• Skip to main content

Pacific Way Brew Systems

Home brew and beer dispense systems

  • Home
  • Articles
  • About Pacific Way Brew
  • Gallery
  • Sitemap

Aug 14 2017

Wallop – Making a modern Mild

A good friend of mine mentioned that he’d love to create a beer for the 10th anniversary of the 1984 Symposium – an event that he’s been running for … 10 years. It’s a picnic and International gathering held at George Orwell’s grave on his birthday. We started discussions on what style of beer would be appropriate and what beer could Orwell have been drinking in the Thirties.

A search led me to a blog post by the beer writer Martyn Cornell and specifically the mention of ‘Wallop‘ and ‘Simpson’s Dark Mild‘ …

“Mild, incidentally, is the drink the old man orders in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four when Winston Smith quizzes him in the pub about the past”

“You must have seen great changes since you were a young man,” said Winston tentatively. The old man’s pale blue eyes moved from the darts board to the bar, and from the bar to the door of the Gents … “The beer was better,” he said finally. “And cheaper! When I was a young man, mild beer – wallop we used to call it – was fourpence a pint. That was before the war, of course.”

We decided that I’d research and create a modern Mild recipe bringing it up to date with a higher alcohol content than they would of been served in the thirties – and of course, it would be called WALLOP.

Martin and I decided that we would brew this on The Grainfather and I started to design the recipe by adding ingredients onto the BeerSmith iOS app aiming for a 5% ABV Dark Mild Ale. I nipped over to Creative Wine Making (they also sell creative beer making stuff) in Ilkeston to pick up a new 25KG bag of Maris Otter and some specialty malts.

INGREDIENTS:

  • Water
  • Maris Otter Pale Malt
  • Chocolate Malt
  • Crystal Malt
  • Black Patent Malt
  • Goldings East Kent Hops
  • Irish Moss
  • SafAle English Ale Yeast

As you may of read from my previous posts, brewing with The Grainfather is a breeze and we loaded the recipe from BeerSmith onto The Grainfather connect Bluetooth control panel with a 60 minute mash and a 60 minute boil.

I was pretty impressed with the colour of the wort, I didn’t want to risk it going too dark like a stout and needed to see a little bit of red tint coming through the glass.

After only 8 days of fermentation in our conical SS Brewtech Brewmaster we bottled it directly from the FV with no secondary transfer. By the time it was opened at the 1984 Symposium it had conditioned in the bottle for 5 weeks.

My friends wife designed and printed the labels – they look great and obviously capture the spirit of the 1984 Symposium! and we were very happy with the results and feedback …

As an unlicensed non-commercial homebrew product we had to make it clear that it could not be sold, so each bottle was handed out for free at the event (including George Orwell’s son!). Perhaps this added to the great reviews? 😉

Written by Pacific Way Brewery · Categorized: Brewing · Tagged: Recipes

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Martyn Cornell says

    15th August 2017 at 9:57 am

    Glad you were inspired by my blog – got any of the beer left?

    Reply
    • Documentally says

      1st September 2017 at 10:05 am

      I have kept two bottles for a very special occasion. It went down really well. Orwell’s son very much enjoyed supping something close to what his Dad drank.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • Home
  • About Pacific Way Brew
  • Gallery
  • Sitemap
  • Privacy Policy
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept Read More
Privacy Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT