Sunday 22 February 2009

Let's brew 1920 Fuller's XX Mild!

Fiddling around trying to get page numbers into "Mild!" I got to read most of the contents again. It contains some information I've never published elsewhere. A collection of Mild recipes, for example. Then I remembered a broken promise.

Last year during Mild month I promised you some Mild recipes. I forgot and all you got were images of old brewing logs. So, as part of my March is Mild Month project, I'm finally fulfilling that promise of nine months back.

So here's a good example of a Best Mild from between the wars, Fuller's XX from 1920.


More tomorrow. I've done Best Mild. Maybe it'll be Imperial Mild next.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This must have been partly American-tasting, even accounting for the old U.S. hops used and the relatively low hopping rate. Interesting too how Alsace and Belgium were able to get hops production - and exporting - back in gear so soon after a punishing war (particularly in those regions).

Gary

Ron Pattinson said...

Gary, old Oregon hops crop up quite a bit in brewing logs from around the end of WW I. Could be they were dumping a crop that, after Prohibition, had no value in the USA. Though a large proportion of the US hop crop was already exported to Britain in the late 19th century.

I wonder how "American" tasting those hops were by modern standards? If I recall correctly, the variety was mostly Cluster.

I don't think there was much fighting in Alsace. The French invaded it in 1914 and took a small area but not much happened for the rest of the war. Isn't Poperinge in the small corner of Belgium that the Germans never captured?

Anonymous said...

All good points, Ron. Perhaps it was Lorraine I was thinking of, but also the overall effects of a war economy on countries restarting agriculture or exports. But they found a way! Hard to know for sure about those hops. Lots of U.S. malt in that spec too.

Gary

Ron Pattinson said...

In the last couple of decades of the 19th century British brewers began sourcing considerable amounts of both hops and barley from overseas. Though it should be remembered that foreign barley was usually malted in the UK.

There's a simple explanation for why raw materials were imported: British agriculture couldn't keep up with the demand for malt and hops.