Victorian Mild!

[peebee]

Well, following my Victorian Bitter thread this was inevitable, wasn't it? But I was hi-jacking @An Ankoù's thread, Quest for the Perfect Bitter , and trying to pass off "Victorian Milds" as bitters (well they were a tiny bit stronger back then). And I was inadvertently passing off my definition of mild which would probably contradict many brewer's ideas and the preaching of well known beer historians too, so that needed pulling out of there too (questions were already starting, such as @mclaughlinj's >post< ).

First off WATER (that should attract some attention, because this isn't just about "Victorian Mild", it's about water generally and I wouldn't want folk uninterested in "mild" drifting off without reading it). When hi-jacking the "bitter" thread I was purposely picking low impact ("American") dark beer water profiles so they wouldn't interfere with me passing a mild off as modern bitter! But I was struggling to get the pH predictions right. The solution to the issue was "unexpected" (for me!), but that will be the topic for my next post.

I'll continue with posts of some Victorian Mild recipes (from Edd's old beers Web-site) to backup my argument that there was no such thing as "Mild" (as a specific type, or "style", of beer) before late Victorian times. That should rattle a few opinionated souls!

But that's for later, I'm off to the shop just now, bear with me …

 

[Cwrw666]

I was under the impression that in those days Mild was the opposite of Stock, not bitter. The former was brewed and dispatched quickly for drinking quite young, whereas Stock was kept at the brewery for many months before being dispatched for consumption.
So Mild was not a style.
I think people make too much of this `style' thing these days. Basically if the label says it's a mild, then it's a mild, and if the definition of a mild doesn't include it then the definition is wrong.

 

[An Ankoù]

Well, following my Victorian Bitter thread this was inevitable, wasn't it? But I was hi-jacking @An Ankoù's thread, Quest for the Perfect Bitter , and trying to pass off "Victorian Milds" as bitters (well they were a tiny bit stronger back then). And I was inadvertently passing off my definition of mild which would probably contradict many brewer's ideas and the preaching of well known beer historians too, so that needed pulling out of there too (questions were already starting, such as @mclaughlinj's >post< ).

First off WATER (that should attract some attention, because this isn't just about "Victorian Mild", it's about water generally and I wouldn't want folk uninterested in "mild" drifting off without reading it). When hi-jacking the "bitter" thread I was purposely picking low impact ("American") dark beer water profiles so they wouldn't interfere with me passing a mild off as modern bitter! But I was struggling to get the pH predictions right. The solution to the issue was "unexpected" (for me!), but that will be the topic for my next post.

I'll continue with posts of some Victorian Mild recipes (from Edd's old beers Web-site) to backup my argument that there was no such thing as "Mild" (as a specific type, or "style", of beer) before late Victorian times. That should rattle a few opinionated souls!

But that's for later, I'm off to the shop just now, bear with me …

I think it's at least arguable that all cask bitters would be classed as milds since they haven't been aged and staled. So I reckon passing off victorian milds as a basis for modern bitters is fair enough.
(Modern) mild's my second favourite style and there are times when nothing else will do. I was particularly fond of Elgood's Black Dog, but it's so long since I've tasted it, I can't remember what it tastes like!

 

[Sadfield]

What's a modern mild though? even the mainstream mild's are usually considered traditional and go back 30+ years. I've had 'mild' from breweries less than 10 years old that have ranged from dark, low abv and ibus, to pale, heavily hopped double figure abvs.

Perhaps the true historic way to approach 'mild' is actually to brew anything that isn't porter or stout, and drink it young, and also stale a portion. If anything, 'bitter' should also be treated in the same manner as another term for pale ale, something that isn't porter or stout. .

 

[peebee]

Ooo ... I'm picking up responses already! But I did promise my next post is on water, so ...

The recipe was a dark mild (EBC 35-40) so I picked out what I thought was an okay profile, a generic "brown, balanced" profile and only minimally mineralised being a "new world" profile, actually one out of Bru'n Water. But I could not get a decent pH prediction using this profile and eventually opted to ignore the "bicarbonate" addition the calculator was suggesting.

The reason for the high pH predictions was staring me in the face and if I reread the instructions was probably explained there too.

Mild relies mainly on colour from crystal malt (of which there was none) or non-mashed colourants, not from roast malts/grains as a general rule. In this case most colour came from No.4 Invert Sugar. The colour wanted to be only the colour resulting from the mash, e.g. 9-10 EBC. Switch profile to "yellow, balanced" and all is okay again!

This quirk was especially due to using generic beer colour profiles but would be something to be aware of generally.

 

[chthon]

Things that drive Ron Pattinson mad: the 19th century mild, or young beer, but then labeled as K, KK, KKK, KKKK, or even X{K*}, or for keeping...

