wort is important in brewing
mild ale because of the relatively delicate flavor profile of milds. In addition, the
evaporation rate is indicative of the efficiency of the boil and how much of the
off-flavor precursors and volatile hop oils, ketones, and sulfur compounds are
being driven off. A rate of 10% evaporation per hour of boil is standard in the
brewing industry. Anything more is gravy; anything less is inadequate.
A rolling, vigorous boil must be maintained for a minimum of 90 minutes.
Isomerization, coagulation, and precipitation are not solely temperature-
dependent—they also depend on agitation. At least 60 minutes of the boil should
take place with the bittering hops. Extended boils of three hours or more will
adversely affect hop utilization and tend to disassociate the coagulated proteins.
The pH of the wort at the beginning of the boil should fall between 5.2 and
5.5. A pH of 5.2 is best for protein coagulation and precipitation; a slightly more
basic pH is best for hop utilization. In most cases, the transition to the more
basic pH happens naturally due to the acidity of the brewing water, the additional
acidification that comes from the use of dark malts, enzymatic activity, and the
application of heat. If corrections need to be made, a food-grade phosphoric acid
or calcium carbonate (gypsum) can be added directly to the kettle.

Bittering hops. The bittering compounds in hops, known as alpha acids, are
not very water-soluble; they must be molecularly altered or isomerized during
the boil in order for them to stay in suspension. Isomerization is dependent on
both the heat of the boil and the rolling motion of the mixture. A hot but placid
boil will adversely affect hop utilization. Even the most efficient kettles can only
be expected to eke no more than 38% utilization out of the alpha acids added to
the boil; in most homebrew environments, less than 33% utilization is common
(assuming the brewer is using pelletized hops—utilization will be somewhat less
if whole hop flowers are used).
A significant portion of the iso-alpha-acids in the wort will be lost during
fermentation. Some of them are lost on the sides of the fermenter in the foam
residue, and more are absorbed by the yeast and then lost when the yeast falls
out of suspension or gets filtered out. This kind of loss represents about 3% of
the total alpha acid added to the kettle, bringing the apparent utilization as
measured in the finished product down to no more than 35% for commercial
brewers and 30% for homebrewers.
Typically, British brewers add their hops (almost invariably as whole hop
flowers) just as the wort comes to a boil. The boil lasts for no more than 90
minutes and sometimes as little as 60 minutes. When I worked at John Harvard’s
Brew House in Cleveland, Ohio, we almost invariably boiled the wort for 2
hours. The extended boil didn’t hurt the clarity of the wort, and we had great
results with the quality of the finished product. Also, it has been demonstrated
that some of the iso-alpha acids are lost if you add hops before the first hot break
is formed because the acids precipitate with the proteins.

Late hopping. Most British brewers add hops at least twice during the boil,
and some add hops up to four different times. The theory is that hops added
during the last 10–20 minutes of the boil will impart more of the aromatic
character of the hops because less of those oils are driven off during the boil.
Hops that are added for the last half hour will impart more hop flavor than aroma
and, of course, hops added to the hop back or directly to the fermented beer will
impart aroma very similar to the aroma of the hop flower itself.

The hop back and whirlpool. After the boil is complete, the bitter wort must
be clarified of all the unwanted coagulated protein that we precipitated during
the boil and the hop particulate, whether in the form of whole hop flowers or the
fine dust of hydrated hop pellets. In a traditional British brewery, this would be
done almost exclusively with a hop back. As mentioned earlier, the hop back
usually takes the form of a cone-bottomed tank with a screen fitted in the cone.

Inside a hop back.

The brewer has the option of adding late hop aroma by putting fresh hop
flowers on the screen and running all the boiled bitter wort through them. The
screens, any hops the brewer puts on them, and the hops that get caught as the
wort passes through help clarify the beer by acting as a filter bed, much like the
mash did during recirculation. The filter bed removes all the unwanted hot break
—the proteins leached from the malt and precipitated and coagulated during the
boil. Many British brewers swear that the hop character they get from adding
fresh hops to the hop back is unlike the character they get by late kettle-hopping
or dry-hopping during fermentation or in the cask.
Most breweries in the United States are not equipped with specialized
equipment for use as a hop back. However, several of John Harvard’s Brew
Houses (as well as Commonwealth Brewing in Boston, Massachusetts, and some
others) use the mash tun—which by this point in the process has been cleared of
spent grains and cleaned—as a hop back. The surface area of the screens is,
admittedly, a lot larger than a typical hop back for the system would be, but the
effect is about the same.
 Hot-side aeration is an issue when using any hop back, but I have found no
British breweries that are concerned about aeration of the hot wort; after all, their
beers get packaged and consumed within a few weeks of leaving the cellars.
Hot-side aeration is mainly an issue when the beer in question is intended to be
packaged as a filtered, bottled product that may sit on retail shelves for extended
periods before consumption. Hot-side aeration produces precursors to staling
compounds and, over time, will impart to the beer oxidized flavors and aromas.
At home, a large strainer or colander that fits inside of a pot can be used, or
better yet, a perforated clam steamer. Place some fresh hop cones in the colander
and slowly pour the wort through. In most American breweries, especially the
smaller ones, the prevailing method of wort clarification is the whirlpool tank,
first developed by Molson Breweries of Canada. The whirlpool comprises a
vertical cylindrical tank into which the wort is pumped at a fairly high velocity at
a tangential angle, causing the hot wort to swirl into a vortex. The result, much
like mixing sugar in a glass of iced tea, where the undissolved sugar collects in a
cone in the center of the glass, is a pile of separated hot trub in the center of the
whirlpool.
After wort clarification, the wort is cooled by means of a counterflow chiller.
There, cold water passes in the opposite direction past the hot wort, and a
temperature gradient is formed that allows the heat to be exchanged. The wort
comes out cool, and the water comes out hot—usually to be recovered and used
in the process of the next brew. Historically, the wort was cooled by other means,
the most ancient of which was the cool-ship, which is still used in many Belgian
breweries and a very few British breweries, including Traquair House in the
Scottish Borders.
The cool-ship is a shallow vessel designed to increase the surface area of the
wort that is exposed to the air. This vessel was also used as a method of hop
separation; the vessel acted as a sedimentation tank, with the clear wort being
run off the top and the precipitated proteins and hops left at the bottom. This is a
very inefficient method, though, and the ratio of lost wort to recovered wort is
dramatic.

Fermentation

Pitching is an important part, as far as Yeast is concerned, the Yeast

from a Gyle brewed on Monday, and cleansed or skimmed on the
Wednesday would be in condition for pitching on Saturday or Monday
 following, and no longer, and in summer stop at Saturday, drain off the
beer as solid as possible, on the same day, that it is intended to be
made use of, the wort should be pitched at the same heat you intend
the Gyle to be.
—George Stewart Amsinck, Practical Brewings: A Series of Fifty
Brewings

Attemporators in an open, stainless-steel square fermenter at Young’s Ram Brewery in London. Cool
glycol or, in some cases, water flows through the attemporators to control the fermentation temperature.

The nature of fermentation was not understood until Pasteur developed his
theory of fermentation and devised the principles of sanitation, sterilization, and
a technique for culturing microorganisms. Yeast and its role in the brewing
process was so misunderstood that for most of history, it was regarded as a
detrimental scum that should be disposed of as quickly as possible. By the
middle of the seventeenth century, some brewers were repitching yeast and
beating the kraeusen back into the fermenting beer, although they didn’t
understand the science behind this practice.
During the last century significant strides have been made in understanding
fermentation and yeast metabolism. The factors that affect fermentation—the
particular strain of yeast and its characteristics, the amount of yeast pitched, the
aeration of the wort, and fermentation temperature—have been isolated and
studied. The result has been the development of better and more economical
systems of fermentation.
 Primary fermentation. In traditional independent British breweries, the
fermentation temperature for mild ale is either ambient (during cooler months),
controlled by water-cooled attemperators immersed in the fermenting wort or,
more rarely, controlled by a water-filled jacket around the vessel. British brewers
typically use higher fermentation temperatures for lower-gravity beers,
employing temperatures at pitching of upwards of 60 °F (15.5 °C) for low-
gravity beers and as low as 57 °F (14 °C) for higher-gravity beers (see table 2).

TABLE 2
Average Pitching Rates and Temperatures
(lbs. thick slurry to the imperial barrel)

Wort Pitching Pitching Maximum Racking

Gravity Rate Temp. Temp. Temp.

1.030 0.66 lbs. 60 °F (15.5 66 °F (19 °C) 53–54 °F

°C) (11.5–12 °C)

1.040 0.75 lbs. 59 °F (15 °C) 67 °F (19.5 °C) “ “

1.050 1.50 lbs. 58 °F (14.5 68 °F (20 °C) “ “

°C)

1.060 2.00 lbs. 57 °F (14 °C) 69 °F (20.5 °C) “ “

1.080 2–3.00 lbs. 57 °F (14 °C) 70 °F (21 °C) “ “

 Disunited unions. Each cask in the unions is taken out of the line and replaced with another on a
regular schedule for reconditioning.

In terms of cell count, British breweries are all over the board. A few mild ale
brewers (two for certain) use no method other than pitching roughly one-quarter
of the yeast harvested from the previous brew. For British ales of all types,
though, the popular British brewing text Malting and Brewing Science
recommends eight 16 × 106 cells/ml. There is a lot of variation among breweries,
but as a general rule, the rate of attenuation and temperature rise occurs at about
a decrease of 1 degree of specific gravity (.26 °P) for every 2 hours or 12
degrees (3.07 °P) a day, and a rise of 1 °F every 8 hours (1.75 °C every 24
hours). The temperature is allowed to rise at its own pace for about 36 hours.
At this point, the brewer checks the temperature every 4 to 6 hours until
fermentation temperature is reached. After one full day at fermentation
temperature, the yeast is harvested, and the temperature is maintained for 6 to 12
hours thereafter. The beer is then gradually cooled to racking temperature at a
rate of 1 °F (.6 °C) every 4 to 6 hours. In all cases, “crash cooling” is avoided to
ensure that the fermentation cycle is complete and that the yeast has time and the
proper environment to scavenge any off-flavor precursors present as by-products
of fermentation.

Secondary fermentation. When there is only 1% or less fermentable sugar

left, the beer is moved from the primary fermenter into a secondary fermenter,
where it is typically cooled to 50 °F (10 °C) or so to begin flocculating the
remaining yeast and to prevent any invading microorganisms that may have
gotten into the beer from spoiling it. The beer is allowed to rest while the final
bit of fermentation takes place, free of the sediment of primary fermentation that
might impair the flavor due to autolyzing yeast.

Cleaning the Brewery

In short, the Reason why Publick and Common Brewers seldom or

never Brew good Drink is, That they . . . Brew so often, that they
cannot sufficiently, between one Brewing and another, cleanse and
scald their brewing Vessels and Barrels, giving them due time to dry,
but that they will retain such a Rest as will always Char and Sour their
Liquors.
—Richard Bradley, A Guide to Gentleman Farmers and Housekeepers
for Brewing the Finest Malt Liquors

The brewing process creates quite a bit of excess material that must be
completely removed from the brewing equipment before it is used again.
Everything from spent grain in the mash tun to beerstone in the copper or yeast
deposits on fermentation vessels must be cleared away, and all the equipment
should be cleaned and sanitized between each brewing session. Large, modern
breweries—and a great number of smaller ones—use a variety of chemicals to
accomplish these tasks. Strong alkalis like sodium hydroxide and sodium
metasilicate are favorites for removing organic deposits, while acid or acid
blends are best for inorganic mineral deposits.
Traditionally, all of the brewery vessels were simply scrubbed by hand and
scalded with hot water; a few small independent breweries still do it this way.
Some fermentation methods (such as unions and stone squares) lend themselves
exclusively to this method because they employ wood or other porous material.
Although such equipment can harbor bacteria, it would also be likely to harbor
residues of any cleaning chemicals, which could be far worse for the beer and
those who drink it.
For the homebrewer, hand scrubbing plus the use of a sanitizer like iodine or
bleach should be adequate. Always visually inspect the surfaces of the vessels to
make sure there are no obvious deposits before using them.
Brewing Throwback Mild
Brewing antique beers is a greater challenge. It requires a working knowledge
of the history of brewing and long hours of research in old brewing texts,
brewery logs, and trade journals. Fortunately, there are a number of good sources
that tell us how the brewers of old made mild ales. The hard part is accurately
substituting the raw materials that are available today for what those brewers
would have been using 100, 200, or 300 years ago.
When interpreting old recipes, we must be sure to do it with the timeline of
technological development in mind. For instance, when attempting to re-create a
mild as it may have been brewed prior to 1817, it would be inaccurate to use any
malts darker than brown malt. In those days, prior to the invention of the
cylindrical drum roaster, attempts to kiln malt any darker would have turned the
malt to charcoal. Unfortunately, brown malt as it was then is not available today.
(See “Brown Malt” in chapter 3.)
The best we can do is assume that brown malts had some diastatic power in
the early nineteenth century because they made up a large portion of some grist
bills. (Modern brown malt has very little enzymatic power and is therefore
useless as a base malt). We can use mild ale malt as the most authentic base malt
available and substitute some middle-range crystal malts and perhaps some
smoked malt for brown malts. Although this grist bill is probably very different
from the original bills, we can feel reasonably comfortable with the accuracy of
the substitution as it manifests itself in the final product.1
Hops are another problem. Who can be certain what the alpha acid content of
hops was 100 or 200 years ago? Given that Goldings and Fuggle, introduced in
1850 and 1875 respectively, have replaced nearly every other hop variety
(including such never-mentioned varieties as Farnham Pale and Long Square
Garlic) in the United Kingdom, our best guess is to assume that Goldings and
Fuggle were deemed better than the other varieties without compromising flavor
and aroma.
Indeed, many of these varieties of hops were local favorites, probably harsh in
flavor and cultivated because they were disease resistant or produced a higher
yield per acre, rather than because of their character.2 This practical reality, in
combination with current practices among mild producers, leaves little doubt
that Fuggle and Goldings are the way to go when brewing a throwback mild.
One other note on antique hops. Judging from the astronomical quantities of
hops quoted in most contemporary sources of recipes from past centuries and the
analysis of the wild hops from which they were bred, it is almost certain that the
historical varieties were lower in alpha acids than most modern hops.
It is impossible to know what kind of yeast the brewers of old were using in
their beers. Indeed, they themselves had no idea what they were using until
Pasteur figured it out in 1876. The best we can do is use a modern yeast that
seems to fit the prescription as far as attenuation goes. For instance, if a recipe
calls for a relatively large quantity of hops, we can assume that the yeast was not
very attenuative and the extra bitterness was needed to counter the sweetness left
in the beer.
As far as brewing methods and equipment are concerned, the procedures were
passed on verbally from generation to generation, and the equipment was
primitive at best. A small, rather inefficient, homebrew set-up would best
approximate the older systems, and the older procedures would have been
devoid of even the simplest instrumentation. The recipes and calculations were
based solely on the repeatability within the confines of that particular system.
For a very good original treatise on the art of brewing in the seventeenth
century, read A Guide to Gentlemen Farmers and Housekeepers for Brewing the
Finest Malt Liquors by Richard Bradley (available as a reprint; see “Further
Reading” in the appendixes).
CHAPTER 5

Conditioning, Packaging, and Dispensing

Beer that has completed primary fermentation but contains very little
carbonation and has not been allowed to mature is referred to as green beer.
Most often, the maturation, or conditioning, process is carried out in closed
containers that can handle some degree of pressure.
In theory, conditioning involves a secondary fermentation brought about by
the small amount of yeast left in suspension, which metabolizes sugars that
either escaped the primary fermentation or were added to the beer as priming
sugar. In practice, however, cask fermentation is often a tertiary fermentation,
following a short secondary fermentation that takes place at the brewery,
although it is still common enough to find a brewery that racks directly into the
trade casks.
One traditional method of conditioning is called spünding by German
brewers. It involves either (1) choosing the exact time when there is enough
fermentable sugar left in the beer to carbonate it with the carbon dioxide that is
produced as a by-product or (2) closing the vessel so that the pressure builds and
CO2 dissolves into suspension.
The other, more common, English method of conditioning mild ale is to prime
the fully fermented beer with a little sugar and perhaps a bit of new, lively yeast
to do the job. The result is the same: the yeast metabolizes the sugar and the
resulting CO2 dissolves into suspension, carbonating the beer. In most mild ale
breweries, these sugars are added as processed sugar (either cane, beet, or invert
sugar). The carbon dioxide that is produced dissolves back into the beer in a
closed cask and the beer comes into condition as a result.
In an alternative to this natural method of conditioning, extraneous carbon
dioxide can be added directly to the beer and forced into solution. This is the
method used by British keg beer producers, as well as by most American
craftbrewers. However it is accomplished, the maturation process does more
than condition the beer. The process causes other chemical changes to occur in
the beer that produce changes in aroma and flavor, in addition to stabilizing and
clarifying the final product.
The vast majority of mild ale produced in the United Kingdom is conditioned
and served from a cask, but we can be reasonably certain that mild ales have, at
some point in history, been bottle-conditioned. There are a number of examples
of mild ales served cold and filtered from a pressurized keg (or a nitrogen keg)
and filtered, force-carbonated, and bottled. In this section we will discuss these
systems and their variations.
Cask Conditioning
Real ale, a name for draught (or bottled) beer brewed from the
traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the
container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of
extraneous carbon dioxide.
—Oxford English Dictionary (Second Edition)

Some brewers and beer historians still maintain that mild ales are simply the
draught version of brown ales. While I disagree wholeheartedly with this
oversimplification, it is a fact that the overwhelming majority of mild ale leaves
the brewery in a cask to be served on draught.
In cask-conditioning, the beer undergoing maturation is racked (decanted) into
trade casks of varying sizes. There it is allowed to continue fermenting slowly,
either by way of the residual yeast feeding on the remaining sugars or as a result
of dosing the beer with yeast or sugar or some combination to the two. Often a
dose of finings (a collagen-based substance designed to attract beer hazing
compounds and make them fall out of suspension) and sometimes a shot of
whole hops for additional aroma are added to the casks. Some cask-conditioned
beers are filtered and then re-dosed with sugar and yeast before being racked
into the casks, but I have found no instances of this occurring in mild ale
breweries.

Racking line at a typical British independent brewery. These casks are all kilderkins, but most cask lines
can fill anything from a pin to a 36-gallon barrel.
 The casks are shipped to the publican’s house where they are stillaged, vented,
spiled, and tapped. They are allowed to clarify and, once they are bright, served
to the guests. Unfortunately, this practice completely died out in the United
States with the advent of Prohibition, and only recently has it begun to make a
small comeback there. Usually instituted as part of a brewpub’s program, the
cost of equipment and training, coupled with the relative uncertainty and
instability of the product in comparison to the ease of handling pressurized,
kegged beers makes this an impractical method for all but the smallest, most
committed packaging brewers in the United States.
The Six Elements of Cask Ale
The Ale
Of course, the first element of cask ale to consider is the beer. Before
determining variables like conditioning time or the volume of finings to be
employed, we must first ascertain the condition the beer is already in. The
amount of fermentable sugar still in solution, the degree to which the beer has
already dropped bright, and the age of the beer at the time of racking will have a
profound impact on the finished product in terms of flavor, clarity, and aroma.
For the most part, in making a mild ale, we are dealing with a malty, low-
gravity beer that has a relatively low hop profile. In the case of throwback milds,
the parameters do not change all that dramatically. With an increase in gravity,
the ale will last longer after tapping (up to two weeks in the case of Sarah
Hughes, says the brewer).
The beer should have undergone a good, active primary fermentation and have
been allowed to age for not more than one week in secondary fermentation
before racking. The beer should be a bit turbid (but not loaded with yeast silt),
and the flavor and aroma profiles, suspended yeast and such notwithstanding,
should be coming into line.

Hops
Although brewers are likely to use dry hops in the cask for their bitter ales,
pale ales, and perhaps other products, they rarely use hops in casks of mild ale.
At least three brewers I know of do use them—pointing to the hops’ clarifying
quality as the reason—but logic suggests, and other brewers confirm, that the
benefit derived in terms of clarity can easily be had with finings.
In the opinion of most brewers, the benefit of using dry hops in the cask for
mild ale does not outweigh the disadvantages of having an excess of hop aroma.
If you do choose to use dry hops, pick a standard British variety like Goldings or
Fuggle and then use it very sparingly. Bitter and pale ale brewers typically use 1-
ounce plugs at the rate of 1 ounce to a firkin. I suggest using .5 ounce at most for
mild ale.

The Cask
 Filtered, carbonated beer comes in kegs. The correct term for the container
that naturally conditioned beers come in is cask. Cask sizes are derived from an
imperial barrel, which holds 2 gross (that is, 288) pints. Casks come in sizes that
range from 4.5 U.K. gallons to 54 U.K. gallons. The most common casks sizes
are firkins that hold 9 U.K. gallons or 10.8 U.S. gallons (see table 3).
Casks always have bowed sides and are fitted with a shive and keystone. The
shive is fitted into a hole (known as the shive boss) in the very center of the
cask’s side, and the keystone is fitted into a hole in the head on the side furthest
from the shive (known as the keystone boss). The keystone is fitted with a tap
for dispensing; the shive is fitted with a spile, either hard or soft, for regulating
the internal pressure and, thus, the level of carbonation in the beer.
At one time, all casks were wooden, and each brewery employed several
coopers to build, maintain, and repair their casks. Today, with few exceptions,
cooperage is made of aluminum, stainless steel or, more rarely, enamel-lined
mild steel. You must know which materials you are using in order to select the
right cleaning agents. For example, strong alkalis like sodium hydroxide will
corrode aluminum in a very short time, leaving it pock-marked and unsanitary.

TABLE 3
British Cask Names and Sizes

Cask Name U.K. Gal. U.S. Gal. Liters

Pin 4.5 U.K. gal. 5.4 U.S. gal. 20.5 l

Firkin 9.0 U.K. gal. 10.8 U.S. gal. 41.0 l

Eleven 11.0 U.K. gal.a 13.2 U.S. gal. 50.0 l

Kilderkin 18.0 U.K. gal. 21.6 U.S. gal. 82.0 l

Twenty-two 22.0 U.K. gal.a 26.4 U.S. gal. 100.0 l

Barrel 36.0 U.K. gal. 43.2 U.S. gal. 123.0 l

 Hogshead 54.0 U.K. gal. 64.8 U.S. gal. 141.0 l

Notes: A U.K. or imperial gallon is 1.2 U.S. gallons, so a firkin holds 10.8 U.S. gallons, and a kilderkin
holds 21.6 gallons or 2 firkins. To further complicate matters, an imperial barrel-sized cask holds 43.2 U.S.
gallons, but a U.S. barrel measure is only 31 U.S. gallons (24.8 U.K. gallons).
aThese are metric sizes of 50 and 100 liters respectively. They are commonly called by their approximate
imperial equivalent.

Finings
Isinglass finings, which are used to help clarify the beer, are comprised of the
dried, processed, swim bladders of selected fish (commonly the sturgeon). The
bladders are processed by being soaked and dissolved in dilute solutions of cold
tartaric and sulfurous acids. The result is a turbid, viscous solution made up
chiefly of solubilized collagen. It works both as a function of electro-chemical
attraction and mechanical flocculation. The collagen is positively charged and
therefore attracts negatively charged proteins, which increases the mass of both
the finings and the proteins, causing them to fall out of suspension. Breweries
may buy a prepared solution straight from a finings manufacturer or, in the case
of several mild ale breweries such as Banks’s, buy shredded bladders and
manufacture the finings themselves.

Highgate casks lined up in the cellar of the White Horse on Parson’s Green in London.

There is an optimum rate for the addition of finings. Too little, and the beer
will not be clarified; too much, and the sediment will be loose and fluffy—so
much so that the mere action of drawing off beer through the tap will stir it.
Unfortunately, there is no clear-cut proper dosage. It all depends upon the
gravity of the beer, the suspended solids at the time of racking, and the
conditions the beer will be faced with after racking.
 The best advice I can offer is what has worked for me in the past. My
colleagues and I have worked with several different brands of isinglass finings
and have found that a sample mixed according to the directions of the
manufacturer in the amount of 14 to 16 ounces per firkin gives the best results.
Often the mixing procedures are very complex, which put them outside the
realm of feasibility for most pubs and microbrewers. However, these products
will work for you, if you adhere to the recommended procedures as closely as
possible. Sometimes this might mean simply mixing the finings in a blender on
and off over the course of an hour or two before racking. One note of caution: I
have found that finings of all sorts work best when fresh. Only mix enough to
use in a single racking session.

Priming Sugar
To achieve the desired condition in a cask beer, it is often necessary to add a
small amount of sugar to the cask prior to racking. This is especially true for
low-gravity beers such as mild ale, where the primary fermentation is short and
little residual sugar is left over.
Cask-conditioned beers typically contain 1.2 to 1.8 volumes of CO2. That is,
in one firkin of beer there will be 9 U.K. gallons of beer and between 10.8 and
16.2 U.K. gallons of gaseous CO2 at standard temperature and atmospheric
pressure. (This might seem paradoxical, but dissolved CO2 takes up only a small
fraction of the space that gaseous CO2 does.) To achieve the desired level of
conditioning, the brewer must know the initial content of CO2 in the green beer
and then calculate the amount of sugar needed to produce the desired CO2.
Green beer that has finished fermenting is naturally saturated with CO2 as a
result of the continuous stream of CO2 bubbling through it during fermentation.
The point of this saturation is entirely dependent on the temperature of the
completed fermentation and the pressure in the tank. Table 4 lists the solubility
of CO2 in beer at atmospheric pressure. We will assume that the brewer is using
the traditional method of open primary and secondary fermentation, and that
fermentation at atmospheric pressure equals 14.7 pounds per square inch (psi).

TABLE 4
Solubility of CO2 at Atmospheric Pressure
 Temperature (°C) Volume CO2 Temperature (°F) Volume CO2

0 1.70 32 1.70

2 1.60 35 1.60

4 1.50 40 1.45

6 1.40 45 1.30

8 1.30 50 1.20

10 1.20 55 1.10

12 1.12 60 1.00

14 1.05 65 0.92

16 0.99 70 0.85

18 0.93 75 0.78

20 0.88

22 0.83

24 0.78

26 0.73

Determining the amount of priming sugar to use in a cask is a function of the

initial volumes of CO2 and the fact that 4 grams of sucrose per liter of beer will
yield approximately 1 volume of CO2 (.5 ounce to 1 U.S. gallon → 1 volume
CO2).
For example, we will assume that a dark mild ale produced in a traditional
Victorian tower brewery with open primary and secondary fermentation is
racked from the secondary into casks at 18 °C (.93 volumes CO2). The brewery
specifications for this dark mild ale call for it reaching the publican with 1.6
volumes of CO2 dissolved. We will use a 100% fermentable sucrose (pure cane,
beet, or invert sugar) for priming.
An additional .67 volumes is needed to reach the desired condition. The
calculation would follow this sequence: 4 grams sucrose × .67 volumes = 2.68
grams sucrose per liter = 110 grams per firkin, OR .5 ounce sucrose × .67
volumes = .335 ounce per U.S. gallon = 3.6 ounces per firkin.
Mild ale breweries use various kinds of sugar for priming, but chief among
them are white cane or beet sugars; invert sugar runs a close second to the other
two. These sugars are fully fermentable. Cane and invert sugars are used in both
their crystalline and syrup forms. When using syrups, note that the
fermentability per weight of sugar is reduced because of the substantial water
content of syrup.
Dextrose, or corn sugar, is often preferred by homebrewers because many
think that cidery flavors are supposedly imparted by cane sugar. I have never
gotten cidery flavors using cane sugar, and as far as I know, there is no scientific
support for this belief. The reported cidery flavors are more likely to stem from
the use of inferior malt extracts, insufficient pitching rates, or using too much
non-malt-derived sugar in the wort.
Sugars like common brown sugar can impart an interesting, caramelized
flavor to the finished beer. Brown sugar does, though, contain some
unfermentable sugar, and the weight should be adjusted accordingly—not more
than an additional 15%.
Honey, maple syrup, molasses (treacle), and golden syrup can all be used as
priming sugar, though the composition of these substances in terms of
fermentability require that the weights used be substantially increased (40% for
honey, 50% for maple syrup, 80% for molasses, and 30% for golden syrup). For
example, you would need to substitute 14 ounces of honey or 18 ounces of
molasses for 10 ounces of sugar. (Again, be sure that the molasses contains no
sulfites as a preservative.)

Yeast
 Yeast is the final element the brewer needs to consider when producing cask
beer. The brewer wants to be certain that the chosen yeast will condition the beer
in a reasonable amount of time (without the brewer having to inoculate the beer
with an excessive quantity), that it will fall out of suspension in a reasonable
time and leave the beer bright, and that it will not impart an unpleasant aroma or
flavor. In practice, it is best to use the same yeast strain you used to produce the
beer—a small quantity will do the job. In terms of cell count, the beer should
contain between .75 and 2 billion cells per milliliter when it is racked into the
trade casks.
Racking
Assuming that you have adhered to sound brewing principals in the
production of your mild ale, there does not have to be any change in the normal
process for cask-conditioning through secondary fermentation.
To rack beer into a cask, fit a keystone into the keystone boss of a clean cask.
Then add isinglass finings, priming sugar, yeast (if necessary), and dry hops (if
you chose to use them). To prevent a protein haze, you may want to consider
using an auxiliary fining like silica gel. Add 5–10 ounces of the auxiliary fining
per firkin at the lowest temperature that the beer will encounter during its time in
the cask.
Modern casking-lines pressurize the cask to just over atmospheric pressure,
ensuring that the beer will not foam too much and decrease the quantity of beer
that gets into the cask. A brewer can achieve the same results on a smaller scale
simply by racking very slowly. Avoid picking up any yeast and proteins that may
have settled to the bottom of the secondary fermenter. Only clean beer should
make it into the cask.
As with any method of packaging, oxygen should be avoided. We are,
however, better off than we would be if we were filtering and carbonating the
beer because it is still alive, and any oxygen that might inadvertently make its
way in will be used up in the aerobic life cycle of the yeast still in suspension.
When the cask is full, set and drive the shive home. Roll the cask thoroughly
to ensure that the finings and priming sugar have mixed into the ale well. Then
put the cask aside for storage. It is best to store the cask at or slightly below
cellar temperature (50–56 °F, 10–13 °C), as the CO2 will dissolve into the beer
more readily at lower temperatures, and any possible microbial contaminants
will be less likely to gain a foothold if kept cool.
Stillaging, Spiling, and Serving
The cask should be stored in an environment as close as possible to the actual
cellar temperature until it is ready to be stillaged. The cask can be moved
around, but not too much. There is evidence to suggest that the finings actually
work best after the third or fourth mixing. When ready for stillaging, the cask
must be supported on a slight angle toward the keystone, so it does not rock or
shake. The goal is maximum stability, so that nothing will rouse the sediment at
the bottom of the cask or cause any of the top break (the sediment floating at the
top) to fall into the beer.
A very effective method of stillaging is to use either the wooden stillions sold
for that purpose or to use three wedges (two at the front and one at the rear) to
support the cask. Be sure that the bilge, the largest diameter portion of the cask
directly in the center, does not touch the surface upon which the wedges are
resting.
Once the cask has been stabilized, allow it to reach the ideal serving
temperature—if the cask is too warm, not enough CO2 will be dissolved into the
solution, and if you were to then vent the cask, you might be dooming the beer to
being under condition. At that point, the cask is ready to tap and spile.
The shive contains a center section called the tut, which can be punched
through to allow CO2 out and air in to avoid drawing a vacuum. The cask must
be vented by piercing the tut with a soft spile. Many cellarmen pierce the tut
with a specially made tool or with the small end of a valve-lifter from an old
engine, but beware—the sudden loss of pressure when open-venting could stir
the sediment at the bottom of the cask and result in a gushing of good beer all
over the cellar floor. With a soft spile, the venting is more controlled because the
spile is porous enough for CO2 and a little beer foam to pass through. Once this
liveliness has subsided, the soft spile can be replaced with a nonporous hard
spile and the cask can be tapped and served.
The most traditional method of dispensing the beer is by letting gravity draw
it out of the cask and into the glass. But because most cellars are found in the
basements of pubs, it is more common today to find the cask stillaged in the
cellar and the beer pumped up to the bar by means of a hand-pull beer engine or,
in the case of at least one mild ale brewery, by an electric pump—though
Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) purists decry the use of such devices. The beer
then often runs through a sparkler (at the discretion of the brewer), which aerates
the beer a little and knocks the CO2 out of suspension to form a creamy head of
very tiny, long-lasting bubbles. The alternative—serving without a sparkler—
leaves more condition in the beer and less head in the glass.
Cellarmanship—the art of handling cask-conditioned real ale—is a very
complex discipline that requires the understanding of hundreds of variables and
the nuances of the particular beer you are handling. The preceding description is
only meant to serve as a general guide. For a more detailed discussion of
handling cask beers, read the CAMRA guide to Cellarmanship, available through
CAMRA in the United Kingdom, or pick up a copy of The Perfect Pint: Producing
Real Ale in America, by Ray Daniels (see “Appendix B: Further Reading”).
Bottle Conditioning
The first bottled beers were undoubtedly bottled by hand, directly out of the
trade casks, and sealed. These bottlings may have been relatively sound because
the beer was still alive (there were a few living yeast cells to lend it some
stability), but the beer would have ceased to be real ale by the modern definition.
Another method of producing real ale—and the most common method in
homebrewing circles—is by carrying out the secondary fermentation in bottles.
Many of the same considerations apply to bottle-conditioned beer as to cask-
conditioned beer, with the notable exception of finings. Rarely, if ever, do
producers of bottle-conditioned beers use finings in the package. They have been
known, however, to fine the beer with isinglass in a secondary fermentation
vessel before bottling. Also, it is a common practice to run the beer through a
coarse filtration and then prime it with a small amount of yeast and sugar to
produce the conditioning that is desired.
The calculations used to determine priming sugar dosages applies here as
well, whether or not you are filtering before bottling. Although it may be
tempting to add the sugar directly to each bottle, it is advisable to add all the
sugar and yeast (if necessary) at once to all the beer in a racking vessel. Fill and
cap the bottles after the priming has been done. Conditioning should take place
at a slightly warmer temperature (65–70 °F, 18–21 °C) for a week. After that, it
should be returned to the ideal serving temperature (50–54 °F, 10–12 °C) for at
least 14 to 21 days before serving.
A good, flocculent yeast strain will leave very compact “bottoms,” or yeast
sediment, at the bottom of the bottle. Be careful not to disturb this sediment
when decanting the beer.
Force Conditioning
The most common method of conditioning in the world, and the method used
at most pub and microbreweries, is force-carbonation. The beer should be as
completely fermented as possible, and it should already have been fined or
filtered. Chill the beer to as low a temperature as possible without freezing (33–
38 °F, 5–3 °C, is sufficient) and then apply CO2 from a cylinder at a pressure
consistent with the volumes CO2 chart in the appendixes. Shake the keg every
few minutes until the flow of CO2 into the container stops.
If conditioning a large volume of beer, it is best to use a perforated
carbonation/aeration stone to do the job. The stone has very tiny pores that let
the CO2 through in small streams, increasing the gas-to-beer contact ratio and
therefore decreasing the time required to fully carbonate.
No matter how you condition the beer, mild ale should be drunk from a proper
English pint glass or pewter tankard; that is, one containing a full 20 ounces of
ale. Inasmuch as mild ale is of relatively low alcohol content but offers profound
flavor, this method of serving should appeal to modern sensibilities, which
dictate moderation in the consumption of intoxicating beverages while
encouraging indulgence in richness and quality of flavor.
CHAPTER 6

Commercially Produced Mild Ales

The CAMRA Real Mild Guide for 1998 lists 137 mild ales being produced in the
United Kingdom (see appendix A). This may sound like quite a few milds, but
the overall barrelage being produced as compared to bitter and even old ale is
very low. Some of the breweries listed in the guide, such as Adnam’s of Suffolk
and Hanson’s, are no longer producing the mild or have sold the brand names to
other breweries. Adnam’s is selling the brand name to a Black Country brewer,
and Hanson’s Mild, which has been brewed by Wolverhampton and Dudley
breweries (of Banks’s fame) is being phased out in favor of the Banks’s label.
What follows is a listing of some of the better-known, more commonly
available milds as well as a few American examples. The analytical data
presented here are for 10 mild ales ranging from light to dark and from low
gravity to rather bawdy. I believe it represents a fair cross-section of what
constitutes mild ale as it exists today. Table 5 shows the composition of several
mild ales in terms of malts, adjuncts, and the types of hops used in them,
providing some indication, in percentages, of where the fermentable sugars come
from in some typical mild ales.

Hanson’s Mild, brewed by Wolverhampton and Dudley breweries, is being phased out in favor of its more
famous sister, Banks’s.

Unfortunately, the truest milds—those brewed in their native England—are

not available in the United States. Therefore, those who wish to try them are
completely out of luck unless they are willing to travel or are able to cajole a
friend into bringing them back one of the few bottled examples, such as Sarah
Hughes or Cain’s Dark Mild.

TABLE 5
An Analysis of Several Mild Ale Formulations

Highgate
W-H W-H Bateman’s Dark Holden’s McMullen’s
1a 2a DM Mild Mild AK

OG (˚P) 11.2 10.0 8.3 8.9 9.2 8.3

S 1.045 1.04 1.033 1.0355 1.037 1.033

FG (˚P) NA NA 1.3 2.3 2.1 1.5

FG (SG) NA NA 1.005 1.009 1.008 1.006

Pale 76.9% 66.5% 60.0% 70.0% 90.0% 79.0%

Brown/amber 2.8% 6.5% — — — —

Crystal 2.8% — 12.0% 10.0% — —

Chocolate — — 5.0%b — — 1.0%

Roasted — — — — 5.0% —
barley

Black — — — 2.0% — —

Torrified — — — 6.0% — —
barley
 Wheat malt — 7.1% — — — —

Torrified — — 4.0% — — —
wheat

Flaked maize — — — — — 6.0%

Sugar 17.5% 19.9% 19.0% 12.0% 5.0% 14.0%

IBU NA NA 22 22 24 22

Kettle hops NA NA Golding Golding Fuggle Golding

and
Golding

Late hops NA NA Golding Golding Golding None

Notes: NA = Not listed in the source.

aData from Wahl-Henius, The American Handy-Book of Brewing and Auxiliary Trades (Chicago: Wahl-
Henius Institute, 1908).
bThe commercial version of this recipe uses brewers’ caramel for color; the chocolate malt shown here
approximates the color of the commercial product.

