Black N Mild

Today I got an early start and brewed up 5 gallons of our Black 'N Mild Ale. As you can see from the picture it is pretty dark with, hopefully, a cream-colored head. At fist glance you might think poter or stout, but with this beer all the color comes from de-husked malt (Carafa III, 525 SRM) which adds mostly color and a slight roasty characteristic. We then add a generous amount of hops. In the previous attempt we only added hops at 60 and 5 minutes (+ dry hopping) and although there was a ton of hop flavor and aroma, the transition from the bittering-hop flavors to the late-hop flavors was very choppy; likely because of the large gap in time from the hop additions. So this time we added a small addition at 30 minutes. It was supposed to be 0.25 oz of centennial, but I forgot to bring down something to weigh the hops on so I just tried to guess from the bag of hop pellets. I'm not very good at guessing, and ended up adding 0.5oz's instead of 0.25; oh well, more IBUs. Hopefully this extra addition will make for a smoother flavor and transition from the bitterness hops to the aroma/flavor hops.

The goal OG was 1041, but I boiled off a little more than I thought and eneded up with ~4.8 gallons of beer at 1044. This is a definite "session" beer in which the alcohol is low (hopefully around 4.3%) so you can have several beers in one sitting and still walk away. The term "session beer" is still being defined in the brewing community, but according to some British beer people, a "session" is one in which you drink at least 6-8 beers. Commericial British beers today are very commonly in this range with beers like Mild, Bitter, Pale, even Porter. For our typical 6.5-7% beers, a "session" would be hard to do without getting blasted, so I have been wanting to have some lower alcohol beers on hand. Most people define a session beer as one that is < 4.5-5% alcohol, and our first attempt was 3.8%.

Some people will complain of "wasting" the calories on a low-alcohol beer with out the "happy" effects, but with lower alcohol comes lower calories. Our first 3.8% one was only 175 calories, and this most recetent version will likely be < 200 calories/pint. Compare this to 436 cal/pint for the RIS and a whopping 574 cal/pint in the BW. One of those beers at +10% alcohol will have you feeling it, but you could have 2-3 of the session beers with the same calories. I think it is a good trade-off to have more time to drink more beers and will likely have a session beer on hand at all times in the future.