Brew Day: Mackeson Milk Stout

Milk Stout: not a style I've brewed before, nor one I'm particularly fond of, but curiosity got the better of me when I saw the recipes for 1936 and 1952 Mackeson Milk Stout on Ron Pattinson's website, and I decided to give it a go.  I was working with a pitch of Wyeast 1318 anyway, and it'll be a good beer to give to guests who don't like dry and bitter beers quite as much as I do.

I wanted to brew the 1952 version, if only because the gravity was lighter and the beer less alcoholic.  However Kristen England's recipe percentages don't quite add up, so I ended up with an amalgamation of the two recipes, aiming for an original gravity in line with the 1952 version but with grain ratios closer to the 1936 one.  According to Kristen's notes, the lactose sugar was added at bottling, but I went ahead and added it for the last five minutes of the boil---saves fussing about it (or even forgetting it) later.

The brew day was fairly straight-forward.  I haven't been brewing darker beers recently, so it was interesting to test how accurate Bru'N Water's mash pH predictions were---I ended up a bit lower than the software predicted, but at 5.3 I was firmly in the right pH range.  I'll try to keep track of this one as it ferments too, in an ongoing effort to see how pH affects the flavour of my beers.

Anyway, a pretty short post, but there you go.  These first two beers (Ordinary Bitter, Milk Stout) were to get the yeast nice and healthy for a couple of bigger ones I have planned for the next few weeks.  In the meantime, I'll probably have some tasting notes to post later this week.

Recipe:

Measured O.G: 1.040
Measured F.G:

Mash: 153°F:

Malt:

39.3%  US 2-Row

30.7%  Pearl
6.0%  Brown Malt
5.0%  Chocolate Malt
8.0%  Invert #3
3.0%  Cane Sugar
8.0%  Lactose

Hops:

EKG          60          23.2 IBUs
EKG          30          10.7 IBUs

Yeast:

Wyeast 1318