If you are in the United Kingdom and are searching for a bottled mild, beware.
Most brewers who bottle their mild ale do so under the name “brown ale” for
reasons that I cannot figure out—and they have been unable to explain, though
the practice probably has its roots in the mad rush to capitalize on the success of
bottled Newcastle Brown Ale in the 1920s and 1930s. Holden’s, Everard’s,
Boddington’s, Bateman’s, and Kimberley and Morrell’s of Oxford all make
exceptional mild ales but bottle their products as brown ale, while some like
Sarah Hughes, Brains, and Ansells bottle under the name mild ale.
 Highgate—the Champion Mild of Britain, 1997.

Luckily, however, if you are unable to try the British milds, there are many
fine examples being brewed in the United States, and the number is growing
daily. I have found exceptional milds at Commonwealth Brewery in Boston,
Massachusetts; Goose Island Beer Company in Chicago, Illinois; and at
Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon. For a real treat, try Marblehead Mild–the
gold medal winner in the English-Style Brown Ale category at the 1998 Great
American Beer Fesitval. It is brewed by Salem Beer Works in Salem,
Massachusetts.
Highgate Dark Mild
Brewers: Highgate and Walsall Brewing Company, Ltd., Sandymount Road,
Walsall, West Midlands WS1 3AP, United Kingdom. Telephone: (01922)
644453.

Brewing Specifics

OG: 1.035 (8.9 ºP)

TG: 1.009 (2.3 ºP)

ABV: 3.1%

IBUs: 22

Hop variety: Golding throughout

Malt: Pale, crystal, black, and chocolate

Adjuncts: Brewers’ caramel in the boil, and cane sugar to prime

Mash: Single-temperature infusion at 155 ºF (68 ºC)

Boil: 90 minutes

Fermentation: Open wooden squares, some lined with UHMW plastic

Yeast: House culture that consists of a mix of four separate strains

Packaging: 100% cask-conditioned

 Entering an area of small, neighborhood shops and multifamily houses in the
largely residential village of Walsall, one must negotiate a maze of winding side
streets to find the venerable Victorian building which, for the last 100 years, has
housed the Highgate Brewery. Built in 1898 to generic, “off-the-shelf” plans,
Highgate’s six-story brick facility exemplifies a standard Victorian tower
brewery. In fact, the well-preserved building now is listed on Britain’s national
historic register.
The brewery takes its name from the old “high gate” that once stood in front
of the brewery and allowed access to old Walsall. And while Highgate produces
a very good best bitter (Saddler’s Best Bitter, 1.045 SG, 3.2% ABV, with an
absolutely breathtaking Styrian Golding character) and an Old Ale (a higher-
gravity version of the mild, with much more fruitiness), its principal product
always has been its dark mild.
The brewery still works in classic tower fashion, with only three pumps to do
all the work. The 70-barrel brewery, which operates much as it did in 1898,
features an original wooden malt-screening device affectionately called the
coffin, thanks to its similar shape; two original wooden mash tuns, now clad and
lined with stainless steel; and twin original copper brew kettles. Fermentation
occurs in open oak squares now lined with white UHMW plastic. The basement of
the brewery houses the racking department and yeast storage.
Until a management buyout in 1995, Highgate had been the smallest brewery
in the Bass conglomerate for a decade. Its flagship dark mild was changed by the
Bass marketing department to Highgate Dark. Neil Bain, the current CEO and
brewmaster, changed the name back. He says that he and his staff are proud to
call their mild by its real name.
Highgate Dark Mild is a mahogany-colored brew with a tight off-white head,
when served properly. Its aroma is fruity, with notes of apples, caramel, and
vanilla. Vanilla, Highgate’s signature characteristic, also shows up in the beer’s
flavor, along with dark fruit, caramel, a bit of nutty malt, and just a hint of
bitterness in the dry finish. Highgate is brewed to 1.055 SG and watered down to
1.035 SG before fermentation. The mild has received numerous awards,
including CAMRA’s “Midlands Mild of the Year” award.
It is interesting to note that Highgate shares its own house strain with other
area mild ale brewers. Highgate retains the services of the laboratories at Bass in
Burton-on-Trent to keep the strain pure and to repropagate it every 16
generations.
Walnut Mild
Brewers: Marston, Thompson, and Evershed PLC, Shobnall Road, Burton-on-
Trent, Staffordshire DE14 2BW, United Kingdom. Telephone: (01283) 531131.

Brewing Specifics

OG: 1.035 (8.75 °P)

TG: 1.009 (2.2 °P)

ABV: 3.5%

IBUs: NA

Hop variety: East Kent Golding throughout

Malt: Pipkin pale, crystal, and chocolate

Adjuncts: Invert sugar in copper and priming

Mash: Single-temperature at 52 °Ra (150 °F, 65.5 °C)

Boil: 1 hour

Fermentation: Entirely in Burton Unions

Yeast: Very powdery union yeast that is unique to Marston’s

Packaging: Cask-conditioned and bottle-conditioned

a°R = Degrees Reaumur, a temperature scale used solely in the brewing industry, which Marston’s uses.
 Marston’s has become a sort of Mecca for beer aficionados. It is the last user
of the very costly, once-famous Burton Union system of fermentation. Famous
for the pale ales of its past and for the Pedigree bitter of its present, Marston’s
history is firmly rooted in mild ale—firmly enough that the word “MILD” is
forever emblazoned alongside of “PALE” and “OLD” on one of the three barrels in
the company’s logo.
One of the rotating selections in the Brewer’s Choice line of beer, Walnut
Mild represents the lowest-gravity beer in Marston’s product line. Like its
cousin, the throwback mild called Merrie Monk, Walnut is entirely fermented in
the unions, unlike Marston’s other beers, which contain only a small percentage
of union-fermented beer (the bulk of those other beers is fermented in large open
squares). Walnut Mild is a classic dark mild, reminiscent of Highgate Dark Mild.
Huge chocolate flavor and a maltiness untouched by hops make this an
extremely enjoyable session beer. You get the feeling you are drinking a much
bigger beer as it goes down your throat.
Banks’s
Brewers: Wolverhampton and Dudley Breweries PLC, P.O. Box 26, Park
Brewery, Bath Road, Wolverhampton, West Midlands WV1 4NY, United
Kingdom. Telephone: (01902) 711811.

Brewing Specifics

OG: 1.036 (9 °P)

TG: NA

ABV: 3.5%

IBUs: 18

Hop variety: Fuggle

Malt: Pale and crystal

Adjuncts: Sugar, presumably sucrose, in the copper; brewers’ caramel

for coloring

Mash: Single-temperature infusion, 152 °F (66.5 °C)

Boil: 60 minutes

Fermentation: Open squares

Yeast: House strain

Packaging: Cask, bottle, and keg

 Banks’s is the flagship product of Wolverhampton and Dudley Breweries, the
largest regional brewery in the Black Country. Although Banks’s is known
widely as a mild ale, the brewery has recently opted to drop the “mild” moniker
in favor of the simple brand name, in an attempt to lose the cloth-cap image and
rejuvenate the brand.

Critics of Banks’s claim that the beer is simply a colored-up version of

Wolverhampton and Dudley’s bitter, which is gaining rapidly on the mild in
terms of total barrels produced. However, a taste of the beer leaves little doubt
that this is not entirely true. It is a nice amber color, which the brewery admits is
the product of coloring after fermentation, but it is definitely maltier than their
bitter, which smacks heavily of Goldings. Perhaps the difference is wholly in the
dry-hopping, but the background caramel flavor in the mild suggests that a larger
percentage of the grist for the mild is crystal as compared to the grist for the
bitter.
Holden’s Black Country Mild
Brewers: Timonthy Holden, Holden’s Brewery Co. Ltd., Holden Brewery,
George Street, Woodsetton, Dudley, West Midlands DY1 4LN, United Kingdom.
Telephone: (01902) 80051.

Brewing Specifics

OG: 1.037 (9.2 °P)

TG: 1.008 (2.1 °P)

ABV: 3.7%

IBUs: NA (likely in the low 20s)

Hop variety: Golding and Brambling Cross

Malt: Pale, crystal, and roasted barley

Adjuncts: Sucrose in copper and at priming

Mash: Single-temperature infusion

Boil: 90 minutes

Fermentation: Open

Yeast: House strain, a true top-cropper

Packaging: Casks and bottles; a few kegs as well

 Although one of the better known mild ale brewers, Holden’s chooses to call their bottled mild a brown
ale.

One of the long-established family breweries of the Black Country, Holden’s

started as a brewpub at the Park Inn (now Holden’s brewery tap) in 1916. It
produces a good range of ales for more than 20 tied houses and more than 100
free-trade customers.
Although darker than many milds, Holden’s Black Country Mild is very light
in flavor. A worthy nod to the malt, the hop presence is just barely perceptible.
Roasted barley is used for the color, but it is not readily apparent in the flavor
profile. This ale drinks with the body of a much stronger beer.
Dark Ruby Mild
Brewers: Guy Perry, Sarah Hughes Brewery, Beacon Hotel, 129 Bilston
Street, Sedgley, Dudley, West Midlands DY3 1JE, United Kingdom. Telephone:
(01902) 883380.

Brewing Specifics

OG: 1.058 (14.5 °P)

TG: NA

ABV: 6.0%

IBUs: 32

Hop variety: Variable, usually Goldings

Malt: Paul’s pale, crystal, chocolate, and roasted barley

Adjuncts: Invert sugar in the copper and for priming

Mash: Single-temperature infusion

Boil: 90 minutes in open-top copper

Fermentation: Open fermentation in converted Grundy tanks

Yeast: Borrowed from Holden’s or Highgate

Packaging: Cask- and bottle-conditioned; sold mainly on premise

 Sarah Hughes is a brewpub and microbrewery in the richly appointed
Victorian-style conservatory of the Beacon Hotel in Sedgley, United Kingdom.
The brewery is about 125 years old, but it laid dormant for 20 years after the
current owner’s grandmother, Sarah Hughes, died. In 1987, John Hughes revived
the brewery to service the hotel and a few other outlets.
The classic throwback mild, Original Ruby Mild, harkens back to the earlier
days of mild ale, boasting a whopping 6% ABV. (The brewery’s pale ale, Sedgley
Surprise, is only 1.048 OG, 5% ABV.) Original Ruby has a full, sweet, and malty
palate and unleashes a blitz of clean, fruity flavors. The ale’s body is huge,
edging on syrupy.
McMullen’s AK
Brewers: McMullen and Sons Ltd., Hertford Brewery, 26 Old Cross, Hertford
SG14 1RD, England. Telephone: (01992) 500729.

Brewing Specifics

OG: 1.033 (8.25 °P)

TG: 1.006 (1.7 °P)

ABV: 3.6%

IBUs: 22

Hop variety: Goldings for bitterness and aroma, plus dry-hopping in the
cask

Malt: 79% pale, 1% chocolate

Adjuncts: 6% flaked maize in the mash, 14% glucose and invert sugar
in copper, and cane sugar for priming

Mash: Single-temperature infusion at 148 °F (64.5 °C)

Boil: 90 minutes

Fermentation: Open fermentation at 68–70 °F (20–21 °C)

Yeast: Top-cropping house strain

Packaging: Cask-conditioned
 McMullen and Sons was founded in Hertford, Hertfordshire, in 1827 and
began producing its flagship product, known simply as AK, in 1832. The
designation “AK” was not unique to McMullen’s—there were at least a dozen
other brews using that moniker at the time—but McMullen’s is the only example
that survived. Beer historian Martyn Cornell theorizes that it stands for ale kyte,
Flemish for “small beer.” Whatever the origin of the name, McMullen’s AK is the
most widely known example of light or pale mild in the world.

McMullen’s Brewery in Hertford exemplifies the ornate architecture of Victorian tower breweries.

Although the name “pale mild” was dropped in the early 1990s, AK is made
with pale and chocolate malts to 1.034 SG and 3.7% ABV. McMullen’s AK starts
with a dry maltiness and rounds out with a nice tea-like finish imparted by
Goldings hops.1

In addition to their famous AK, McMullen’s has also brewed a dark mild bottled as a brown ale.
Bateman’s DM
Brewers: George Bateman and Son Ltd., Salem Bridge Brewery, Mill Lane,
Wainfleet, Skegness, Lincolnshire PE24 4JE, England. Telephone: (01754)
880317.

Brewing Specifics

OG: 1.033 (8.25 °P)

TG: 1.005 (1.2 °P)

ABV: 3.0%

IBUs: 22

Hop variety: Goldings for bitterness and aroma as well as dry hopping in
the cask.

Malt: Pale, crystal, and brewers’ caramel for color

Adjuncts: Caramel in the boil, and cane sugar for priming

Mash: Single-temperature infusion

Boil: 90 minutes

Fermentation: Open fermentation at 68–70 °F (20–21 °C)

Yeast: Top-cropping house strain

Packaging: Cask-conditioned
 Founded in 1874, Bateman’s is the last remaining brewery in the whole of
Lincolnshire (an English county best known for the Norman cathedral and castle
of its capital city). The brewery has prospered over the past several years,
finding new markets for its beers, both at home and abroad—including America,
where craftbeer consumers have embraced Bateman’s complex XXXB ale (5%
ABV) and potent Victory Ale (6% ABV).

Bateman’s bottles its DM as a nut brown ale.

Visitors to Wainfleet can locate Bateman’s by looking for its crenellated

tower, which rises above the area’s thatched cottages and rambling fields.
Originally built as a windmill serving a local bakery, this tower (now missing its
sails) was annexed by the adjacent brewery in the 1920s. It presently houses the
all-important sample room. The administrative offices and whitewashed brew
house still occupy their century-old sites next door.
Bateman’s DM hails from the coast of the North Sea north of East Anglia—
well outside the mild ale stronghold of the West Midlands. Nevertheless, it took
the title “Champion Mild of Britain” at the Great British Beer Festival in 1997. It
is dark, molasses-brown in color and the aroma is not unlike molasses or dark
brown sugar. The beer delivers a full, toasty palate. Malt is clearly the signature
flavor here, but a pleasant bitterness takes the edge off the sweetness.
Gateway Dark
Brewers: Brian O’Reilly, David Sutula, and Bill Bryson, John Harvard’s Brew
House #13, 1087 Old River Road, Cleveland, Ohio 44113. Telephone: (216)
623-2739.

Brewing Specifics

OG: 1.033 (8.3 °P)

TG: 1.005 (1.2 °P)

ABV: 3.1%

IBUs: 21

Hop variety: Willamette

Malt: Pale, crystal, chocolate

Adjuncts: Flaked maize in the mash, and cane sugar to prime

Mash: Single-temperature infusion at 152 °F (66.5 °C)

Boil: 2 hours total (90 minutes with hops)

Fermentation: Closed, dual-stage fermentation

Yeast: Whitbread, top-cropping strain

Packaging: Served cask-conditioned or filtered

 The John Harvard’s Brew House chain of brewpubs was founded in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1992. Since then, the company has grown to over
14 stores in the eastern United States. Brewpub number 13 was opened in
Cleveland, Ohio, in September of 1997 under the “Honest Food, Real Beer”
banner that each of the chain’s brewpubs flies.
Formerly called Gateway Mild, Gateway Dark was originally filtered and
nitrogenated. In addition to changing the name, the brewery began to serve the
beer filtered and carbonated, occasionally offering it gravity-dispensed from a
firkin or served through a hand pump.
Gateway Dark is a deep brown color, with ruby highlights. The aroma is
reminiscent both of chocolate malt and fresh tobacco from the Willamette hops
used for bittering and aroma. The body is light and dry, while chocolate malt
predominates over toffee and molasses notes. The cask-conditioned versions
have in the past been done without dry hops, with Willamette dry hops, or with
Styrian Goldings. I personally favor the character of the Willamettes over the
Styrians in this particular beer.
Harvard’s AK
Brewers: Brian O’Reilly, David Sutula, and Bill Bryson at John Harvard’s
Brew House #13, 1087 Old River Road, Cleveland, Ohio 44113. Telephone:
(216) 623-2739.

Brewing Specifics

OG: 1.033 (8.2 °P)

TG: 1.007 (1.75 °P)

ABV: 3.1%

IBUs: 19

Hop variety: Willamette, Styrian Goldings

Malt: Pale and crystal

Adjuncts: Flaked corn in the mash

Mash: Single-temperature infusion at 152 °F (66.5 °C)

Boil: 2 hours total (90 minutes with hops)

Fermentation: 4 days at 68 °F (20 °C), transferred to secondary at 50 °F (10

°C), and cooled to 33 °F (.5 °C) before filtration

Yeast: Top-cropping strain of London origin

Packaging: Served cask-conditioned or cold with forced carbonation

 This is another offering from John Harvard’s Brew House number 13 that is
modeled after the famous pale mild, Original AK, from McMullen’s in Hertford.
Harvard’s AK is a bit drier and less sweet than the original, with a bit less hop
presence than the British version. The people of Cleveland have come to enjoy
this crisp and refreshing brew during hot summer nights on the patio in the
Cleveland flats.
PMD Mild
Brewers: Gregory Hall, Goose Island Beer Company, 1800 N. Clybourn Ave.,
Chicago, Illinois 60614. Telephone: (312) 915-0071.

Brewing Specifics

OG: 1.034 (8.5 °P)

TG: 1.010 (2.5 °P)

ABV: 2.5 %

IBUs: 22

Hop variety: Fuggles throughout

Malt: American two-row, caramel (40 °L), and wheat malt

Adjuncts: None

Mash: Single-temperature infusion

Boil: 100 minutes, 90 minutes with hops

Fermentation: 3 days primary fermentation at 68 °F (20 °C), 3-day diacetyl

rest at 70 °F (21 °C)

Yeast: Top-cropping house strain

Packaging: Served cask-conditioned or cold with forced carbonation

 Among the fastest growing craftbrewers in the nation, Goose Island Beer
Company was founded in 1988 by owner John Hall in Chicago’s burgeoning
Clybourn Corridor, once the center of the city’s pre-Prohibition brewing district.
With a 2,500-barrel annual output, the Clybourn brewpub has been recognized as
one of the top ten breweries in the world by the prestigious Beverage Testing
Institute.
The success of this original brewpub prompted the 1995 launch of Goose
Island’s second facility, a 37,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art brewery on West
Fulton Street. It includes a high-speed bottling line that will enable the company
to produce over 100,000 barrels annually. This expanded capacity will also aid in
the distribution of Goose Island’s award-winning Honker’s Ale and its seasonal
beers, which are sent to over 1,000 locations.
PMD Mild has the distinction of being one of only two mild ales to have won a
medal at the Great American Beer Festival to date: the gold medal in the
English-Style Brown Ale category for 1995. It is also the only mild ale listed on
Michael Jackson’s Beer Hunter CD-ROM as a world classic beer. (It is interesting
that a British beer writer would award this honor to an American example of a
beer style that is so uniquely English.)
PMD takes its name from the Protected Manufacturing District, which is where
the original Goose Island brewpub sits. The district is reminiscent of the
industrial sprawl of the English Midlands. This beer, with its delicate malt nose
and caramel flavors, is a fitting tribute to the people of Chicago and the
Midlands who owe their livelihood to industry.
PMD is a dark mild with a great Fuggle character in the palate and subtle
bitterness that does nothing to impair the delicate sweetness of the malt. This
mild is devoid of any diacetyl, and yeast character is minimal, if present at all. A
delicious example—the best I’ve found outside the Midlands, and perhaps better
than many of them.
Commonwealth Best Mild
Brewers: Jeffrey Charnick, Commonwealth Brewing Company Ltd., 138
Portland Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02114. Telephone: (617) 523-8383.

