British Mild?

I can't believe it, but it's been a year since we made our last batch of beer. Maybe we got burned by our previous batch, our first all-grain beer. Tristan had to stay up til 3am to finish it, and it ended up tasting like Budweiser. We went to the brew store and picked up ingredients for another batch several months ago, but life got in the way and we didn't get around to making the beer until yesterday.

Well, when we pulled everything out of cold storage and inspected the ingredients, we realized we had no idea what style of beer we had intended to make. 6 pounds of Amber malt, 1/4 lb. of roasted barley, 2 different kinds of bittering hops but no finishing hops...and either a British Ale Yeast or an American Ale Yeast. Hmmmmm. Time for some detective work. After consulting our Joy of Homebrew's recipes and hops charts, we concluded that we had planned to make a British Mild. Maybe. We made a few changes to the ingredients by substituting some other hops we had in the fridge, and here is what we came up with:

Mystery Mild

1/4 lb. roasted/crystal barley combo

6 lbs. amber malt powder

1/2 oz. Chinook bittering hops

1/2 oz. Liberty finishing hops

British Ale Yeast

We steeped the grain in 3 gallons of water until it came to a boil, removed the grain, added the malt powder, returned to a boil. Added bittering hops. Boil for 1 hour, adding finishing hops in last 15 minutes. Cool by adding 16 lbs. of ice (to make 5 gallons of wort), transfer to 6 gallon carboy, pitch yeast.

There is a nice foamy krausen on the wort today. We'll see what style of beer this most resembles in a few months' time. What do you think we're making?

From Whittled Down