Tetley Milds in 1878

I've been putting this off for ages, going through Tetley's Milds. They just brewed so damn many of the things. At least four. Possibly five. I'm not totally sure whether XX was a Strong Mild Ale of a Strong Ale. Six of one, roundabouts of another, I guess.

In my customary contextualisation effort, I'll be comparing the Milds of Tetley to those of London. Always a good laugh, that one. Doubtless you'll be chortling into your cornflakes as you read it. Much as I would be myself. If I chortled. And if I ate cornflakes.

Tetley's Milds covered a fair range of gravities, from 1044º to 1078º. Which just shows what a flexible concept Mild Ale was. How many current styles span 30-odd gravity points? None, clearly, because the pointy heads writing style guidelines wouldn't allow that. They like their styles caged like battery hens, unable to turn around or even stand up. Even that range was a trimming down of the situation in the first half of the nineteenth century when the upper end was 1100º plus.

But I've started to drive on the verge again. Back to the topic in hand. First let's take a look at the general characteristics of these Milds. There's one obvious difference between Tetley's Milds and the London ones: there was no equivalent in the capital of the two weakest varieties, X and X1. It's scary how the remaining three map virtually exactly to London beers.

A little background. In the first half of the 19th century London Milds went from X up to XXXX. The stronger Milds were mostly dropped and, as you can see in the table, by the 1870's XXX and XXXX had disappeared. And only Barclay Perkins of the three brewers were looking at even brewed an XX. Whitbread's XL and Truman's 40/- Ale are really X and a half. You can see that their gravities are a good bit lower than Barclay Perkins XX - about 10 gravity points.

The level of attenuation at Tetley varied quite a lot between individual batches, but was mostly in the range 68-78%. Fairly similar to in London.

Hopping. I always like looking at hopping levels. Easy bit first, the XX's. Both in terms of pounds of hops per quarter (around 14) and per barrel (around 5) they're pretty similar. The next to strongest Tetley Mild, X3, is significantly more heavily hopped than either Whitbread XL or Truman 40/-, the London beers with similar gravities. On the other hand, X2 had about 50% fewer hops than London X Ales of Whitbread and Barclay Perkins. And about the ssmae as Truman X Ale. Not much of an overall pattern there.

As for boiling, the London brewers boiled a tad longer, but not by a huge amount.

London brewers pitched 6 or 7 degrees cooler, at around 60º F, but let the temperature rise more during fermentation, 11-14º F. At Tetley the temperature never rose more than 4º F, never exceeding 70º F. Which probably explains why the fermentation period was a day or two less in London, at six or seven days.

That's it for the general specs. We'll be looking at the ingredients next time.

Tetley Milds in 1878
Date	Year	Beer	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	boil time (hours)	Pitch temp	max. fermen-tation temp	length of fermen-tation (days)
7th Oct	1878	X	1044.3	1012.7	4.18	71.25%	5.31	0.83	2	69º	69.5º	8
4th Oct	1878	X1	1048.5	1011.1	4.95	77.14%	6.23	1.16	2	68º	69.75º	7
7th Oct	1878	X1	1048.5	1011.6	4.87	76.00%	6.27	1.23	2	69º	69.75º	9
13th Dec	1878	X1	1048.5	1019.4	3.85	60.00%	5.24	0.99	2	67º	67.75º	6
13th Dec	1878	X1	1051.2	1021.1	3.99	58.92%	5.24	1.05	2	67º	67.5º	7
7th Oct	1878	X1	1052.1	1011.1	5.42	78.72%	6.27	1.32	2	68º	69.5º	8
4th Oct	1878	X1	1052.6	1011.1	5.50	78.95%	6.23	1.26	2	69º	69.75º	8
10th Dec	1878	X2	1056.8	1018.8	5.02	66.83%	8.32	1.79	2	65º	68.5º	9
9th Jan	1878	X2	1060.4	1015.5	5.94	74.31%	6.24	1.47	2	68º	69º	8
10th Dec	1878	X2	1060.9	1018.8	5.57	69.09%	8.32	1.92	2	65º	68.5º	9
9th Oct	1878	X3	1069.3	1016.6	6.96	76.00%	11.60	3.43	2	63º	67º	10
7th Oct	1878	XX	1073.1	1023.3	6.60	68.18%	14.00	4.53	2	66.75º	69.5º	10
3rd Oct	1878	XX	1077.6	1017.7	7.92	77.14%	14.00	5.89	2	68º	69.5º	10
Source:
Tetley brewing record held at the West Yorkshire Archive Service document number WYL756/25/ACC1903

London Milds 1875 - 1880
Date	Year	Brewer	Beer	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)	Pitch temp	max. fermen-tation temp	length of fermen-tation (days)
16th Jul	1878	Whitbread	X	1060.7	1015.8	5.94	73.97%	8.53	2.29	2.5	2		61º	º	7
16th Jul	1878	Whitbread	XL	1069.3	1018.3	6.74	73.60%	8.53	2.62	2.5	2		61º	º	7
17th Jan	1876	Truman	X Ale	1062.0	1013.9	6.38	77.68%	5.9	1.69				62º	73º
31st Mar	1875	Truman	40/- Ale	1068.1	1012.5	7.37	81.71%	7.5	2.42				60º	72º
31st Aug	1880	Barclay Perkins	X	1060.7	1013.6	6.23	77.63%	10.29	2.69	1.5	2	2	60º	74º	3 + 4
14th Feb	1880	Barclay Perkins	XX	1079.5	1024.1	7.33	69.69%	13.38	4.98	2	3		59º	73º	3 + 3
Sources:
Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives document number LMA/4453/D/01/044
Truman brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives document number B/THB/C/156
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives document number ACC/2305/1/579