Brewing Specifics

OG: 1.046 (11.5 °P)

TG: 1.011 (2.8 °P)

ABV: 4.5%

IBUs: 28

Hop variety: East Kent Goldings

Malt: British pale, crystal, and chocolate

Adjuncts: None

Mash: Single-temperature infusion at 152 °F (66.5 °C)

Boil: 75 minutes with hops, 85 minutes total

Fermentation: Open squares at 62–68 °F (16.5–20 °C)

Yeast: True top-cropping house strain

Packaging: Served cask-conditioned or cold with forced carbonation

Commonwealth Brewing Company, located in Boston, Massachusetts, is one

of the staple East Coast brewpubs. One of the United States’ largest producers
and retailers of naturally conditioned beers, Commonwealth offers a wide variety
of both British and Continental styles. It is a very traditional British-style
brewery, employing everything from a hop back to a Steele’s masher. This is a
must-see brewery for connoisseurs of British ale.
Commonwealth Best Mild (CBM), a tawny example of a mild ale, is something
of a throwback to the 1930s and 1940s mild in that no adjuncts are used in the
mash or boil, and it has an atypically high original gravity and alcohol content.
It’s a very tasty beer with a big, bold body and crisp maltiness, with only the
faintest hint of chocolate.
CHAPTER 7

Mild Ale Recipes

This section presents seven formulations that are representative of different

types of commercially available milds. For each example, three different recipes
will be given. The first is a 5-gallon (18.9-liter) all-grain recipe. Because most
milds contain some adjunct sugar in the form of nonbarley cereal grains or the
direct addition of sugar, the term all-grain will refer to beers made without any
malt extract.
The second is a similar 5-gallon recipe using malt extract as the main source
of fermentable sugar. The third is a stepped-up version of the first, aiming for a
yield of 1 barrel (1.17 hectoliters). Craftbrewers who are using a multiple-barrel
system in a pub or microbrewery can increase this single-barrel recipe by
multiplying the values presented times the number of barrels to be produced.
Each of these recipes was brewed over the course of a month, using the
ambient temperature of my basement (68 °F, 20 °C) as the primary fermentation
temperature, secondary fermentation temperature, and conditioning temperature.
All were brewed using a single-temperature infusion, and by converting for 50
minutes before starting to recirculate. Each was lautered in the same Phil’s
Lauter, which achieves a relatively consistent 81% efficiency. All were open-
fermented with the same strain of yeast (Wyeast 1318 London Ale III, which I
find to be an absolutely excellent strain for top-cropping) in a 10-gallon
stainless-steel pot. Part of each recipe was bottle-conditioned, and the rest was
kegged with force-carbonation.
Two of the ales, Abili Red Mild and Lusty Gnome Midlands Mild, were also
cask-conditioned in a 4.5 U.K. gallon pin and served draught. Only one of these
was actually brewed using the extract recipe listed (Mild Ale, c. 1824).
You will notice that all of the extract recipes call for steeping some of the
malt. I believe that steeping grains adds a depth of character that is rarely
achieved with all-extract recipes and, even if there were only a marginal
improvement, it would still be worth the minimal effort steeping requires.
To gain the most from your steeping grains, first have the homebrew supplier
you deal with crush the grains—or do it yourself with a corona mill or any of the
wide variety of mills available to the small-scale brewer. Then put the grains in
an oversized (loose) steeping bag; homebrew shops carry just the right thing, or
you can make your own with cheese cloth or muslin. Immerse the bagged grains
in the cold water you are going to brew with.
When brewing the all-grain recipes, be sure that your malt is well crushed.
Remember that it is better to be under-crushed and lose the 60-cents-worth of
extract than to have a stuck mash. And, speaking of mashing, remember to mash
thick and stir well, checking to see that the temperature is even throughout the
mash.
Sparge with water only a few degrees above the mash temperature, and boil
rapidly for 60 to 90 minutes. After the boil, follow your normal procedures for
separating the wort and trub (whirlpool, hop back, centrifuge) and cooling. The
wort should be pitched with plenty of a good, healthy British yeast culture to 8 –
16 × 106 cells/ml. Watch the fermentation temperature so that it stays below 70
°F (21 °C).
When brewing with specialty grains, make sure the grains are well-crushed
and place them inside a highly porous, net-like bag. Put the requisite volume of
cold liquor (cold water) in the kettle (your pot has now become a kettle) and
place the grains in it. Apply heat to the kettle, making sure that the grains are
nice and wet inside the bag. Let the temperature rise to 160 °F (71 °C), and hold
it there for 10 to 20 minutes.
Remove the grains, being certain to squeeze the last of the wort out before
discarding them, and then add the malt extract. Proceed as usual with the rest of
the brew, adding malt extract and sugar as required.
Notice that I only specify pale (unhopped) malt extract. I believe that the
character derived from adding pellets (or whole hops) to the kettle is far superior
to the character of hopped malt extracts and that the effect is well worth the
minimal investment required.
Above all else, “Fret, sweat, and have a mild ale!”
AK

Malt % Grain, 5 Gal. Extract, 5 Gal. Grain, 1 Bbl.

Pale malt 80.0 5.00 lbs. (2.40 — 31.00 lbs. (14.1

kg) kg)

Pale malt 80.0 — 4.50 lbs. (2.1 —

extract kg)

Chocolate malt 1.0 1.25 oz. (35.0 1.25 oz. (35.0 7.75 oz. (220.0
g) g) g)

Flaked maize 5.0 0.50 lb. (228.0 0.50 lb. (228.0 3.10 lbs. (1.4
g) g) kg)

Invert or cane 14.0 17.50 oz. 17.50 oz. 6.80 lbs. (3.1
sugar (500.0 g) (500.0 g) kg)

Bittering Hops (90 Extract, 5

min.) Grain, 5 Gal. Gal. Grain, 1 Bbl.

Golding (5% alpha) 1.00 oz. (28.5 1.00 oz. (28.5 6.20 oz. (1.8
g) g) kg)

HBU 5 5 31

IBU 22 22 22

Brewing Specifics

Color: 6 °L
Mash temperature: 147 °F (64 °C)

OG: 1.033 (8.3 °P)

FG: 1.006 (1.5 °P)

Priming sugar: 2.00 oz. (57.0 g) cane sugar in 5 gal.

CO2: 1.3–2.5 volumes

Packaging: Draught or keg

Finings: 3.00 oz. isinglass to 5 gal.

Maclay’s 56/Mild Ale (c. 1909)

Extract, 5
Malt % Grain, 5 Gal. Gal. Grain, 1 Bbl.

Pale ale malt 67.0 8.75 lbs. (4.0 — 55.00 lbs. (25.0
kg) kg)

Light malt 67.0 — 7.50 lbs. (5.5 —

extract kg)

Black malt 1.8 3.75 oz. (107.0 3.75 oz. (107.0 1.50 lbs. (684.0
g) g) g)

Amber malta 7.7 1.00 lb. (456.0 1.00 lb. (456.0 6.20 lbs. (2.8 kg)
g) g)

Wheat malt 23.5 3.00 lbs. (1.4 3.00 lbs. (1.4 18.60 lbs. (10.5
kg) kg) kg)

Bittering Hops (90 Grain, 1

min.) Grain, 5 Gal. Extract, 5 Gal. Bbl.

Golding (4% alpha) 4.00 oz. (114.0 4.00 oz. (114.0 1.50 lbs.
g) g)

HBU 16 16 96

IBU 67 67 67

Brewing Specifics

Color: 11 °L
 Mash 152 °F (66.5 °C)
temperature:

OG: 1.060 (14.7 °P)

FG: 1.015 (3.8 °P)

Priming 2.00 oz. (57.0 g) cane sugar in 5 gal.

sugar:

CO2: 1.5–2.0 volumes

Packaging: Draught or bottle-conditioned

Finings: 3.00 oz. isinglass to 5 gal. (if bottled, fine in a separate vessel,
then rack the beer into a bottling bucket, prime, and bottle)

aBeeston Amber Malt.

Source: Converted from ledgers held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh,
Scotland.
Abili Red Mild

Malt Grain, 5 Gal. Extract, 5 Gal. Grain, 1 Bbl.

Pale malt 4.60 lbs. (2.1 — 28.50 lbs. (13.0

kg) kg)

Pale malt extract — 3.33 lbs. (1.5 kg) —

Crystal malt 15.00 oz. (4.3 15.00 oz. (427.0 5.80 lbs. (2.70
kg) g) kg)

Chocolate malt 6.00 oz. (170.0 6.00 oz. (170.0 2.30 lbs. (1.05
g) g) kg)

Torrified wheat 5.00 oz. (142.0 5.00 oz. (142.0 1.90 lbs. (866.0
g) g) g)

Invert sugar (in 1.50 lbs. (684.0 1.50 lbs. (684.0 9.30 lbs. (4.24
kettle) g) g) kg)

Bittering Hops (90 Extract, 5

min.) Grain, 5 Gal. Gal. Grain, 1 Bbl.

Golding (5% alpha) 1.00 oz. (57.0 1.00 oz. (57.0 6.25 oz. (353.0
g) g) g)

HBU 5.00 5.00 31.25

IBU 22 22 22
 Aroma Hops (15 Extract, 5 Gal.
min.) Grain, 5 Gal. Grain, 1 Bbl.

Golding 0.33 oz. (10.0 0.33 oz. (10.0 2.00 oz. (57.0
g) g) g)

Brewing Specifics

Color: 13 °L

Mash temperature: 149 °F (65 °C)

OG: 1.033 (8.3 °P)

FG: 1.005 (1.3 °P)

Priming sugar: 2.00 oz. (57.0 g) cane sugar in 5 gal.

CO2: 1.5–2.5 volumes (if kegged)

Packaging: Draught or keg

Finings: 3.00 oz. isinglass to 5 gal.

Note: Abili Red Mild is a pleasing, deep ruby red color and has a pleasing malty chewiness. Care should be
taken to get this ale to attenuate very well. The caramel and roasted notes lend themselves well to a nice,
dry finish.
KMS Dark Mild

Malt % Grain, 5 Gal. Extract, 5 Gal. Grain, 1 Bbl.

Pale malt 62 5.50 lbs. (2.5 — 34.10 lbs. (15.5

kg) kg)

Pale malt extract 62 — 4.25 lbs. (1.9 —

kg)

Crystal malt 15 1.33 lbs. 1.33 lbs. (600.0 8.25 lbs. (3.7 kg)
(600g) g)

Chocolate malt 5 6.50 oz. 6.50 oz. (185.0 2.50 lbs. (1.1 kg)
(185g) g)

Flaked maize 8 10.50 oz. 10.50 oz. (300.0 4.00 lbs. (1.8 kg)
(300g) g)

Invert or cane 10 13.50 oz. 13.50 oz. (385.0 5.25 lbs. (2.4 kg)
Sugar (385g) g)

Bittering Hops (90 Extract, 5

min.) Grain, 5 Gal. Gal. Grain, 1 Bbl.

Fuggle (4% alpha) 2.00 oz. (68.0 2.00 oz. (68.0 12.40 oz. (3.5
g) g) kg)

HBU 4 4 —

IBU 24 24 24
 Brewing Specifics

Color: 22 °L

Mash temperature: 150 °F (65.5 °C)

OG: 1.036 (9 °P)

FG: 1.008 (2 °P)

Priming sugar: 2.00 oz. (57.0 g) cane sugar in 5 gal.

CO2: 1.3 to 2.5 volumes

Packaging: Draught or nitrogen

Finings: 3.00 oz. isinglass to 5 gal.

Note: This recipe represents the modern dark mild ale. It is something of a collective example, considering
all the milds I have tasted and all the mild brewers I have talked to. For an added dimension, try dry-
hopping with about 0.25 to 0.50 oz. of Fuggle, Willamette, or Styrian Golding.
Lusty Gnome Midlands Mild

Mash Grain, 5 Gal. Extract, 5 Gal. Grain, 1 Bbl.

Pale malt 11.00 lbs. (5.0 — 68.20 lbs. (31.0

kg) kg)

Pale malt — 9.00 lbs. (3.6 —

extract kg)

Crystal malt 3.60 lbs. (1.7 kg) 3.60 lbs. (1.7 22.30 lbs. (10.0
kg) kg)

Bittering Hops (90 Extract, 5

min.) Grain, 5 Gal. Gal. Grain, 1 Bbl.

Fuggle (4.5% alpha) 1.59 oz. (43.0 1.50 oz. (43.0 9.30 oz. (265.0
g) g) g)

Golding (5% alpha) 1.25 oz. (35.0 1.25 oz. (35.0 7.75 oz. (221.0
g) g) g)

HBU 13.0 13.0 80.6

IBU 30 30 30

Aroma Hops (15

min.) Grain, 5 Gal. Extract, 5 Gal. Grain, 1 Bbl.

Golding 0.66 oz. (20.0 0.66 oz. (20.0 4.00 oz. (114.0
g) g) g)
 Brewing Specifics

Color: 10–12 °L

Mash 155 °F (68 °C)

Temperature

OG: 1.058 (14.3 °P)

FG: 1.014 (3.6 °P)

Priming 2.00 oz. (57.0 g) cane sugar in 5 gal.

sugar

CO2: 2.0–2.5 volumes

Packaging: Draught or bottle-conditioned

Finings: 3.00 oz. (85.5 g) isinglass to 5 gal. (If bottled, first add
isinglass to a separate vessel, let it drop bright, and then rack
the ale into a bottling bucket and bottle.)

Note: Lusty Gnome Midlands Mild is loosely patterned after a higher-gravity mild that is being brewed in
the English Midlands today. The gravity is reminiscent of the nineteenth-century milds, and the alcohol
content should dispel the myth that milds are supposed to be weak.
Mild Ale, c. 1824

Malt % Grain, 5 Gal. Extract, 5 Gal. Grain, 1 Bbl.

Mild ale malt 50 6.25 lbs. (2.9 — 38.75 lbs. (17.7

kg) kg)

Pale malt 50 — 7.50 lbs. (3.4 —

extract kg)

Amber malta 10 20.00 oz. (570.0 20.00 oz. (285.0 7.25 lbs. (3.5
g) g) kg)

Caramalt 40 5.00 lbs. (2.3 2.00 lbs. (912.0 31.00 lbs. (14.1
(carapils) kg) g) kg)

Bittering Hops (90 Extract, 5

min.) Grain, 5 Gal. Gal. Grain, 1 Bbl.

Golding (4% alpha) 3.33 oz. (95.0 3.33 oz. (95.0 1.25 lbs. (570.0
g) g) g)

HBU 13.2 13.2 80.0

IBU 56 56 56

Brewing Specifics

Color: 6–8 °L

Mash 152 °F (66.5 °C)

 temperature:

OG: 1.066 (16.1 °P)

FG: 1.019 (4.9 °P)

Priming sugar: 2.00 oz. (57.0 g) cane sugar in 5 gal.

CO2: 1.5–2.0 volumes

Packaging: Draught or Bottle Conditioned

Finings: 3.00 oz. isinglass to 5 gal. (If bottled, gently stir into
bottling bucket.)

aBeeston Amber Malt.

Source: Converted from The Young Brewer’s Monitor (London: 1824).

APPENDIX A

Producers of Real Mild Ale in Great Britain

The following statistics were compiled by the Campaign for Real Ale. The list
includes independent British breweries, national concerns, and homebrew pubs.

ABV
Brewery Name of Beer OG (%)

