Clark Kent's Manners

English milds are a fascinating style of beer, and are somewhat difficult to find here in the states. Kate and I discovered them at NERAX in '04. The event spotlighted the style, and had casks imported from Britain as well as a few hauled in from local micro breweries. This traditional style predates the industrialization of brewing and packs a lot of flavor into a low alcohol beer. Colors range from brown to black. My personal preferences range to those with chocolate flavors. There can be incredible complexities in these subtle beers.

The general trend I've seen in American micro breweries is to generate complexity according to the Doc Oc philosophy of "More! More! More!". Whether its from stronger hops, more ingredients, more Belgian influence, or more alcohol, great complex American beers tend to be big beers. There's nothing wrong with big beers. I enjoy them. In fact my scotch ale may well turn out to be "big". The notion that brewers can get more complexity with less ingredients is simply fascinating.

I brewed this batch with a kit from Northern Brewer.

Here's the ingredients

Specialty Grains: 0.125 lbs. Simpson's Chocolate, 0.25 lbs. Crisp Amber Malt
0.25 lbs. Crisp Brown Malt. (I steeped these from the start of heating until 170 degrees - Northern brewer recommends a 15 minute max, but with my slow stove I needed 45 minutes to get 170 degrees. The grain needs to be about 150 before any interesting sugar conversions occur)
Liquid Extracts: 3.3 lbs. Amber Malt Syrup
Solid Extracts:1 lbs. Amber Dry Malt
Hops: 1 oz. Fuggle (60 min)
Yeast: 150 ml smack pack Wyeast #1275 Thames Valley Ale Yeast
Etc: 1 tsp Irish Moss (Not included, but I believe in clarification. I do not believe in filtration, despite the fact that it pays the bills)

Higgins started to take an interest in the brewery with this batch. He clawed holes in the grain and malt powder bags as soon as I brought the kit home. During my brewing he reopened the powder bag, and opened both bags of sanitizer that I stored in the box. Fortunately, I noticed most of this trouble before I lost much through the holes.

I would have been in trouble if he figured out how to open the syrup bottle.

I brewed this batch with a 2 gal. boil, instead of the recommended 1.5 gal. My pot is big enough, and greater volumes yield better flavor extraction. Maybe this would help my hopping problem. After the seemingly over sweet Scottish ale, I seriously considered keeping some of the hops for an aroma addition. That might not have been true to form, so I figured I would try to follow the kits directions (mostly). If it came out weird, I could fix it next time around. After all, the Higgins Heifer Brewery is in the business of brewing milds (among other things).