 

[An Ankoù]

Things that drive Ron Pattinson mad: the 19th century mild, or young beer, but then labeled as K, KK, KKK, KKKK, or even X{K*}, or for keeping...

F**K me!

 

[jMac]

F**K me!

Sounds like a name for your own Victorian Mild clone.

 

[peebee]

Before diving into the "what is 'mild'" controversy, I'll just post these two "Victorian Milds". And I do know they are from a few months after Queen Victoria died, but it was felt acceptable as King Edward VII wasn't crowned until 1902 (@Scrattajack saved me from that blunder - thanks).


Boddington's!!! I need me head seeing to (some more?), but it was a long time ago. Here's another, two "Xs" so slightly more up-market, and paler. The XX is what I'm planning to make next (well, I consider I am "up-market"!):


(Credit to Edd, Make Mine A Magee's!, for digging out them recipes).

 

[peebee]

The other advantage of making the XX rather than X is the No.4 Invert Sugar will be a pain to organise (the XX uses No.2). I posted the X recipe in @An Ankoù 's thread, but the one above is adapted to my better understanding of suitable water profiles.

Remember, the recipes have been adapted for my water and equipment (Grainfather in "full-boil-volume-mash" mode and "no-sparge").

The other advantage (another?) of the XX is it's stronger

 

[peebee]

Again, "before diving into the 'what is mild' controversy", here's a list of two more "Milds" I dug out of Edd's lists, along with the two above.

These have been arranged by date as they appear in Edd's blog:

=================================================
November 2020
Tennant Bros 1891 X
=================================================
October 2019
Boddington's 1901 XX Mild Ale
August 2019
Boddington's 1901 X Mild Ale
April 2019
Henry Bentley 1893 X Mild Ale

They've all taken a serious nose dive in strength (OGs of 1.045 to 1.052 instead of the more common, at that time, 1.060+) and they've taken advantage of the 1880 "Free Mash-Tun Act" to use Invert Sugars which must have lightened up the body of the beer from its heavy predecessors.

These beers were designed to be different hence I choose to see them as the first true "Milds". Oops, controversy!

Compare that to a pre-1880 beer like:

April 2019 (Edd's blog date)
Joshua Tetley 1844 XX Mild Ale

OG 1.0695! This was "mild" in that it would be served young (less than 4 weeks) and didn't need loads of hops as preservative (loads of hops would make it a pretty harsh drink after only 4 weeks maturation).

But just to confuse that, I can pick out the following post-1880 beers:

June 2020 (Edd's blog date)
Barclay Perkin 1880 X Ale
August 2019 (Edd's blog date)
Henry Bentley 1892 XX Mild Ale

But OGs of 1.060, they are still "mild" only in that they aren't aged, even if they do contain Invert Sugar.

It's a very tentative conclusion, not really based on a very definite "line in the sand". And only arrived at by trawling Edd's published work and not Ron Pattinson's or anybody else's. It's not even something I arrived at with careful thought, I'd assumed this was what everyone else had concluded!

And I haven't even mentioned "mild porter". I don't think there's any need!

 

[peebee]

In case anyone wonders: The "strike" mash step in my worksheets were to allow me to transfer the Beersmith details to Grainfather and have it automatically perform "strike" (the Grainfather has no concept of "strike", but I didn't want to give it up). Haven't tried it after the fiasco they had updating the GF software a couple of years (almost) ago. I still use the GF in "manual" (safe!) mode.

 

[jMac]

I love your posts @peebee! I’m not anywhere near as knowledgable in my beer history as you, so perhaps you can define what you see is controversial about your views on the evolution of Mild as a style?

I don’t think it’s controversial that beer styles evolved and weren’t born of whole wort. Is it that the point at which you see the modern style we call “Mild” diverging from the traditional definition of Mild (ie. any beer to be served young, irrespective of other descriptors like strength, colour, flavour), is earlier than others suggest?

I don’t think one can take the evolution of a drink as important as beer out of the social and economic background. So the late 20th century Mild evolved out of these earlier 19th and early 20th C Mild Ales, partly due to the Free Mash-Tun Act and beyond that the economic necessities of both World Wars and the interwar period. But, these aren’t the only considerations. The modern style should also be seen as an evolution of earlier small beers, as something to keep the working classes hydrated without them being so trollied they couldn’t function. In the days when men drank beer they drank a lot of beer, so it was also economic sense that this beer be produced cheaply and quickly. Mild ales fit the bill due to not having to be aged. I’m happy to proved wrong on any of these points though!

 

[peebee]

Thanks @mclaughlinj!