Abel Brown’s Lord Douglas Mild 1040 4.0

Adnam’s Mild 1035 3.2

Adnam’s Old 1043 4.3

Ansells Mild 1033 3.4

Ballard’s Midhurst Mild 1034 3.5

Banks’s Banks’s 1036 3.5

Banks’s Hansons Mild 1035 3.3

Banks and Taylor Shefford Mild 1038 3.8

Bass (Museum) No. 6 Mild 1037 3.9

Bass (Museum) Offilers Mild 1037 3.9

Bass (Sheffield) Mild 1032 3.1

Bateman’s Mild 1033 3.0

Batham A J Mild 1049 5.0

Batham Mild 1037 3.5

Beecham’s Dark Mild 1045 4.5

Bellhaven 60 Shilling 1030 2.9

Blackawton Dart Mild 1036 3.6

Blackburn BBC3 1038 3.8

Boddington’s Mild 1032 3.5

Boddington’s OB Mild 1032 3.3

Boddington’s Pub Ale 1035 3.6

Blue Moon Dark Side 1041 4.0

Border Noggin’s Nog 1041 4.2

Brains Dark Mild Ale 1035 3.5

Brakspear Mild 1031 3.0

Brewery on Sea Spinnaker Mild 1036 3.5

British Oak Oak Mild 1038 3.7

Buckley Buckley’s Dark Mild 1035 3.4

Buffy’s Mild 1042 4.2

Bull Mastiff Ebony dark 1073 7.0

Burtonwood Dark Mild 1032 3.0

Bushy’s Dark Mild 1035 3.5

Butterknowle West Auckland Mild 1034 3.3

Cains Dark Mild 1032 3.2

Caledonian 60 Shilling 1032 3.2

Cannon Royal Fruiterers Mild 1037 3.7

Church End Gravediggers Mild 1038 3.8

Clark (William) Thistle Mild 1040 4.0

Coach House Gunpowder Strong 1037 3.8

Mild

Cotleigh Nutcracker Mild 1036 3.6

Crouch Vale Best Dark Ale 1036 3.6

Cuckmere Haven Velvet Dark Mild 1048 4.7

Dark Star Roast Mild 1035 3.5

Davenports Arms Reynold’s Redneck 1056 5.5

Donnington XXX 1036 3.6

Earl Soham Gannett Mild 1033 3.0

Easingwold Tender Mild 1035 3.4

Elgood’s Black Dog Mild 1035 3.6

Enville High Gravity Mild 1042 4.2

Enville Low Gravity Mild 1038 3.8

Everards Mild 1036 3.3

Felinfoel Dark 1032 3.2

Fiddler’s Mild 1035 3.4

Firkin Pub Chain Firkin Mild 1034 3.4

Fox and Hounds Wild Mild 1043 4.2

Gale’s Festival Mild 1052 4.8

Goacher’s Real Mild Ale 1033 3.4

Greenall Whitley Greenalls Mild 1032 3.3

Greene King Black Baron 1044 4.3

Greene King XX Dark Mild 1036 3.0

Green Jack Mild 1032 3.0

Guernsey Braye 1038 3.7

Hanby Black Magic Mild 1033 3.3

Hardy’s and Hansons Kimberley Best Mild 1035 3.1

Harveys Knots of May 1030 3.0

Harveys Sussex XX Mild Ale 1030 3.0

Highgate and Walsall Dark Mild 1035 3.2

Hogsback Dark Mild 1036 3.4

Holden’s Mild 1037 3.7

Holt Mild 1032 3.2

Holt, Plant and Deakin Holts Mild 1036 3.7

Home Mild 1036 3.6

Hook Norton PAB Mild 1031 3.0

Hoskins and Oldfield HOB Best Mild 1036 3.5

Hughes (Sarah Hughes) Dark Ruby Mild 1058 6.0

Hull Mild 1034 3.3

Hyde’s Anvil Dark Mild 1032 3.5

Hyde’s Anvil Mild 1032 3.5

Isle of Man (Okells) Mild 1034 3.4

Jennings Dark Mild 1031 3.1

Joshua Tetley Pale Mild 1032 3.3

Joshua Tetlley Dark Mild 1032 3.2

Kelham Island Bête Noire 1056 5.5

King and Barnes Mild Ale 1034 3.5

Leatherbritches Scrum Down Mild 1053 5.0

Leatherbritches Steaming Billy Mild 1038 3.0

Lees GB Mild 1033 3.5

Leyland Old Cock Up Mild 1032 3.5

Linfit Dark Mild 1032 3.0

Little Avenham Arkwright Mild 1035 3.5

McGuiness Feather Plucker Mild 1034 4.0

McMullen Original AK 1033 3.7

Malton Dark 1035 3.5

Mansfield Gray’s Mild 1035 3.5

Mansfield Riding Mild 1035 3.5

Marston, Thompson, and Walnut Mild 1035 3.5
Evershed

Mathew Brown Lion Mild 1030 3.1

Mitchell and Butlers M & B Mild 1034.5 3.2

Mitchell’s Country Mild 1035 3.3

Moorehouses Black Cat Mild 1034 3.2

Morrell’s Oxford Mild 1039 3.7

Old Chimneys Military Mild 1035 3.4

Old Court (Whitbread) Copper’s Ale 1034 3.4

Old Mill Traditional Mild 1035 3.4

Parish Mild 1035 3.5

Pembroke The Darklin 1035 3.5

Phoenix Mild 1040 4.0

Porter Dark Mild 1033 3.3

Reepham Strong Ruby Ale 1048 4.5

Reindeer Mild 1034 3.4

Ridley’s Champion Mild 1035 3.5

Riverhead Sparth Mild 1036 3.6

Robinson’s Dark Best Mild 1033 3.3

Robinson’s Hatters Mild 1033 3.3

Rudgate Ruby Mild 1041 4.4

Ryburn Best Mild 1033 3.3

Scott’s Strong Mild 1043 4.4

Shipstones Mild 1034 3.4

St. Austell XXXX Mild 1039 3.6

St. Peter’s Mild 1035 3.6

Tally Ho! Master Jack Mild 1039 3.5

Theakston Traditional Mild 1035 3.5

Three Tuns Dark Mild 1034 3.4

Thwaites Best Mild 1034 3.3

Timothy Taylor Dark Mild 1034 3.5

Timothy Taylor Golden Best 1033 3.5

Titanic Lifeboat Ale 1040 3.9

Tolly Cobbold Mild 1032 3.2

Tomlinson’s Hermitage Mild 1036 3.7

Ventnor Dark Mild 1033 3.3

Viking Island Dark Mild 1035 3.5

Ward’s Darley’s Dark Mild 1034 3.4

Webster’s Green Label 1032 3.2

Welsh Brewer’s Worthington Dark 1034.5 3.2

Whim Magic Mushroom 1042 3.8

Mild

Wilsons Original Mild 1032 3.0

Winfields Mild 1035 3.5

Woodforde’s Mardler’s Mild 1035 3.5

APPENDIX B

Further Reading

Perhaps the biggest reason that mild ale has not enjoyed the success that other
beers have in these times of revivalist brewing is because there is so little
information available about the style. The books listed in this appendix cover a
wide range of brewing topics and range from antiquated brewing texts to
volumes on general modern brewing knowledge and historical works that put
mild ale into perspective. If you have consulted any of the footnotes to this book,
you will no doubt recognize many of these titles.
Brewing Texts

Clissold, Ivor. Cellarmanship: Caring for Real Ale. St. Albans, Hertfordshire,
U.K.: CAMRA Ltd., 1997.
Daniels, Ray. Designing Great Beers: The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic
Beer Styles. Boulder, Colo.: Brewers Publications, 1996.
———. The Perfect Pint: Producing Real Ale in America. Chicago: Craft Beer
Institute, 1998.
Daniels, Ray, and Jim Parker. Brown Ale: History, Brewing Techniques, Recipes.
Boulder, Colo.: Brewers Publications, 1998.
DeClerck, Jean. A Textbook of Brewing. Translated by Kathleen Barton-Wright.
1957; reprinted by the Siebel Institute of Technology, Chicago, 1994.
Foster, Terry. Pale Ale. Classic Beer Style Series, no. 1. Boulder, Colo.: Brewers
Publications, 1990.
———. Porter. Classic Beer Style Series, no. 5. Boulder, Colo.: Brewers
Publications, 1992.
Hind, H. Lloyd. Brewing Science and Practice. New York: John Wiley and Sons,
1943.
Lewis, Michael J., and Tom W. Young. Brewing. London: Chapman and Hall,
1995.
Noonan, Gregory J. New Brewing Lager Beer. Boulder, Colo.: Brewers
Publications, 1996.
———. Scotch Ale. Classic Beer Style Series, no. 8. Boulder, Colo.: Brewers
Publications, 1996.
Historical Sources

Bradley, Richard. A Guide to Gentleman Farmers and Housekeepers for

Brewing the Finest Malt Liquors. 1700; reprint 1997, Birch Run Press,
Richfield, Ohio.
Briggs, D. E., J. S. Hough, and T. W. Young, eds. Malting and Brewing Science,
2nd ed. London: Chapman and Hall, 1981.
Glover, Brian. Prince of Ales. St. Albans, Hertfordshire, U.K.: CAMRA Ltd.,
1993.
Gourvish, T. R. The British Brewing Industry 1830–1980. Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Harrison, John. Old British Beers and How to Make Them. London: Durden Park
Beer Circle, 1991.
Jackson, Michael. Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion, 2nd ed. Philadelphia:
Running Press, 1997.
Mathias, Peter. The Brewing Industry in England: 1700–1830. Brookfield, Vt.:
Gregg Revivals, 1993.
Protz, Roger. The Ale Trail. St. Albans, Hertfordshire, U.K.: Verulam Publishing,
1995.
Sambrook, Pamela. Country House Brewing in England: 1500–1900. London:
Hambledon Press, 1996.
Tuck, John. Private Brewers Guide to the Art of Brewing Ale and Porter. 1882;
reprinted by Zymoscribe, Woodbridge, Conn., 1995.
APPENDIX C

Useful Information

TABLE 1
Solubility of CO2 at Atmospheric Pressure

ºC Volumes CO2 ºF Volumes CO2

0 1.70 32 1.70

2 1.60 35 1.60

4 1.50 40 1.45

6 1.40 45 1.30

8 1.30 50 1.20

10 1.20 55 1.10

12 1.12 60 1.00

14 1.05 65 0.92

16 0.99 70 0.85

18 0.93 75 0.78

20 0.88
 22 0.83

TABLE 2
Volumes of CO2 at Various Temperatures and Pressures

Temp. Volumes of CO2 at Given Temperature and Pressure

ºF ºC 5 psi 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23

32 0 2.15 2.38 2.59 2.80 3.00 3.21

35 1.7 2.02 2.24 2.43 2.63 2.83 3.02 3.22

40 4.0 1.83 2.01 2.20 2.39 2.56 2.75 2.93 3.10 3.28

45 7.2 1.66 1.84 2.00 2.17 2.34 2.51 2.69 2.86 3.02 3.19

50 10.0 1.50 1.66 1.82 1.98 2.14 2.30 2.46 2.62 2.78 2.94

52 1.61 1.76 1.92 2.06 2.22 2.38 2.53 2.68 2.84

54 1.56 1.71 1.86 2.00 2.15 2.30 2.45 2.59 2.74

56 1.50 1.65 1.79 1.93 2.08 2.22 2.36 2.50 2.64

58 1.59 1.74 1.87 2.01 2.15 2.28 2.42 2.55

60 15.6 1.54 1.69 1.82 1.95 2.08 2.21 2.34 2.47

62 1.63 1.76 1.88 2.01 2.14 2.26 2.39

64 1.58 1.70 1.82 1.94 2.06 2.18 2.30

 66 1.52 1.64 1.76 1.88 1.99 2.11 2.23

Source: Data taken from Methods of Analysis, 5th ed. (Milwaukee, Wis.: The American Society of Brewing
Chemists, 1949).
Useful Temperature Conversions
To convert °Celsius to °Fahrenheit, multiply by 9, divide by 5, then add 32.
To convert °Fahrenheit to °Celsius, subtract 32, then multiply by 5 and
divide by 9.
To convert °Reaumur to °Celsius, multiply by 5 and divide by 4.
To convert °Celsius to °Reaumur, multiply by 4 and divide by 5.
To convert °Reaumur to °Fahrenheit, multiply by 9, divide by 4, then
subtract 32.
To convert °Fahrenheit to °Reaumur, subtract 32 then multiply by 4 and
divide by 9.
Useful Measurement Conversions
1 imperial (U.K.) barrel = 2 kilderkins = 4 firkins = 36 gallons = 1.6356 hl
= 1.4 U.S. barrels
1 imperial (U.K.) pint = 20 fl. oz. = .5682 liter = 28.412 ml
1 imperial (U.K.) gallon = 160 fl. oz. = 8 pints = 10 lb. = 1.201 U.S. gallons
= 4.546 liters
1 U.S. barrel = 31 U.S. gallons = 25.81 imperial (U.K.) gallons = 1.1734 hl
= .717 imperial barrel
1 U.S. gallon = 128 fl. oz. = 8 U.S. pints = 3.7853 liters = .8327 imperial
(U.K.) gallon
1 oz. = 64.8 mg
1 lb. = 16 oz. = 256 drams = .45359 kg

Britain

1 bushel barley = 56 lb. = 25.401 kg

1 quarter barley = 448 lb. = 203.209 kg
1 bushel malt = 42 lb. = 19.051 kg
1 quarter malt = 336 lb. = 152.407 kg

United States

1 bushel barley = 48 lb.

1 bushel malt = 34 lb.

TABLE 3
Short Table for Converting Specific Gravity at 20 °C to °Plato

SG °P SG °P SG °P

1000 0.00 1030 7.56 1060 14.75

1001 0.26 1031 7.80 1061 14.98

1002 0.52 1032 8.05 1062 15.21

1003 0.78 1033 8.29 1063 15.44

1004 1.03 1034 8.54 1064 15.68

1005 1.29 1035 8.87 1065 15.91

1006 1.54 1036 9.03 1066 16.14

1007 1.80 1037 9.27 1067 16.37

1008 2.05 1038 9.51 1068 16.60

1009 2.31 1039 9.75 1069 16.83

1010 2.56 1040 10.00 1070 17.06

1011 2.82 1041 10.24 1071 17.29

1012 3.07 1042 10.48 1072 17.52

1013 3.32 1043 10.72 1073 17.74

1014 3.58 1044 10.96 1074 17.97

1015 3.83 1045 11.20 1075 18.20

1016 4.08 1046 11.44 1076 18.43

1017 4.33 1047 11.68 1077 18.65

 1018 4.58 1048 11.92 1078 18.88

1019 5.08 1049 12.15 1079 19.11

1020 5.33 1050 12.39 1080 19.33

1021 5.58 1051 12.63 1081 19.55

1022 5.83 1052 12.87 1082 19.78

1023 6.08 1053 13.10 1083 20.00

1024 6.33 1054 13.34 1084 20.23

1025 6.57 1055 13.57 1085 20.45

1026 6.82 1056 13.81 1086 20.67

1027 7.07 1057 14.04 1087 20.90

1028 7.31 1058 14.28 1088 21.12

1029 7.56 1059 14.51 1089 21.34

Note: As a quick conversion that is more or less accurate up to SG 1060, divide the last two digits of a SG
reading by 4 to get approximate °Plato or °Balling. Conversely, multiply °Plato or °Balling by 4 to get
approximate SG.
Chapter Notes

Introduction
1. Charlie Papazian, The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing, 2nd Edition (New York: Avon Books,
1991), 141.
2. Roger Protz, The Ale Trail (London: CAMRA Publications, 1996), 148. CAMRA is the Campaign
for Real Ale.
3. Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion, 2nd Edition (Philadelphia: Running Press,
1997), 74.

Chapter 1. Mild Ale: The Historical Perspective

1. Roger Protz, The Ale Trail (London: CAMRA Publications, 1996).
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. W. Young, The New and True Art of Brewing (London: St. Paul’s Churchyard, 1692; reprint,
Richfield, Ohio: Birch Run Press, n.d.), 18.
5. Michael Jackson, The Beer Companion (Philadelphia: Running Press, 1993), 14.
6. Dr. John Harrison, Old British Beers and How to Make Them (Wiltshire, U.K.: Durden Park Beer
Circle, 1991), 7.
7. Brian Glover, The Prince of Ales: The History of Brewing in Wales (Phoenix Mill, London: Allan
Sutton Publishing, 1993), 1.
8. E. Hughes, A Treatise on the Brewing of Beer (1796; reprint, Richfield, Ohio: Birch Run Press,
1997).
9. Terry Foster, Porter (Boulder: Brewers Publications, 1992), 6.
10. Roger Protz, personal communication (November 1997).
11. Richard Bradley, A Guide to Gentleman Farmers and Housekeepers for Brewing the Finest Malt
Liquors (1700; reprint, Richfield, Ohio: Birch Run Press, 1997).
12. Ibid.
13. Jackson, The Beer Companion, 21.
14. John Tuck, The Private Brewer’s Guide to the Art of Brewing Ale and Porter (London: 1822;
reprint, Woodbridge, Conn.: ZymoScribe, 1995), 3–4, 128, 170.
15. César de Saussure (November 29, 1726), from A Foreign View of England (1902), 158, as quoted in
Peter Mathias, The Brewing Industry in England 1700–1830 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, 1959), 14.
16. Truman Brewing Company’s Records, manuscript (1802).
17. Journal of the House of Commons, XXIV (n.d.), 541–542.
18. Mathias, The Brewing Industry in England, 58.
19. Ibid., 62.
20. David Wheeler, British Patent No. 4112 (1817).
 21. Michael Lewis, Stout (Boulder: Brewers Publications, 1995).
22. T. R. Gourvish and R. G. Wilson, The British Brewing Industry 1830–1980 (Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press, 1994).
23. Foster, Porter.
24. Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Sale of Beer, Q3906, 230, as quoted in
Gourvish and Wilson, The British Brewing Industry, 42.
25. Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette (December 4, 1875).
26. Alfred Barnard, Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I (1889), 378.
27. F. Faulkner, The Art of Brewing (London: 1875), 43–44.
28. J. L. Baker, The Brewing Industry (London: 1905), 11–12
29. E. A. Pratt, The Licensed Trade: An Independent Survey (1909), 229–241
30. Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette (October 9, 1875).
31. Gourvish and Wilson, The British Brewing Industry, 38–41.
32. R. Wahl and M. Henius, The American Handy-Book of Brewing, Malting and Auxiliary Trades
(Chicago: Wahl-Henius Institute, 1908), 1251–1253
33. H. Lloyd Hind, Brewing Science and Practice (London: Chapman & Hall, Ltd., 1940), 394–395.
34. Gourvish and Wilson, The British Brewing Industry, 558.
35. Ibid.

Chapter 2. The Flavor Profile of Mild Ale

1. Ray Daniels, Designing Great Beers (Boulder: Brewers Publications, 1996), 221.
2. Roger Protz, A Beer Drinker’s Almanac (London: CAMRA Publications).

Chapter 3. Mild Ale Ingredients

1. Michael Lewis, Stout (Boulder: Brewers Publications, 1995), 44.
2. Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion, 2nd Edition (Philadelphia: Running Press,
1997).+
3. W. R. Loftus, The Brewer (London: c. 1850).
4. Ibid.
5. D. E. Briggs, J. S. Hough, R. Stevens, and T. W. Young, Malting and Brewing Science, Volume 1
(London: Chapman, Hall, 1981), 223.
6. Andrew Walsh, “The Mark of Nobility,” Brewing Techniques 6, no. 2 (March–April 1998).
7. Gregory Noonan, Scotch Ale (Boulder: Brewers Publications, 1993), 52.

