Mild: roasted barley or not?

[Sandimas]

Must be the CAMRA influence, but around this time of year I always brew a Dark Mild. Been scanning through a few recipes and wanted to try a new one this time, a few have Roasted Barley in them: I always thought Roasted Barley was primarily for Stouts, but what do you think? I have some, but use it so infrequently I can't remember how it tastes in a brew.

 

[The Baron]

Not for me I prefer a mild without the roast barley.
If you think you will like it go for it as beer taste is personal to each brewer but its not for me

 

[RichardM]

Some Scottish Ale's use roasted barley, so it isn't just stouts

 

[obscure]

A while back I brewed a CML kit stoutly mild which was basically a mild with some roasted barley added, it does give The beer a distinctive taste but it is not unpleasant, I,would definitely say it is worth a try.

 

[marshbrewer]

I'd say no.

 

[Erik The Anglophile]

During the heyday of the modern Mild, a breweries Best Mild would often contain a few percent of roast malt. Although Black or Chocolate, or a combination of both, would be more common.

 

[An Ankoù]

I once made a batch of Irish stout stuck in the immersion cooler and went to walk the dog. The cooler had developed a pinprick hole and when I returned the kettle was overflowing. I ended up with a dark beer at 1030 OG which was very pleasant to drink and put me back on the track of brewing milds. In comparison, though, the roast barley gave it a crispness that is not characteristic of trad milds. I now make two, regularly: one uses equal parts carafa special #1, 2 & 3 added to the base malt and the other only chocolate malt and Simpson double roasted or Special B.
I don't see any reason why you can't use roasted barley for colouring, but you need something lighter and richer in there, too, to give it more character than a half-strength Guinness.

 

[Sandimas]

Thanks all, I'll leave it out this time and stick to the Crystal, Chocolate and Black Malt.

 

[An Ankoù]

Thanks all, I'll leave it out this time and stick to the Crystal, Chocolate and Black Malt.

If you've got any double roasted, or Special B, Special W, Special X (they're pretty much the same thing) I really can recommend it over crystal.
Crisp's Vienna malt is an ideal base malt for mild, too.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

During the heyday of the modern Mild, a breweries Best Mild would often contain a few percent of roast malt. Although Black or Chocolate, or a combination of both, would be more common.

I'd gently suggest you're over-extrapolating from a very small minority of beers. The whole concept of a dark Best Mild was confined to a small handful of breweries, mostly around the M62 corridor (plus the odd short-lived ones from nationals like Whitbread), because they were the weird ones that had a pale mild as their "ordinary" one (and their bitter would be pale as well, so a more complicated darker beer balanced the range).

Classic mild, across time and space, is made from three ingredients. Most characteristic is around 10-15% (or more) of invert #3 or similar dark sugar, then the rest is base malt (normally pale malt but sometimes mild malt which was roughly equivalent to Vienna or a light Munich) and then usually 5-10% of unmalted adjunct. Typically that is/was flaked maize, but could be eg torrified barley/wheat for better head retention when serving through a sparkler up north. Oh, and caramel (rarely black malt) for colour. See eg :

1889 Harvey's X - 83% pale malt, 17% invert #2
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2019/12/lets-brew-1889-harvey-x.html
1910 Fuller's X - 74% pale malt, 10% invert #3, 10% "pale trivert" (~invert #1?), 6% flaked maize, 0.67% caramel
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2022/02/lets-brew-1910-fullers-x.html
1944 Fuller's X - 83% pale malt, 12.5% flaked barley, 2% glucose, 2% caramel (supplies of sugar were rationed for brewers during the war)
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2019/07/lets-brew-wednesday-1944-fullers-x.html
1946 Tetley Mild - 59% pale malt, 15% flaked barley (but over the war that had varied between maize, rice, oats and barley), 15% "ERC/G & S" (invert #3?), 11% "Barbados" (brown sugar?)
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2017/03/lets-brew-1946-tetley-mild.html
All sorts of things went into mild over the years - amber, chocolate, brown to name but a few - so you will always be able to find an example or two to "prove" that ingredient X was "used in mild", but that doesn't mean it was the norm. About the only speciality malt you can generalise about is crystal, which was fairly common (particularly in the northwest and southeast) in the early 20th century but died out in most places after WWII, in my lifetime it's only really been used in northwest milds which are noticeably sweeter and richer than eg their West Midlands counterparts.

1939 Whitbread X - 76% pale malt, 13% crystal 60L, 9% invert #3, 1.66% caramel
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2019/06/lets-brew-1939-whitbread-x.html
1950 Whitbread Best Ale (effectively a Best Mild, for those wanting to generalise about such things) - 87% mild malt, 7% crystal, 4% invert #3, 1.82% caramel
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2019/05/lets-brew-wednesday-1950-whitbread-best.html
1955 Wilson's Mild - 40% pale malt, 34% mild malt, 9% invert #2, 8% flaked barley, 6% crystal, 3% caramel
https://cdn.imagearchive.com/aussiehomebrewer/data/attach/96/96340-WILSON-S-XX-1955-1955.pdf
I do think people put far too much weight on the 1950s Lees Best milds when even in their own terms their recipes were all over the place before simplifying things after 1956 (presumably as dark sugar became more available?) , even though they came out of the war with a very classic mix of pale malt, flaked barley and glucose/sugar (plus black malt for colour, presumably in part due to sugar rationing affecting the availability of caramel). I'd end with a passing comment from Ron :

We were all on Flying Bed, a proper Dark Mild, brewed the English way. That is, not coloured with f*cking chocolate malt or roast barley.

 

[RichardM]

I'd gently suggest you're over-extrapolating from a very small minority of beers. The whole concept of a dark Best Mild was confined to a small handful of breweries, mostly around the M62 corridor (plus the odd short-lived ones from nationals like Whitbread),.

We still get Brains Dark in Cardiff, although it is becoming harder to find.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

We still get Brains Dark in Cardiff, although it is becoming harder to find.

I was talking specifically about the concept of a Best Mild that was dark, not dark milds in general. I'm not too familiar with the Brains range, but Dark isn't positioned as a Best Mild, no?

Having a Best Mild that was dark was a bit of an oddity mostly restricted to a handful of breweries around the Pennines where the "ordinary" Mild was pale. Tim Taylor's 3.5% Golden Best is the only mainstream-ish survivor of that regional style (although you could argue modern Boddies has morphed into it), I guess you could view Ram Tam/Dark Landlord as sort of a dark Best Mild sitting above Golden Best in the range, but it's not really.

 

[Erik The Anglophile]

In that case I stand corrected, I have studied and think I have gotten a pretty good hang on what to do in order to brew a traditional/"good old days" (best) bitter but in the case of milds I am still very much a novice.
I am gonna re-work the recipe a bit for my coming mild, as I want it to resemble the few actual milds I've had, mainly ruby mild, Theakston's and TT.
So a fair bit of Crystal, a bit of invert 3 and maybe a dash of black malt.

 

[MrRook]

My next two batches.

 

[crescent city Mike]

I've got a few mind-sets to deal with regularly. I've got it stuck in my head NOT to use roast barley in most anything except stouts and Scotch ales. In Scotch ales, the roast barley will comprise about 2 - 3 % of the grist bill. I strictly won't use the roast in Mild, or Porters. I've had lots of beers with roast barley in them and other than the stouts and Scotch ales, none have been impressive.

Various chocolate malts, black malts, etc. work quite well in a Mild. Of course, it's entirely subjective.