A heady mild
Now there’s a name the promises so very little. The nose on the beer is actually quite nice with lots of malty sweetness and a bit of dark fruit. The carbonation that carries the aroma so well is, however, way too much. It’s aggressively acidic up front. Once the first flavor passes the beer settles into a pleasant malt sweetness then finishes up on a reasonably dry note. Given a bit of time mellowing in a glass, the carbonation eases up a little, but absolutely minimal, hand-pulled, pub-style carb would still suit it better. As the beer flattens out the body also increases to a medium level that ensures the low gravity doesn’t come across as watery. This one has promise, but the taster’s inability to patiently stare at a beer without drinking it is becoming problematic in decarbonation operations.
The recipe began with five and three quarters pounds of our standard English malt, Maris Otter. The adjuncts became darker and smaller doses simultaneously: six ounces of caramel 60, five ounces of caramel 120, three ounces of pale chocolate, and an ounce and a half of pitch Black malt. The only hop addition was 0.85 ounces of East Kent Goldings at sixty minutes. After an hour in the mash tun and another hour in the kettle we would up with a 1.044 gravity. That’s not quite Mild but certainly not a big beer. Fermentation with with WLP002 English Ale yeast finished at 1.010. Somehow the 4.4% ABV falls within style despite the extra gravity. The math there perplexes me.