Description:

Adapted from 'Standard Dark Mild' from the February 2005 BYO magazine, and the 'Dark Mild Ale' from the July/August BYO magazine. The irony of this recipe is that we spent a lot of time researching this style of beer and the malts that are used in it, and as Mild beers have become less popular than they once were, the odds are most people will not actually brew this recipe. But we enjoy the challenge of learning about different beer styles and attempting to adapt them to gluten free recipes. This is actually in many ways an easy recipe to adapt; the hops are the same, S-04 is one of the recommended yeast strains, and it primarily uses a base and crystal malt. So why did we have to research this recipe so much? Because the base malt is either a Mild Ale Malt or British Pale Ale Malt, and both impart unique flavor profiles that are not found in the Pale Millet or Rice Malts. To further complicate matters, the recommended malt substitute is Maris Otter malt which imparts it's own unique flavor substitute. In our research we found Mild Ale Malt described as having elevated sweetness, malty flavor and aroma, and rich golden color. The Maris Otter has been described as imparting a unique biscuit quality. In other recipes that called for Maris Otter we used Biscuit Rice Malt as a substitute. But as this is the base malt we will be using a lot, so we ended up doing some "rough justice" as Judge Milian from The People's Court would say!

We carried over the same recipe and increased the grain bill by 20% to match the OG. It should be noted that Mild Ales are typically only about 3.5% ABV. We used the 20% increase in grain bill to add Biscuit Rice Malt and CaraMillet to the Pale Malt to do our best to reproduce the Mild Ale Malt. The Biscuit Rice Malt will add the biscuit tones while the CaraMillet will add residual sweetness. The Chocolate Millet Malt was also doubled but still did not get this beer all the way to the 22-24 SRM of the original recipes.

If you brew this recipe please let us know how it turned out! Tasting notes and any recommendations would be greatly appreciated too!!

Ingredients:

• 6 LBS 10 OZ Pale Millet Malt; or 9.275 LBS Pale Rice Malt (hulled and/or naked varieties); or any combination of any of the two
• 12 OZ Crystal Millet Malt
• 8 OZ Chocolate Millet Malt
• 1 LB Biscuit Rice Malt
• 6 OZ CaraMillet
• 1.33 OZ Fuggles Hops
• SafAle S-04 Yeast

Additional Instructions

Primary Ferment: 7 days
Secondary Ferment: 7 days

Beer Profile

Original Gravity: 1.034
Final Gravity: 1.009
Alcohol by Vol: 3.4%
Color SRM: 12.7
Bitterness IBU: 20.0
Recipe Type: all-grain
Yield: 5.0 Gallons

Procedure:

Source: Adapted from BYO magazine