MILD ALE IS a rich-tasting beer, dark in color, and light in hops, often made by adding sugar to the cask as it ferments. Our recipe features demerara sugar, which makes it dark. Traditional milds had quite a low alcohol content — around 3.0 to 3.5 percent alcohol by volume. It’s a good example of what is called a session beer. If a group of people are going to spend an evening or a few hours after work drinking together (that is, a session), then they want a beer with a relatively low alcohol content. Mild fit that bill. It could be drunk while working, too, a more common practice in the nineteenth century.

Time was, mild ruled Britannia, or at least England and Wales, and spread throughout the Empire. (According to Brian Glover in The Oxford Companion to Beer, Molson was brewing it in Montreal by 1859.) Time has not been kind to mild, however. In England, after the Second World War, it came to be seen as old-fashioned, something drunk by elderly men in cloth caps while discussing their whippets’ racing form.

Our version is an amalgam of three recipes we found but lacked the proper ingredients for.

GRAIN BILL

5 lbs Malt extract

2 lbs 1 oz Crystal malt

8 oz Demerara sugar

(Total 7 lbs 9 oz)

HOPS BILL

0.75 oz Fuggles (60 minutes)

0.5 oz Cascade (0 minutes)

(Note: Used pellet hops)

YEAST

One packet Lallemand Danstar Nottingham Ale Yeast

Original gravity (OG): 1.050

Final gravity (FG): 1.010

Method: Bring 3 U.S. gallons to steeping temperature, 165–170 degrees Fahrenheit. Turn off heat and add crystal malt in a mesh bag. Steep for 30 minutes. Remove from heat, remove crystal malt, add malt extract, stir and bring to boil. At the boil, add Fuggles. Boil for 45 minutes, stir in sugar and boil for an additional 15 minutes. Irish moss and yeast nutrient could be added at this point, though we didn’t. Top off with additional water in the fermenter to bring it to 5 gallons. Add dry yeast packet.

(A note on bottling: When it comes time to bottle, practice is to add ¾ cup of priming sugar, usually dextrose, dissolved in water, to kick off carbonation again. We do this by racking the beer back into the primary, adding the sugar and then bottling. For smaller quantities, the amount should be modified accordingly.)