Chapter 4. Brewing Equipment and Methods

1. Dr. John Harrison, Old English Beers and How to Make Them (London: The Durden Park Beer
Circle, 1992).
2. Ibid.
Chapter 6. Commercially Produced Mild Ales
1. Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion, 2nd Edition (Philadelphia: Running Press,
1997), 71.
Glossary

acrospire. The germinal plant-growth of the barley kernel.

adjunct. Any unmalted grain or other fermentable ingredient added to the mash.
adjuncts. Sources of fermentable extract other than malted barley. Principally
corn, rice, wheat, unmalted barley, and glucose (dextrose).
aerate. To force atmospheric air or oxygen into solution. Introducing air to the
wort at various stages of the brewing process.
aeration. The action of introducing air to the wort at various stages of the
brewing process.
aerobic. In the presence of or requiring oxygen.
airlock. See fermentation lock.
airspace. See ullage.
AK. An early stylistic designation for relatively low-gravity pale beers, many of
which were described as pale milds. Only a very few breweries still manufacture
products known as AK.
albumin. Intermediate soluble protein that is subject to coagulation upon
heating. Hydrolyzed to peptides and amino acids by proteolytic enzymes.
alcohol by volume (ABV). The percentage of volume of alcohol per volume of
beer. To calculate the approximate volumetric alcohol content, subtract the final
gravity (FG) from the original gravity (OG) and divide the result by 75. For
example: 1.050 – 1.012 = 0.038 / 0.0075 = 5% ABV.
alcohol by weight (ABW). The percentage weight of alcohol per volume of beer.
For example, 3.2% alcohol by weight = 3.2 grams of alcohol per 100 centiliters
of beer. Alcohol by weight can be converted to alcohol by volume by
multiplying by 0.795.
ale. 1. Historically, an unhopped malt beverage. 2. Now, a generic term for
hopped beers produced by top fermentation, as opposed to lagers, which are
produced by bottom fermentation. 3. Once used as a catch-all term to describe
British beers that were neither “pale” or “old” and thus “mild.”
all-extract beer. A beer made with only malt extract, as opposed to one made
from barley or a combination of malt extract and barley.
all-grain beer. A beer made with only malted barley, as opposed to one made
from malt extract or from malt extract and malted barley.
alpha-acid unit (AAU). The number of AAUs in a hop addition is equal to the
weight of the addition in ounces times the alpha-acid percentage. Thus 1 ounce
of 5% alpha-acid hops contains 5 AAUs. AAU is the same as homebrewers’
bittering units.
alpha acid (a-acid). The principle source of bitterness from hops when
isomerized by boiling. These separate but related alpha acids come from the soft
alpha resin of the hop. (When boiled, alpha acids are converted to iso-alpha-
acids.)
ambient temperature. The surrounding temperature.
amino acids. The building blocks of proteins. Essential components of wort,
these acids are required for adequate yeast growth.
anaerobic. Conditions under which there is not enough oxygen for respiratory
metabolic function. Anaerobic microorganisms are those that can function
without the presence of free molecular oxygen.
apparent attenuation. A simple measure of the extent of fermentation that a
wort has undergone in the process of becoming beer. Using gravity units (GU),
Balling (B), or Plato (P) units to express gravity, apparent attenuation is equal to
the original gravity (OG) minus the terminal gravity divided by the OG. The result
is expressed as a percentage and equals 65 to 80% for most beers.
apparent extract. The terminal gravity of a beer.
aqueous. Consisting of or comprising water.
attemper. To regulate or modify the temperature.
attemperator. A device used to regulate or modify the temperature of
fermenting or aging beer in traditional British breweries. Usually composed of a
network of tubing carrying water or some other refrigerated liquid immersed in
the beer.
attenuate. To reduce the extract/density by yeast metabolism.
attenuation. The reduction in the wort’s specific gravity caused by the
transformation of sugars into ethanol and carbon-dioxide gas.
autolysis. Yeast death due to shock or nutrient-depleted solutions.
bacteriostatic. Bacteria inhibiting.
Balling (ºB). A saccharometer invented by Carl Joseph Napoleon Balling in
1843. A standard for the measurement of the density of solutions. It is calibrated
for 63.5 ºF (17.5 ºC), and graduated in grams per 100, giving a direct reading of
the percentage of extract by weight per 100 grams solution. For example, 10 °B
= 10 grams of cane sugar per 100 grams of solution.
barrel. 1. The prevailing unit of measurement in both the British and U.S.
brewing industries, equal to 31 U.S. gallons for a U.S. barrel and 36 imperial
(U.K.) gallons for an imperial barrel. 2. A cask used in the dispense of real ale
that holds 36 imperial (U.K.) gallons or 43.2 U.S. gallons.
bbl. Abbreviation for beer barrel. See barrel.
beer engine. A hand-operated pump for pulling beer from casks in the pub cellar
to the pub bar.
beerstone. Brownish-gray mineral-like deposits left on fermentation equipment
that is composed of calcium oxalate and organic residues.
blow-off. A single-stage homebrewing fermentation method in which a plastic
tube is fitted into the mouth of a carboy, with the other end submerged in a pail
of sterile water. Unwanted residues and carbon dioxide are expelled through the
tube, while air is prevented from coming into contact with the fermenting beer,
thus avoiding contamination.
body. A qualitative indicator of the fullness or mouthfeel of a beer. Related to
the proportion of unfermentable long-chain sugars or dextrins present in the beer.
Brettanomyces. A genus of yeasts that have a role in the production of some
beers, such as modern lambics and Berliner weisse and historical porters.
brewer’s gravity (SG). See gravity.
BU:GU ratio. The ratio of bitterness units (BU) to gravity units (GU) for a specific
beer or group of beers. International bitterness units (IBU) are used for bitterness,
and gravity units (GU) are used for the gravity component. GU = original gravity
– 1 × 1,000. For most beers and beer styles, the resulting ratio has a value
between 0.3 and 1.0.
buffer. A substance capable of resisting changes in the pH of a solution.
Burton Union. A once-popular method of fermentation in small (3-barrel) oaken
barrels connected by a network of piping. The method was prevelent in Burton-
on-Trent and elsewhere, but it is now very rare.
carbonates. Alkaline salts whose anions are derived from carbonic acid.
carbonation. The process of introducing carbon-dioxide gas into a liquid by (1)
injecting the finished beer with carbon dioxide; (2) adding young fermenting
beer to finished beer for a renewed fermentation (kraeusening); (3) priming
(adding sugar or wort) to fermented wort prior to bottling, thereby creating a
secondary fermentation in the bottle; or (4) finishing fermentation under
pressure.
carboy. A large glass, plastic, or earthenware bottle.
caryophylline. A secondary component of hop oil found in varying proportions
in different varieties of hops.
cellulose. A polymer of sugar molecules that plays a structural rather than a
storage role. The sugars that make up cellulose cannot be liberated by the
enzymes found in most plant systems.
chill haze. Haziness caused by protein and tannin during the secondary
fermentation.
chillproof. Cold-conditioning to precipitate chill haze.
cleanse. To cause beer to become bright, often used in reference to fermentation
methods such as the Burton Union system and the Yorkshire squares system.
closed fermentation. Fermentation under closed, anaerobic conditions to
minimize risk of contamination and oxidation.
coliform. Waterborne bacteria, often associated with pollution.
cylindro-conical fermenter. A fermentation tank consisting of a cylindrical tank
with a conical bottom for easily harvesting yeast. It is the most common type of
fermenter in the United States.
decoction. Boiling to extract the flavor and facilitate the degradation of starches
and proteins; the part of the mash that is boiled.
density. The measurement of the weight of a given solution, as compared to the
weight of an equal volume of pure water.
dextrin. Soluble polysaccharide fraction from the hydrolysis of starch by heat,
acid, or enzyme.
diacetyl. See diketone.
diacetyl rest. A warm—55 to 70 ºF (13 to 21 ºC)—rest that occurs during
fermentation. During the diacetyl rest, yeast metabolizes diacetyl and other
byproducts of fermentation.
diastase. Starch-reducing enzymes. Usually alpha- and beta-amylase, but also
limit dextrinase and a-glucosidase (maltase).
diastatic malt extract. A type of malt extract containing the diastatic enzymes
naturally found in malt and needed for conversion of starch into sugar. This type
of extract is sometimes used in recipes that contain grain adjuncts such as corn
or rice.
diketone. A class of aromatic, volatile compounds perceivable in minute
concentrations from yeast or Pediococcus bacteria metabolism—most
significantly, the butter and butterscotch aroma of diacetyl, a vicinal diketone
(VDK). The other significant compound relevant to brewing is 2,3-pentanedione.
dimethyl sulfide (DMS). An important sulfur-carrying compound originating in
malt. Adds a crisp, “lager-like” character at low levels and corn or cabbage
flavors at high levels.
disaccharides. A sugar group; two monosaccharide molecules joined by the
removal of a water molecule.
drop. 1. To transfer beer from one bulk vessel to another by means of gravity. 2.
To become clear and refined, as in to “drop bright” by means of natural
sedimentation or through the use of finings.
dry hopping. The addition of hops to the primary fermenter, the secondary
fermenter, or to casked beer to add aroma and hop character to the finished beer
without adding significant bitterness.
dry malt. Malt extract in powdered form.
European Brewery Convention (EBC). See SRM.
enzymes. Protein-based organic catalysts that affect changes in the compositions
of the substances on which they act.
essential oil. The aromatic, volatile compounds from the hop.
ester. A class of organic compounds created from the reaction of an alcohol and
an organic acid. They tend to have fruity aromas and are detectable at low
concentrations.
esters. “Ethereal salts,” such as ethyl acetate. Aromatic compounds from
fermentation composed of an acid and an alcohol, such as the “banana” ester.
Formed by yeast enzymes from an alcohol and an acid. Associated with ale and
high-temperature fermentations, esters also arise to some extent with pure lager
yeast cultures, though more so with low wort oxygenation, high initial
fermentation temperatures, and high-gravity wort. Top-fermenting yeast strains
are prized for their ability to produce particular mixes of esters.
extract. The amount of dissolved materials in the wort after mashing and
lautering malted barley and/or malt adjuncts such as corn and rice.
extraction. Drawing out the soluble essence of the malt or hops.
fermentation lock. A one-way valve that allows carbon-dioxide gas to escape
from the fermenter while excluding contaminants.
final specific gravity. The specific gravity of a beer when fermentation is
complete.
fining. (n.) A clarifying agent. (v.) The process of adding clarifying agents to
beer during secondary fermentation to precipitate suspended matter. Examples of
clarifying agents are isinglass, gelatin, bentonite, silica gel, or polyvinyl
pyrrolidone.
firkin. A cask used to dispense real ale that holds 9 imperial (U.K.) gallons or
10.8 U.S. gallons. It is the most common size of cask in the British and the
emerging U.S. real ale market.
flocculation. The tendency of yeast to clump together at the end of fermentation.
The greater the tendency for the yeast to flocculate, the faster it will drop out of
the solution, thereby creating clearer or brighter beer.
germination. Sprouting the barley kernel to initiate enzyme development and
conversion of the malt.
glucophilic. An organism that thrives on glucose.
gravity (SG). Specific gravity as expressed by brewers. For example, specific
gravity 1.046 is expressed as SG 1046. Density of a solution as compared to
water; expressed in grams per milliliter (1 milliliter of water weighs 1 gram,
hence a specific gravity of 1.000 = SG 1000; specific gravity of. 1.046 = SG
1046).
gravity units (GU). A form of expressing specific gravity in formulas as a whole
number. It is equal to the significant digits to the right of the decimal point
(1.055 SG becomes 55 GU, and 1.108 SG becomes 108 GU).
green malt. Malt that has been steeped and germinated and is ready for kilning.
gruit. A mixture of spices and herbs used to bitter and flavor ales before hops
became accepted as a bittering and flavoring agent.
gyle. A single wort drawn from a mash. Can refer to one of several successively
weaker worts, as in “parti-gyle,” or to one wort drawn from a mash, as in
“single-gyle.” See parti-gyle.
heat. Arcane word for temperature. “The correct heat in the first wetting the
malt, stamps the character of the whole gyle, the heat most adapted to open the
pores of the grain must be correct, and after that is done, a higher heat can be
added, without prejudicee to the flavour of the Wort, a rich flavour of the Malt,
is what we seek to obtain in the beer.” (From George Stewart Amsinck, Practical
Brewings: A Series of Fifty Brewings.)
hemocytometer. A device used for counting blood cells (or brewer’s yeast)
under a microscope.
hexose. Sugar molecules of six carbon atoms. Includes glucose, fructose,
lactose, mannose, and galactose.
hogshead. A cask used in the dispense of real ale that holds 54 imperial (U.K.)
gallons or 64.8 U.S. gallons.
homebrew bittering unit (HBU). A formula adopted by the American
Homebrewers Association to measure the bitterness of beer. For example, 1.5
ounces of hops at 10% alpha acid for 5 gallons: 1.5 × 10 = 15 HBU per 5 gallons.
Same as alpha-acid unit (AAU).
homofermentive. Organisms that metabolize only one specific carbon source.
hop back. A piece of brew-house equipment designed to separate the trub from
the wort after boiling by running the entire wort through a filter bed of fresh hop
cones, thereby imparting a unique hop character.
hop pellets. Hop cones compressed into tablets. Hop pellets are 20 to 30% more
bitter by weight than the same hop variety in loose form. Hop pellets are less
subject to alpha-acid losses than are whole hops.
hydrolysis. Decomposition of matter into soluble fractions by either acids or
enzymes in water.
hydrometer. A glass instrument used to measure the specific gravity of liquids
as compared to water, consisting of a graduated stem resting on a weighted float.
hydroxide. A compound, usually alkaline, containing the OH (hydroxyl) group.
inoculate. The introduction of a microbe into surroundings capable of
supporting its growth.
international bitterness unit (IBU). This is a standard unit that measures the
concentration of iso-alpha-acids in milligrams per liter (parts per million). Most
procedures will also measure a small amount of uncharacterized soft resins, so
IBUs are generally 5 to 15% higher than iso-alpha-acid concentrations.

isinglass. A gelatinous substance made from the swim bladder of certain fish and
added to beer as a fining agent.
isomer (ISO). Organic compounds of identical composition and molecular
weight but having a different molecular structure.
kilderkin. A cask used in the dispense of real ale that holds 18 imperial (U.K.)
gallons or 21.6 U.S. gallons.
kilning. The final stage in the malting of barley that prepares it for use by the
brewer. Kilning reduces the moisture contained in the grain to approximately 4%
and roasts the malt to some extent. The degree of roasting affects the flavor and
color of the malt as well as of the beer it produces.
kraeusen. (n.) The rocky head of foam that appears on the surface of the wort
during fermentation. Also used to describe the period of fermentation
characterized by a rich foam head. (v.) To add fermenting wort to fermented beer
to induce carbonation through a secondary fermentation.
Lactobacillus. Species of bacteria that ferments wort sugars to produce lactic
acid. Although considered undesirable in most breweries and beer styles, it plays
a significant role in the production of some beers, such as Berliner weisse and
lambics.
lactophilic. An organism that metabolizes lactate more readily than glucose.
lager. (n.) A generic term for any bottom-fermented beer. Lager brewing is now
the predominant brewing method worldwide except in Britain, where top-
fermented ales dominate. (v.) To store beer at near-freezing temperatures in order
to precipitate yeast cells and proteins and improve taste.
lauter. The process of separating the clear liquid from the spent grain and husks.
lauter tun. A vessel in which the mash settles and the grains are removed from
the sweet wort through a straining process. It has a false slotted bottom and a
spigot.
lipids. Fatlike substances, especially triacylglycerols and fatty acids. Negatively
affect a beer’s ability to form a foam head. Lipids cause soapy flavors and, when
oxidized, contribute stale flavors.
liquefaction. The process by which alpha-amylase enzymes degrade soluble
starch into dextrin.
malt. Barley that has been steeped in water, germinated, and then dried in kilns.
This process converts insoluble starches to soluble substances and sugars.
malt extract. A thick syrup or dry powder prepared from malt.
maltose. A disaccharide composed of two glucose molecules. The primary sugar
obtained by diastatic hydrolysis of starch. One-third the sweetness of sucrose.
mashing. Mixing ground malt with water to extract the fermentables, degrade
haze-forming proteins, and convert grain starches to fermentable sugars and
nonfermentable carbohydrates.
melanoidins. Color-producing compounds produced through a long series of
chemical reactions that begin with the combination of a sugar and an amino acid.
Midlands. A district of England south of Manchester (centered in
Wolverhampton) known for its mining and steel industry. The largest area of
mild ale popularity.
mild. 1. A British ale of low gravity and low alcoholic strength, either pale or
brown in color. 2. Historically, a beer that has not undergone a long aging
process or that does not exhibit the characteristic sour and tart flavors associated
with long aging in unlined wood. 3. Sometimes used to denote beers with a
relatively low hop profile and low alcoholic strength.
modification. 1. The physical and chemical changes that occur in barley during
malting where complex molecules are broken down to simpler, soluble
molecules. 2. The degree to which malt has undergone these changes, as
determined by the growth of the acrospire. The greater the degree of
modification, the more readily available starch is and the lower the protein level
is.
mole. A unit of measure for chemical compounds. The amount of a substance
that has a weight in grams numerically equal to the molecular weight of the
substance. Also, gram-molecular weight.
myrcene. A primary component of the essential oil of the hop cone. Although
rarely found in beer in this native form, it is processed into a number of flavor-
active compounds that are significant in beer. The quantity of myrcene found in
a hop varies by variety, year, and growing region.
open fermentation. Prevailing system of fermentation in independent British
breweries where beer is fermented in open-to-air wooden, steel, stainless steel,
or copper vessels.
original gravity. The specific gravity of wort previous to fermentation. A
measure of the total amount of dissolved solids in wort.
oxidation. 1. The combining of oxygen with other molecules, often causing off-
flavors, as with oxidized alcohols, to form aldehydes. 2. A reaction in which the
atoms in an element lose electrons and its valence is correspondingly increased
(oxidation-reduction reaction).
parti-gyle. An arcane system of brewing in which the first runnings of wort are
taken to make a high-gravity beer and the grain is then remashed to create
another brew. This can be done yet again to make a third brew, all from the same
grains. There is usually no sparging involved when using the parti-gyle system.
With the advent of more-sophisticated equipment that allowed lautering and
sparging, the parti-gyle system of brewing lost favor around the end of the
nineteenth century.
pectin. A vegetable substance (a chain of galacturonic acid) that becomes
gelatinous in the presence of sugars and acids.
pentosan. Pentose-based complex carbohydrates, especially gums.
pentose. Sugar molecules containing five carbon atoms. Monosaccharides.
peptonizing. The action of proteolytic enzymes upon protein, successively
yielding albumin/proteoses, peptides, and amino acids.
pH. A measure of acidity or alkalinity of a solution, usually on a scale of 1 to 14,
where 7 is neutral.
phenols. Aromatic hydroxyl precursors of tannins/polyphenols. “Phenolic” in
beer describes medicinal flavors from tannins, bacterial growth, cleaning
compounds, or plastics.
phosphate. A salt or ester of phosphoric acid.
pitching. Inoculating sterile wort with a vigorous yeast culture.
pin. A cask used in the dispense of real ale that holds 4.5 imperial (U.K.) gallons
or 5.4 U.S. gallons. Although they are a perfect size for homebrew use, pins are
becoming increasingly rare.
Plato, degrees. Commercial brewers’ standard for the measurement of the
density of solutions, expressed as the equivalent weight of cane sugar in solution
(calibrated on grams of sucrose per 100 grams of solution). Like degrees Balling
(ºB), but degrees Plato (ºP) computations are more exact.
Plato saccharometer. A saccharometer that expresses specific gravity as extract
weight in a 100-gram solution at 68 ºF (20 ºC). A revised, more-accurate version
of Balling, developed by Dr. Plato.
polymer. A compound molecule formed by the joining of many smaller identical
units. For example, polyphenols are joined phenols, and polypeptides are joined
peptides.
polyphenol. Complexes of phenolic compounds involved in chill-haze
formation and oxidative staling.
polysaccharides. Carbohydrate complexes that can be reduced to
monosaccharides by hydrolysis.
ppm. Parts per million. Equal to milligrams per liter (mg/l). The measurement of
particles of matter in solution.
precipitation. Separation of suspended matter by sedimentation.
precursor. The starting materials or inputs for a chemical reaction.
primary fermentation. The first stage of fermentation, during which most
fermentable sugars are converted to ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide.
priming. The act of adding priming sugar to a still (or flat) beer so that it may
develop carbonation.
priming solution. A solution of sugar in water added to aged beer at bottling to
induce fermentation (bottle conditioning).
priming sugar. A small amount of corn, malt, or cane sugar added to bulk beer
prior to racking or at bottling to induce a new fermentation and create
carbonation.
racking. The process of transferring beer from one container to another,
especially into the final package (bottles, kegs, and so on).
reagent. A substance involved in a reaction that identifies the strength of the
substance being measured.
real ale. A name for draught (or bottled) beer brewed from the traditional
ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is
dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide. Real ale is
found primarily in Britain, where it has been championed by the consumer rights
group called the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA).
recirculation. See vorlauf.
resin. Noncrystalline (amorphous) plant excretions.
rest. Mash rest. Holding the mash at a specific temperature to induce certain
enzymatic changes.
ropy fermentation. Viscous gelatinous blobs, or “rope,” from bacterial
contamination.
rousing. Creating turbulence by agitation. Mixing.
runnings. The wort or sweet liquid that is collected during the lautering of the
wet mash.
saccharification. The naturally occurring process in which malt starch is
converted into fermentable sugars, primarily maltose. Also called mashing, since
saccharification occurs during the mash rest.
saccharometer. An instrument that determines the sugar concentration of a
solution by measuring the specific gravity.
secondary fermentation. 1. The second, slower stage of fermentation, which,
depending on the type of beer, lasts from a few weeks to many months. 2. A
fermentation occurring in bottles or casks that is initiated by priming or by
adding yeast.
sparge. The even distribution or spray of hot water over the saccharified mash to
rinse free the extract from the grist.
sparging. Spraying the spent grains in the mash with hot water to retrieve the
remaining malt sugar. This is done at the end of the mashing (saccharification)
process.
specific gravity (SG). A measure of a substance’s density as compared to that of
water, which is given the value of 1.000 at 39.2 ºF (4 ºC). Specific gravity has no
accompanying units because it is expressed as a ratio. Specific gravity is the
density of a solution in grams per milliliter.
Standard Reference Method (SRM) and European Brewery Convention
(EBC). Two different analytical methods of describing color developed by
comparing color samples. Degrees SRM, approximately equivalent to degrees
Lovibond, are used by the ASBC (American Society of Brewing Chemists), while
degrees EBC are European units. The following equations show approximate
conversions: (EBC) = 2.65 × (SRM) – 1.2; SRM = 0.377 × (EBC) + 0.46.
starch. A polymer of sugar molecules. The chief form of energy storage for most
plants. It is from starch that the relevant sugars for brewing are derived.
starter. A batch of fermenting yeast added to the wort to initiate fermentation.
Steele’s masher. A device used in many traditional British independent
breweries to hydrate the grain as it is added to the mash tun. It consists of an
archemedian screw and a metal housing.
steeping. The initial processing step in malting in which the raw barley is soaked
in water and periodically aerated to induce germination.
strike temperature. The initial (target) temperature of the water when the
malted barley is added to it to create the mash.
swirl tank. See whirlpool.
tannin. Astringent polyphenolic compounds, capable of colliding with proteins
and either precipitating or forming haze fractions. Oxidized polyphenols form
color compounds relevant in beer. See also polyphenol.
terminal extract. The density of the fully fermented beer.
titration. Measurement of a substance in solution by the addition of a standard
disclosing solution to initiate an indicative color change.
trisaccharide. A sugar composed of three monosaccharides joined by the
removal of water molecules.
trub. Flocks of haze-forming particles resulting from the precipitation of
proteins, hop oils, and tannins during the boiling and cooling stages of brewing.
turbidity. Sediment in suspension. Hazy, murky.
ullage. The empty space between a liquid and the top of its container. Also
called airspace or headspace.
utensils. Arcane word meaning brewery equipment.
viscosity. The resistance of a fluid to flow.
volatile. Readily vaporized, especially esters, essential oils, and higher alcohols.
volume of beer. To calculate the approximate volumetric alcohol content,
subtract the terminal gravity from the original gravity and divide the result by
75. For example: 1.050 – 1.012 = 0.038 / 0.75 = 0.05 or 5% ABV.
vorlauf. The practice of running the sweet wort back through the bed of grain to
filter out the finest particles and return a clear wort to the kettle.
water hardness. The degree of dissolved minerals in water. Usually expressed
in parts per million (ppm) or grains per gallon (gpg).
whirlpool. A brewhouse vessel designed to create a vortex in the hopped wort
after the boil to help coagulate the precipitated trub for a clean racking into the
primary fermenter.
wort. Mash extract (sweet wort). The hopped sugar solution before pitching,
before it is fermented into beer.
Yorkshire stone squares. A once-popular fermentation method in the Northeast
of England characterized by slate construction, the necessity of manual rousing,
and use of a highly flocculant yeast. Now only used in a very few breweries in
Yorkshire and surrounding counties.
Index

