I'm a big fan of Milds and its a standard house brew for me.
As mentioned, 1.048 is kind of big for a Mild. However, I can tell you that you don't want to go too small either. I typically shoot for the upper end of the range for the style: 1.038. That is a good medium on keeping it small while providing enough malt for flavor.
I tried a popular recipe posted on HomebrewTalk, Reapers Mild, but I found it far too crystally-sweet and underattenuated. With 20% crystal malt in that recipe, its too much. That is a fault I also find with Rogue beers...they use too much crystal malt. I prefer to keep the crystal malt at less than 10%. I really like the 75L Simpsons crystal. One thing that I did appreciate that this recipe brought to my attention was pale chocolate malt. This is truly a superb malt for adding color and a restrained roast character to a beer. Around 3% is good in a Mild.
I find another asset in a Mild is to brew with mild malt as the base. It is a little darker than a pale malt. In some respects, its a version of light munich malt. I like the Pauls Mild malt, but you may not be able to find it. As workable substitute, I suggest pale malt with a decent charge of munich malt to serve as the base malt component in the beer, say a third of the base malt bill.
The 19 IBU bittering would probably be quite low in a 1.048 beer, but that is the level I aim for in my 1.038 beer. I like EKG for all hopping, but the Warrior should be relatively flavorless when used at 60 min. For yeast, I recommend a low attenuating yeast. I really like Wyeast 1338, but they dropped it from regular production. The Chico yeast may be a bit too attenuative and may eat up too much of the sweetness that you want to retain in the final product. The single step, 154F mash temp should be good for reducing attenuation a bit.
Mild should be a great introductory beer to the Budmillors crowd.
Topic: Mild Brown Ale (Read 4124 times)