And thanks for your stamina ploughing through this thread! I actually think I got the tone a bit wrong and come across as an over-awed newbie and a clever-dick to boot (if I ever was an "over-awed newbie" it was over 40 years ago!). But perhaps I'm being too self-critical, many of us are.

Anyway, "controversial", I deal with that in this post. A week ago I never felt I was being controversial (gawd, that's a hard word to spell!), I thought I was just towing the line: That there was a clear demarcation between "mild" as an unaged (young) ale/beer (e.g. mild porter!) and "Mild" as a type ("style") of ale/beer.

But there is no "clear demarcation" and the two just merge as one. It would have helped if they didn't share the same name! So I, like no doubt many others, try to "invent" a demarcation, and its the "invention" that's controversial. It's controversial with those that "invented" it before me, and it's controversial with those that "invented", or believe in, something else.

I think any "invention" will suffer the same problem; there's no clear demarcation and each beer has to be assessed as whether the brewer intended it to be a separate type of beer (called "Mild"). And of course the individual assessments are bound to be controversial!

Does that help?

 

[peebee]

And the other subject in your post @mclaughlinj that I wanted to answer was "style". Although you weren't asking for an opinion in that case.

Note I put that word in raised commas and that's because the word has been hi-jacked to mean something else. You perhaps noticed from the earliest posts in this thread that "style" attracts a lot of bad feeling? This is my experience:

I first went into what can be called a "craft beer" bar only two years ago. Amazing, all the familiar beers were listed. I chose an "imperial stout". It was good! So what's wrong with that?

It was a small bar tucked away in the streets of ... Catania, Sicily!

The insidious, global, uniformity this (American lead?) "beer style" caper is having is most unwelcome. We do have "Irish Bars" selling Guinness globally, but at least they can be easily spotted so as to arrange to be on the other side of the road! Having said that, another insidious, global, uniform beer was ... Porter!


Okay, perhaps I've just alienated another group of followers?

Back to "Victorian Mild". I want to explore this "invert sugar" business ...

 

[peebee]

So, I start looking into this Invert Sugar business, the first question being "what did they actually use in late Victorian time"? I knew sugar was available and "invert sugar" and its manufacture was known about, but was "No.2 Invert Sugar" an option, or did it represent something else? I start getting back answers ... disturbing answers, and nowt to do with Invert Sugar!

There was no sudden 1880 boundary to herald use of sugar, as I say earlier ("Free Mash-Tun Act"). Sugar had been allowed since 1847! Although tax (as was also applied to malt) changed with the act. This came from one of my favourite blogs of information: The Rise and Fall of Invert Sugar.

That would blow holes in what I said! But fortunately it also says that uptake was slow and never really got going until 1879-80. Phew!

(EDIT: Mis-quote! In 1866 only 10,000,000lbs of sugar was used in beer, in 1879-80 it was 127,000,000lbs. So my "1880" line-in-the-sand is still dodgy!).

 

[chthon]

@peebee : You will also find out from Ron Pattinson that there were breweries in the 19th century which made their own invert sugar, by combining sugar with sulphuric acid, then adding lime to stop the process.

 

[peebee]

It's worth saying that "favourite blog" I mention is by another Ed (only one "d" this time). The same Ed acknowledged in Ron Pattinson's book "Vintage Beer".

 

[peebee]

@peebee : You will also find out from Ron Pattinson that there were breweries in the 19th century which made their own invert sugar, by combining sugar with sulphuric acid, then adding lime to stop the process.

I'll look into that. I did know sulphuric acid and lime was (is still?) used in the inversion. Something about the product (calcium sulphate) being insoluble. There was also something about breweries stopping all use of sugar in the very early 20th century because of some scare about arsenic (the sort of scare that kills a lot of people!).


What I currently know (addressing the wider audience):

Sugar was plentiful back then, if expensive. Highly refined sugar was very expensive, but brewers used less refined sugar which accounts for some of the extra flavour (and unfermentable debris, about 5-10%). Sugar didn't need to be inverted, yeast still ferments sucrose, but inversion had a very useful function; it breaks the sucrose down to fructose and glucose.

Now fructose will caramelise at 110C, whereas for glucose and sucrose it's 160C. Caramelisation results in more flavour and colour. That'll be handy!

BTW. Sucrose refracts light right (positive) and the products glucose (dextrose) also rotates light right, but the fructose bends light strongly left (negative), the nett result is light through invert sugar rotates left. Refraction in the finished product is "inverted". (O-level chemistry! Cor, that were along time ago!).

 

[peebee]

I've carved this Invert Sugar discussion to another thread where it might pick up more useful comments (well, invert sugar isn't just for Victorian milds!).

Brewer's Invert Sugar

I'll be back soon!