Abel Brown’s, mild ale by, 207

Adjuncts, 77-78, 174, 229; coloring, 84-85; copper, 78, 82-84; grain, 79; mash tun, 78-79
Adnam’s, mild ale by, 173, 207
Adnam’s Old Ale, OG of, 63
Aeration, 130, 229; hot-side, 139-40
Age, classification by, 24
Aging, 48, 76
AK, 229; meaning of, 58-59; recipe for, 201
Albumin, 108, 229
Ale conners/konners, 58
Ale kyte, 58, 186
Ales, 37, 230; cask ale and, 155-56; meaning of, 35, 36; roots of, 12; unhopped, 35
Alibi Red Mild, 198; recipe for, 203
Alkalis, cleaning with, 146, 158
All-grain, 197, 230
Alpha acids, 134, 148, 230; total, 136
Amber malt, medium-roasted, 75
American Handy-Book of Brewing, Malting and Auxiliary Trades, 43-44
American Tettnanger, 91
Amsinck, George Stewart, 25-26, 126; on fermentation, 94; on grinding, 122; on hops, 86; on Kents, 87;
on pitching, 141; on rousing, 104
Anise, experimenting with, 25
Ansells, mild ale by, 176, 208
Antique beers, brewing, 147-50
Aroma, 74, 153; of hops, 137, 138, 148, 156; mild ale, 57, 59-63; oxidized, 140; roast and, 74; undesirable,
132
Art of Brewing, on mild ales/gravity, 41
Asquith, Herbert, 58
Attemperators, 112, 142 (photo), 144, 231
Attenuation, 116, 144, 231

Bacteria, 48, 76, 124; problems with, 17, 147

Bain, Neil: Highgate Dark and, 178
Baird’s, stout malt by, 72
Ballard’s, mild ale by, 208
Banks and Taylor, mild ale by, 208
Banks’s, 159, 173, 181-82; criticism of, 182; mild ale by, 54, 174, 208
Barclay and Perkins: mild ale by, 39; porter vats at, 31 (illus.); pubs by, 38
Barley: malted, 14, 15, 16, 123; roasted, 71-72
Barley wine, sparging, 133
Barm back, 112, 113, 114
Barnard, Alfred, 97, 127-28; on ingredients, 65; on malt, 66; on mashing machines, 125; on water, 91-92
Barrels: imperial, 157; oak, 120; trade, 30, 31
Bass, 46; Highgate and, 178, 179; mild ale by, 208
Bass Pale Ale, gravity of, 46
Bateman’s, mild ale by, 176, 208
Bateman’s DM, 187-89
Bateman’s XXXB ale, 188
Batham: color/clarity of, 54, 55; mild ale by, 208
Baverstock, James: hydrometer and, 33
B.C. Goldings, 87-88; character of, 89
Beecham’s, mild ale by, 208
Beer, 37; antique, 147-50; meaning of, 35
Beer Companion (Jackson), 72
Beerhouse Act (1830), 38
Beer Hunter CD-ROM, PMD Mild and, 193
Beet sugar: flavors/aromas from, 82; priming with, 163
Belgian abbey strain, 95
Belgian styles, 48
Bell Brewhouse, 28
Bellhaven, mild ale by, 208
Beverage Testing Institute, Clybourn brewpub and, 192
Bickerdyke, John: on porter brewing, 28
Bier, 24-25
Bittering hops, 135; described, 136-37
Bitterness, 57, 86; yeast and, 149
Bitters, 37, 41, 42, 60, 79; flavor/body/aroma of, 59; light, 8; mild and, 85; porters/milds and, 46, 52
Blackawton, mild ale by, 208
Blackburn, mild ale by, 208
Black Lion pub, floor maltings at, 13
Black malt, 33, 38, 67; mild ale, 70-71
Bleach, cleaning with, 147
Blown malt, 73, 75, 76
Blue Moon, mild ale by, 209
Boddington’s: mild ale by, 176, 208, 209; OG of, 61
Boddington’s Nut Brown Ale, 26
Boddington’s Pub Ale, 60
Body, 57, 59-63, 232; wheat/corn and, 80
Bog myrtle, 12
Boiling, 133-41; efficiency of, 135; extended, 135; imprecise, 18-19
Border, mild ale by, 209
Bottle conditioning, described, 168-70
Bottling, filtering and, 169
Bowmer, Ken, 2-3, 6; pale mild/light mild and, 3-4
Bradley, Richard, 150; on cleaning, 145-46; on water, 92
Brains, mild ale by, 176, 209
Brakspear, mild ale by, 209
Brambling Cross hops, 60, 88, 90
Brettanomyces, 16, 47, 76, 233
Brewery, cleaning, 145-47
Brewery on Sea, mild ale by, 209
Brew house, 18 (illus.), 100-104, 125 (illus.)
Brewing, 121-47; classification by, 24; as cottage industry, 27, 111; early, 14; as technological industry, 27-
28
Brewing liquor, 91-94
Brewing Science and Practice, on mild ales, 45
British ale, 12, 121; yeast strains, 95
British brewing: milds and, 7; roots of, 12-13
British Oak, mild ale by, 209
Brown ale, 15; mild ale and, 5, 7, 12, 45, 56, 176
Brown beers: early references to, 26-27; mild beers and, 44-45; water for, 92
Brown malts, 73, 76, 77, 148; heavy-roasted, 75; porter and, 34
Brown sugar, 83, 163
Bryson, Bill, 189, 190
Buckley, mild ale by, 209
Buffy’s, mild ale by, 209
Bull and Bladder pub, 54
Bull Mastiff Brewery: mild ale by, 209; throwback mild by, 62
Burton ales, accessibility of, 40
Burton Unions, 62, 116, 233; diagram of, 112 (fig.); fermentation with, 110-14, 120; at high kraeusen, 113
(photo)
Burton water, 91, 93
Burtonwood, mild ale by, 209
Bushy’s, mild ale by, 209
Butterknowle, mild ale by, 209
Butts, 26; repairing/replacing, 31; storing in, 30-31

Cains, mild ale by, 209

Cain’s Dark Mild, 174
Calcium carbonate, 136
Caledonian, mild ale by, 209
Calverts, 43
Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), 6; on dispensing, 168; Highgate and, 179; mild ales and, 207
CAMRA Good Beer Guide, mild and, 6, 50
CAMRA Real Mild Guide, mild ales in, 173
Cane sugar, 83: flavors/aromas from, 82; priming with, 163
Cannon Royal, mild ale by, 209
Caramel, 85, 134, 163
Caramel malt, 69-70
CaraPils, 70, 72
Carbonation, 233; force, 170
Carbon dioxide, 152, 167, 168; fermentation and, 161; producing, 161; solubility of/at atmospheric
pressure, 161 (table), 162, 221 (table); volumes of/at various temperatures and pressures, 222 (table)
Cascade hops, 1, 2, 3
Cask ale, elements of, 155-64
Cask conditioning, 169; described, 153-55; secondary fermentation and, 164
Cask lines, 154 (photo), 165
Casks, 30, 113, 144 (photo), 154-55; cask ale and, 157-58; Highgate, 159 (photo); names/sizes of, 257, 158
(table); racking into, 165; rolling, 165; stabilizing, 166-67; trade, 114, 152, 164, 168; wooden, 20
Cellarmanship, 168
Cellarmanship (CAMRA), 168
Celts, curmi and, 12
Ceolred, ales for, 16
Charnick, Jeffrey, 194
Charrington’s, 46; porter by, 39
Cheetham, John, 62
Chocolate malt, 2, 4, 56, 67, 77, 190; mild ale, 70-71
Church End, mild ale by, 209
Clarity, mild ale, 53-55
Clark (William), mild ale by, 210
Cleansing system, 109
Clear ales, 16
Clybourn brewpub, 192
Coach House, mild ale by, 210
Cobb’s Margate Brewery, 40
Collagen, 159
Color, 74; mild ale, 53-55, 62-63; wheat/corn and, 80
Committee on the Sale of Beer, mild ale and, 39
Commonwealth Best Mild, 194-95
Commonwealth Brewing Company Ltd., 139; mild ale by, 176, 194-95
Conditioning: bottle, 168-70; cask, 153-55, 164, 169; classification by, 24; English method of, 152; force,
170-71; secondary fermentation and, 151; temperature, 198; traditional method of, 152; yeast and, 152
Conversions, 122, 124; temperature/measurement, 222-23
Conversion temperature, 127, 128, 129; sparging and, 132
Cool-ships, 17, 140-41
Coopers, casks and, 157-58
Coppers, 101, 102-3, 103 (photo), 123; cleaning, 146
Corn, 79-81; body/color and, 80
Cornell, Martyn: on ale kyte, 186
Corn sugar, using, 163
Cotleigh, mild ale by, 210
Cottage industry, brewing as, 13-21, 23-27
Counterflow chiller, 140
Craft Beer Institute’s Real Ale Festival, 50
Crash cooling, 145
Crouch Vale, mild ale by, 210
Crushing, 124
Crystal malt, 2, 69-70, 76
Cuckmere Haven, mild ale by, 210
Curiosities of Ale and Beer, The (Bickerdyke), 28
Curmi, brewing, 12
Cylindrical drum roaster, 33, 148; roasted barley and, 71
Cylindrical vessels, 103, 106, 118
Cylindro-conical fermentation, described, 117-18, 234

Daniels, Ray, 168

Dark beer, pale beer and, 85
Dark mild, 50, 51, 177-79; flavor/body/aroma of, 57, 59; gravity of, 52; OG of, 63
Dark Ruby Mild, 49, 53, 184-85; adding invert sugar to, 83 (photo); color/clarity of, 55; flavor/body/aroma
of, 61; Grundy tanks and, 119
Dark Star, mild ale by, 210
Davenports Arms, mild ale by, 210
Demerara sugar, 82
Deschutes Brewery, mild ale by, 176
Dextrin, 70, 72, 76, 129, 234
Dextrose, 80, 163
Diacetyl, 96, 235
Diastase, 76, 77, 235
Dimethyl sulfide (DMS), 134, 235
Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), 134
Domesday Book, 13
Donnington, mild ale by, 210
Double Barrel Ale, fermentation of, 120
Doughing in, described, 125-26
Droppers, 109; fermentation and, 106, 110
Dry-hopping, 91, 139, 156, 165, 182, 235
Dual-stage fermentation, 117, 118

Earl Soham, mild ale by, 210

Early Birds hops, 88
Easingwold, mild ale by, 210
East India Pale, 25
East Kent Goldings, 87-88, 88-89
Ebony Dark Mild, SG/ABV of, 62
Eckhardt, Fred: quote of, 57
Edwardian Britain, beers in, 41-42
Elgood’s, mild ale by, 210
English ale, 7, 56; yeast strain, 95
English brewing, as cottage industry, 13-21, 23-27
English hops, 3, 86, 89
Enville, mild ale by, 210
Enzymes, 76, 132, 136, 148, 236; boiling and, 134
Equipment: described, 99-121; early, 16, 149-50; standard British, 98
Essentials of Beer Style, The (Eckhardt), quote from, 57
Evaporation rates, 135
Everards, mild ale by, 176, 210
Extraction, 122, 236

False bottoms, 102, 102 (photo), 130

Family ales, 42
Farmer-brewers, 14-15
Farnham Pale hops, 148
Federation Special Ale, 60
Feeders, 112
Felinfoel, mild ale by, 210
Fermentation, 94, 178; carbon dioxide and, 161; cask, 151; closed, 117; cylindro-conical, 117-18, 234;
described, 141-45; dropping and, 110; dual-stage, 117, 118; early, 113; home brewery, 120-21; iso-alpha-
acids and, 136; in loose pieces, 111; nature of, 142; pH and, 134; primary, 107, 198, 245, 111, 143-45,
151, 156, 160, 162; rousing and, 104; secondary, 118, 145, 151, 156, 162, 164, 165, 169;
skimmers/droppers and, 106; skimming and, 108-9; spoilage and, 20; tertiary, 55, 151; uni-tank, 117-18;
yeast and, 20, 96, 106
Fermentation systems, described, 104-21
Fermentation temperature, 96, 143, 144, 145, 198, 199; controlling, 142
Fermenters, 119; cleaning, 146
Fiddler’s, mild ale by, 211
Filter beds, 130, 139
Filtering, bottling and, 169
Finings, 166, 237; addition of, 159; auxiliary, 165; cask ale and, 158-59; fresh, 160; isinglass, 55, 158, 160,
165, 169, 239; mixing, 165; racking and, 160
Firestone-Walker Brewery, oak barrels at, 120
Firkin Pub Chain, mild ale by, 211
Firkins, 157, 160, 237
First gyle, 17-18, 19
Flaked grains, 79, 80, 81
Flavor, 74, 135, 153, 156; hops and, 148; malt and, 73, 75; mild ale, 57, 59-63; oxidized, 140; roast and,
74; smoky, 75; undesirable, 132, 145
Flocculation, 145, 159, 237; encouraging, 117
Force conditioning, described, 170-71
Fox and Hounds, mild ale by, 211
Fructose, 83
Fuels, brewing, 32-33
Fuggle hops, 59, 61, 89-90, 148, 149, 156; English, 90, 91; using, 3
Fuller’s, 58

Gale’s, mild ale by, 211

Gale’s Prize Old Ale, 48
Gas-to-beer contact ratio, 170
Gateway Dark, 189-90
Gateway Mild, 190
George Bateman and Son Ltd., mild ale by, 187-89
German wheat beer strain, 95
Gin, popularity of, 38
Ginger, experimenting with, 25
Glucose, 83
Goacher’s, mild ale by, 211
Golden lagers, 41
Golden Lane Brewery, vat at, 32
Golden Promise malt, 68
Golden syrup, 82, 163, 164
Golding, John: hops and, 88
Goldings hops, 62, 148, 149, 156, 182, 187; B.C., 87-88, 89; East Kent, 87-88, 88-89; Kent, 87-88, 89;
Savinjski, 89, 91; Styrian, 59, 89, 91, 190; Whitbread, 61
Goose Island Beer Company, mild ale by, 176, 191-92
Grain hydrators, 126
Grains: flaked, 79, 80, 81; home roasting, 74-75; rolled, 79; specialty, 200; steeping, 199
Grape and Granary, 1-2
Great American Beer Festival, 50, 56, 176
Great British Beer Festival, 188
Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, 1
Greenall Whitley, mild ale by, 211
Green beer, 151; carbon dioxide in, 161
Greene King, 61; mild ale by, 211; stale ale by, 48
Green Jack, mild ale by, 211
Grinding, described, 121-24
Grist, 81, 123-24
Grist hoppers, 99 (photo)
Grist mills, 100
Grist shaker, 100 (photo)
Grundy tanks, 119-20, 119 (photo)
Guernsey, mild ale by, 211
Guidelines to Beer Style Guidelines and Medal Categories (Great American Beer Festival), on mild ale, 56
Guide to Gentleman Farmers and Housekeepers for Brewing the Finest Malt Liquors, A (Bradley), quote
 from, 92, 145-46, 150
Guinness, roasted barley/roasted malt and, 72

