The gravity is pretty weedy for a beer of the period. Even for a cheap Mild Ale. Assuming 2d is the price per pint, in London you’d have got a beer of around 1050º for that amount.
It’s a pretty simple recipe. Just one malt, one adjunct and one sugar. There’s really very little to it at all. Though around a quarter of the pale malt was made from Californian barley. The rest being Irish.
Given the extremely pale colour, it wouldn’t surprise me I some caramel was added for colour correction.
The hops were split 50-50 between Oregon and English, both from the 1913 harvest.
| 1914 Cairnes 2d Ale | ||
| pale malt | 5.00 lb | 66.67% |
| flaked maize | 1.00 lb | 13.33% |
| glucose | 1.50 lb | 20.00% |
| Cluster 120 mins | 1.25 oz | |
| Fuggles 60 mins | 0.75 oz | |
| Fuggles 30 mins | 0.50 oz | |
| OG | 1038 | |
| FG | 1012 | |
| ABV | 3.44 | |
| Apparent attenuation | 68.42% | |
| IBU | 44 | |
| SRM | 3 | |
| Mash at | 152º F | |
| Sparge at | 170º F | |
| Boil time | 120 minutes | |
| pitching temp | 58.5º F | |
| Yeast | Wyeast 1084 Irish ale | |
OK, I admit it, I'm a yank and milds still confuse me. Looking at this recipe --- very pale color, highly hopped (BU/GU > 1), mashed fairly cool --- I would assume this is a bitter if all I had to go on were the recipe. Yet it's listed (I assume) as a mild in the brewing records.
ReplyDeleteOther than maybe the price, what distinguishes this from a typical bitter? How can I tell the difference from just the recipes?
Jonathan
Seems quite bitter compared to the mild ales of the 1940’s onwards.
ReplyDeleteOscar
I wonder if people asked for this as a pint of Cairnes or a pint of mild, or I guess even a pint of tuppence?
ReplyDelete