Hall, Gregory, 191

Hall, John, 192
Halycon malt, 68
Hanby, mild ale by, 211
Hanson’s, mild ale by, 173, 174
Hardy’s and Hansons, mild ale by, 211
Harvard’s AK, 190-91
Harveys, mild ale by, 211
Harwood, Ralph: porter by, 28-30
Hazing, 55, 124, 154, 165
Head Brewer’s Choice, 110; Merrie Monk and, 62
Heat exchanger, 101
Herbs, experimenting with, 25
Highgate and Walsall Brewing Company, Ltd., 108 (photo); Bass and, 178, 179; casks at, 159 (photo);
coppers at, 103 (photo); dark mild by, 50, 177-79; mash at, 128; mild ale by, 176 (photo), 211; water for,
93
Highgate Dark Mild, 6-7, 177-79; color/clarity of, 54, 55; color/taste of, 179; and Walnut Mild compared,
181
High kraeusen, 105 (photo), 107, 110, 113 (photo)
Hogsback, mild ale by, 212
Holden, Timonthy, 183
Holden’s Black Country Mild, 183-84; color/clarity of, 54
Holden’s Brewery Co. Ltd.: coppers at, 103 (photo); fermenters at, 107 (photo); mild ale by, 54, 176, 183-
84, 212
Holt, mild ale by, 212
Holt, Plant and Deakin, mild ale by, 212
Home, mild ale by, 212
Honey, 163, 164
Honker’s Ale, 193
Hook Norton, mild ale by, 212
Hop back, 138 (photo), 138-39, 239; mash tun as, 139
Hop flowers, 137, 138
Hopping, 133-41; kettle, 139; late, 137
Hops, 12, 24-25, 86-91; alpha acid content of, 148; antique, 148-49; aroma and, 137, 138, 156;
aromatic/flavor/bittering properties of, 88, 148; cask ales and, 156-57; English, 86; as preservative, 25-
26; separation, 141; spicing with, 25; utilization, 135, 136; varieties of, 88, 174; wild, 149
Hoskins and Oldfield, mild ale by, 212
Hot-side aeration, 139-40
Huck, Robert, 30
Hughes, John, 185
Hughes, Sarah, 185
Hull, mild ale by, 212
Hyde’s Anvil, mild ale by, 212
Hydrators, 100, 126
Hydrometers, 1, 239; acquiring, 2; early, 33 (illus.)
Hygroscopic, 124

Imperial stout, sparging, 133

Ind Coope, 58
Infusion mashes, 81
Invert sugar, 82-84; adding, 83 (photo); metabolization of, 84; preparing, 83-84
Iodine, 129; cleaning with, 147
Isinglass finings, 55, 158, 160, 239; adding, 165; secondary fermentation and, 169
Isle of Man (Okells), mild ale by, 212
Iso-alpha-acids, 137; fermentation and, 136
Isomerization, 135, 136, 240

Jackets, glycol-/water-filled, 117, 144

Jackson, Michael: on farmer-brewers, 14-15; on mild ale, 4, 72; on pale/dark milds, 5; PMD Mild and, 193
Jennings, mild ale by, 212
John Harvard’s Brew House #13, 139, 189; AK by, 190-91; wort boiling at, 137
Joshua Tetley, mild ale by, 212
Julian, Emperor: beer and, 13

Kegs, 155, 157

Kelham Island, mild ale by, 213
Kent Goldings, 87-88; character of, 89
Kettles, 102-3, 200; direct-fired, 134-35; metal/copper, 17; steam-jacketed, 134. See also Coppers
Keystone bosses, 165
Keystones, 165, 166
Kilning, 32, 123, 240; problems with, 15
Kimberley and Morell’s, mild ale by, 176
King and Barnes, mild ale by, 213
KMS Dark Mild, recipe for, 204

Lactobacillus, 16, 240

Lagers, 240; popularity of, 47
Leatherbritches, mild ale by, 213
Lees, mild ale by, 213
Leyland, mild ale by, 213
Linfit, mild ale by, 213
Little Avenham, mild ale by, 213
London and Country Brewer, The, on brown beer/porter, 26
London water, 93
Long Square Garlic hops, 148
Lusty Gnome Midlands Mild, 198; recipe for, 205
Maclay’s 56/Mild Ale, recipe for, 202
Malt, 14, 66-67, 72-73, 174, 241; amber, 75; base, 77; black, 33, 38, 67, 70-71; blown, 73, 75, 76; British-
style, 128; brown, 34, 73, 75, 76, 77, 148; caramel, 69-70; chocolate, 2, 4, 56, 67, 70-71, 77, 190; crisp,
69; crystal, 2, 69-70, 76; curing, 15; flavor and, 73, 75; grinding, 121-24; high-quality, 123; pale, 67-69,
74; peat-smoked, 75, 77; roasted, 67, 71-72, 74, 75; sun-drying, 15; two-row, 67
Malted barley, 16, 123; early brewing and, 14, 15
Malt extract, 197, 200, 241
Maltiness, 59, 86
Malting and Brewing Science, 144
Malt liquor, 25, 35, 37
Malton, mild ale by, 213
Manholes, 114, 115
Mansfield, mild ale by, 213
Manway, 118
Maple syrup, using, 163, 164
Marblehead Mild, 176
Marris Otter malt, 68-69
Marston’s, 62, 110, 111 (photo); water for, 93
Marston, Thompson, and Evershed PLC, 110; Merrie Monk by, 62; Walnut Mild by, 179-81, 213
Mash, 127-29; stirring, 127 (photo)
Mashing, 122, 125, 199, 241
Mash temperature, 127, 128, 130
Mash tub, primitive, 17 (illus.)
Mash tuns, 17, 101, 101 (photo), 102 (photo), 122, 130; cleaning, 146; draw-off points for, 102; as hop
back, 139; recirculation and, 131
Mathew Brown, mild ale by, 213
Mathons hops, 88
Maturation, 107; extended, 118
McGuiness, mild ale by, 213
McMullen and Sons Ltd., AK by, 185-87
McMullen’s Brewery, 58, 60-61, 186 (photo), 191; mild ale by, 213
McMullen’s Original AK, 50, 52, 58, 61, 185-87; color/clarity of, 53-54; OG of, 63
Measurement conversions, list of, 223
Meaux’s Horse Shoe Brewery, 43; vat at, 32
Melanoidins, 15, 241
Merrie Monk, 62, 180
Mesh-bottomed dishes, 124
Microflora, fermentation and, 20
Microorganisms, 145; alcoholic content and, 20; culturing, 142
Mild, 12, 37, 242; bitter and, 85; as class of beer, 23-24; meaning of, 36
Mild Ale, c. 1824, recipe for, 206
Mild ales: accessibility of, 40; bitters and, 46; brewing, 5, 7-8, 98; brown ales and, 45, 56; commercially
produced, 173-95, 197; cousins of, 27-30; decline of, 49, 63; defining, 51, 56-57; development of, 4, 8-
9, 21, 30, 37-43; in early popular literature, 22-23; English ingredients for, 65; formulations analysis of,
 175 (table); future for, 47-50; gravity of, 36, 41, 42, 47; hopping of, 41; ingredients of, 65-96, 174;
modern, 8, 43-47, 55; OG of, 53; pales and, 36, 46; popularity of, 9, 11, 33, 43, 46-47; porters and, 39;
profiles of, 51-63, 54 (table); roles for, 7-8; roots of, 1, 11-12; subcategories of, 51
Mild beers, brown beers and, 44-45
Mill, described, 99-100
Mitchell and Butlers, mild ale by, 214
Mitchell’s, mild ale by, 213
Modification, 123, 242
Molasses, 82, 83, 163, 164
Molson Breweries, whirlpool tank by, 140
Moorehouses, mild ale by, 214
Morrell’s, mild ale by, 214
Munich lager strain, 95
Muntons malt, 69

Nethergate, 61
New Brewing Lager Beer and Scotch Ale (Noonan), 94
Newcastle Brown Ale, 176
New Complete Joy of Homebrewing, The (Papazian), quote from, 57
Noonan, Gregory, 94; on water/mild ale, 93
Normans, brewing and, 13, 19-20, 35
Northern Brewer hops, 90
Northerner No. 1 dark ale, 36
Northhampton Brewing Company, 43
Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. II, The (Barnard), quote from, 65, 66, 92, 97, 125, 127-
28

Oats, 81
Öl, 12
Old 5X, 48
Old ales, 12, 42, 178; beers and, 49; early, 20; first gyle and, 19; OG of, 63; sparging, 133
Old beers, 22
Old Chimneys, mild ale by, 214
Old Court (Whitbread), mild ale by, 214
Old Mill, mild ale by, 214
Old Union Room, 111 (photo)
Open square/round fermenters, 105 (photo), 106 (photo), 107 (photo), 108 (photo); described, 105-10
O’Reilly, Brian, 189, 190
Organ pipes, 114, 115

Pale ales, 33, 35, 37; beers and, 49; flavor/body/aroma of, 59; hopping of, 41; mild ales and, 36, 46, 52;
oatmeal, 81; popularity of, 40-41, 42; porters and, 38, 46; saving, 132-33
Pale malts: American, 67; British, 67-68; flavor of, 68-69; roasting, 74
Pale milds, 51; characteristics of, 52; flavor/body/aroma of, 59-61; gravity of, 52; roots of, 58-59
Papazian, Charlie, 4, 57
Parish, mild ale by, 214
Parson’s Brewery, vats at, 31-32
Partigyle, 16, 30, 243
Pasteur, Louis: fermentation and, 142
Pastor, Jim and John: hydrometer from, 2
Paul’s malt, 69
Pedigree Bitter, 93, 110
Pembroke, mild ale by, 214
Perfect Pint: Producing Real Ale in America, The (Daniels), 168
Perforated carbonation/aeration stone, 170
Perkins, mild ale by, 39
Perry, Guy, 184
Pewter tankards, 97, 171
pH, 243; fermentation and, 134
Phil’s Lauter, 198
Phoenix, mild ale by, 214
Phosphates, 132, 243
Pipkin malt, 68
Pitching, 116, 141, 244; temperatures at, 144
Pitching rates, 163; average, 143 (table)
Pliny the Younger, on curmi, 12
Plumage Archer malt, 68
PMD Mild, 191-94
Polysaccharides, 132, 244
Porter (brewer), mild ale by, 214
Porters, 7, 8, 76; bitters and, 46; brewing, 2, 30; brown malt for, 34; classification of, 36-37; consumption
of, 39; decline of, 38, 39, 40; development of, 21, 28-30, 34; gravity of, 41; mild ale and, 5, 27-30, 39;
naming, 28; pales and, 38, 46; quest for, 1, 5; stouts and, 24; vatted, 40
Porter vats, 31 (illus.)
Practical Brewings: A Series of Fifty Brewings (Amsinck), quote from, 86, 87, 94, 104, 122, 126, 141
Precipitation, 135, 244
Present-use ales, flavor of, 21
Primary fermentation, 107, 111, 151, 156, 162, 245; described, 143-45; sugar and, 160; temperature for,
198
Priming, 163, 245
Priming sugar, 160-64, 245; determining dosages of, 169; mixing, 165
Private Brewer’s Guide, on brown beer/porter, 26
Protein haze, 55, 165
Protz, Roger: mild ales and, 4
Pubs, growth of, 38

Racking, 154, 154 (photo), 159, 162, 245; described, 164-66; finings and, 160; temperature at, 145
Rainer Brewing Company, cylindro-conical fermentation and, 117
Rauchmalz, 75, 77
Real ale, 153, 245; brewing, 6; handling, 168
Recirculation, 139, 245; described, 130-31
Recordkeeping, importance of, 3
Reepham, mild ale by, 214
Reindeer, mild ale by, 214
Reinheitsgebot (1516), 71
Richardson, John: extract potential and, 33
Ridge Brewery, Grundy tanks at, 119
Ridley’s, mild ale by, 214
Riverhead, mild ale by, 214
Roast, 67, 71-72, 74-75, 77; aroma/flavor and, 74; long, 74
Robinson’s, mild ale by, 214, 215
Romans, beer and, 13
Rosemary, 12
Rousing, 109, 246; fermentation and, 104
Rudgate, mild ale by, 214
Running beers, 21, 246
Run-off, 131-33
Rygate, mild ale by, 215

Saddler’s Best Bitter, 178

St. Austell, mild ale by, 215
St. Peter’s, mild ale by, 215
Salem Beer Works, mild ale by, 176
Samuel Smith’s, Yorkshire stone squares at, 114
Sanitation, 117, 142; problems with, 14, 17
Sarah Hughes Brewery, 49, 156, 174; Dark Ruby Mild by, 53, 61; Grundy tanks at, 120; mild ale by, 54-55,
176, 184-85, 212
Savinjski Goldings, 89, 91
Saxons, brewing and, 13, 35
Scotch ale, 134; yeast strains, 96
Scottish Borders, 141
Scott’s, mild ale by, 215
Scrubbing, 146, 147
Secondary fermentation, 118, 156, 162, 165, 246; in bottles, 169; color/clarity and, 55; conditioning and,
151, 184; described, 145; isinglass finings in, 169; temperature for, 198
Sedgley Surprise, 185
Sedimentation, 112, 166
Serving, 166-68
SG. See Specific gravity
Shipstones, mild ale by, 215
Shive bosses, 157
Shives, 157, 165, 167
Silicates, 132, 133, 165
Single-gyle beers, 29, 30
Single-temperature infusion method, 126
Six-roller mills, 98 (photo), 100, 123
Skimming, 107; fermentation and, 106, 108-9; variation on, 109
Small beers, 21, 58, 186
Sodium hydroxide/metasilicate, cleaning with, 146
Sparging, 124, 131-33, 199, 246
Specific gravity (SG), 246; converting/at 20 °C to °Plato, 224 (table)
Spiling, 157, 166-68
Spoilage, 17, 20
Spünding, 152
Square fermenter, 142 (photo)
SRM. See Standard Reference Method
Stale ale, 24, 48; first gyle and, 19
Stale beers, 40; aging, 20
Standard Reference Method (SRM), 52, 247
Starch conversion, iodine test for, 129
Steele’s masher, 101, 126, 247
Steeping bag, 199
Sterilization, 142
Still, William: verse by, 22-23
Stillaging, 166-68
Stock ales, 24, 42; first gyle and, 19
Stock beers, 44; aging, 20
Stouts, 7, 41, 42; classification of, 36-37; mild ales and, 27-30; oatmeal, 81; porters and, 24; revivalist
success of, 8
Strike temperature, 126, 127, 247
Strong ales, 20, 41
Styrian Goldings, 59, 89, 91, 190
Sucrose, 82, 84, 162
Suffolk Marl, 48
Suffolk Strong, 48
Sugar, 82-84, 129; beet, 82, 163; brown, 83, 163; cane, 82, 83, 163; carmelization of, 134; corn, 163;
demerara, 82; fermentable, 84, 128, 155; invert, 82-84, 83 (photo); priming, 160-64, 165, 169, 245;
redosing with, 154; turbinado, 82, 83; undissolved, 140
Sutula, David, 189, 190
Swan necks, 112, 113 (photo)
Swirl tanks, 103, 247
Syrups: golden, 82, 163, 164; maple, 163, 164

Tadcaster Tower Brewery, 46

Tally Ho!, mild ale by, 215
Tannins, 132, 133, 247
Temperature probes, 118
Temperatures: average, 143 (table); controlling, 114; conversions for, 222-23 (list)
Tertiary fermentation, 151; color/clarity and, 55
Theakston, mild ale by, 215
Thermometers, 1, 2, 97
Thrale’s and Truman’s: butts of, 30; vat at, 32
Three Tuns, mild ale by, 215
Throwback milds, 51, 52-53, 155-56; brewing, 147-50; flavor/ body/aroma of, 61-63; OG of, 53
Thwaites, mild ale by, 215
Timothy Taylor, mild ale by, 215
Titanic, mild ale by, 215
Tolly Cobbold, mild ale by, 215
Tomlinson’s, mild ale by, 215
Tower brewery, 100, 162
Trade casks, 114, 152, 168; racking into, 164
Traquair House, 141
Treacle, 82, 163
Triumph barley, 73
Truman’s brewery, mild ales/gravity of, 42
Trunnion, 111
Tuns, 126; mash, 17, 101, 101 (photo), 102, 102 (photo), 122, 130, 131, 139, 146; racking, 114
Turbidity, 55, 248
Turbinado sugar, 82, 83

Unions, 116; cleaning, 146; disunited, 144 (photo)

Uni-tank fermentation, described, 117-18
Utensils, 16, 17, 248

Vats: early, 31-32; oak, 48

Ventnor, mild ale by, 215
Verticillum, 89
Victorian tower brewery, 100, 162
Victory Ale, 188
Viking, mild ale by, 216

Wales, mild ale in, 16, 44

Wallace, Robert: on water/mild ale, 93
Walnut Mild, 62, 179-81, 213; and Highgate Dark Mild compared, 181
Waltham Brothers Brewery, 59
Ward’s, mild ale by, 215
Water, 91-94, 135
Webster’s, mild ale by, 216
Weizen, wheat and, 81
Welsh Brewer’s, mild ale by, 216
Welsh miners, 44 (photo)
Wheat, 79-81; beta glucans in, 80-81; body/color and, 80; weizen and, 81; wit beers and, 81
Wheeler, David: cylindrical drum roaster by, 33
Whim, mild ale by, 216
Whirlpool, 138-39, 249; wort clarification and, 140
Whitbread, 43, 46, 61; cisterns at, 32; porter by, 29; pubs by, 38
White Horse, 159
Wild yeasts, 48; fermentation of, 16, 20; problems with, 17
Willamette hops, 91
Wilsons, mild ale by, 216
Winfields, mild ale by, 216
Winter barley, 68
Wit beers, wheat and, 81
Wolverhampton and Dudley Breweries PLC, mild ale by, 173, 181-82
Woodforde’s, mild ale by, 216
Working class, mild ales and, 47
Wort, 249; clarification, 103, 140; cooling, 140-41; drawing off, 130; pH of, 134, 135; transferring, 19
Wulfred, 16
Wyeast London III strain, 96, 198
Wyeast Scotch Ale #1028, 96
Wyeast Scotch Ale #1056, 96
Wyeast Scotch Ale #1728, 96

X Strong Mild Ales, prices for, 59

Yarrow, 12
Yeast, 94-96; adding, 165; autolyzing, 145; bitterness and, 149; cask beer and, 164; choice of, 95;
conditioning and, 152; fermentation and, 20, 37, 96, 106; flocculant, 109, 115, 116, 118; metabolism of,
143; nonflocculant, 109, 112-13; redosing with, 154; repitching, 142; skimming, 107, 108; strains of, 95,
109; turbidity from, 55; wild, 16, 17, 20, 48
Yorkshire stone squares, 120, 249; cleaning, 146; diagram of, 115 (fig.); fermentation with, 114-16
Young’s Ram Brewery, 58; mash tun at, 101 (photo); square fermenter at, 142 (photo)
About the Author

David Sutula could not stand the taste of beer until his junior year in college
when he and a friend took a trip to Portland, Maine. While there, they stumbled
upon Gritty McDuff’s Brewery, where David requested the most appetizing-
sounding item on the menu—a stout. Two weeks later, David was at home and
bottling his first homebrew.
David has worked professionally in the Cleveland brewing industry since
1993. Currently, he is the head brewer at the Quarry Ridge Brewery in Berea,
Ohio. When he is not driving the horse-drawn beer dray to make deliveries
around historic Berea, David is perched atop the brew house making traditional
British ales, continental lagers, and indigenous American beers.