Tag Archives: mild

Month of Mild: Origins

Make Mine Real Mild -- CAMRA, c.1980.For the last thirty-six years (with gaps) May has been the Campaign for Real Ale’s ‘Mild Month‘. This sub-campaign began life as an attempt to change CAMRA’s image, as much as to save and celebrate an endangered type of beer.

It began in December 1974 when a letter from Tim Beswick appeared in What’s Brewing making the point that mild wasn’t getting the attention it deserved. This prompted a thoughtful article by David Hall, of CAMRA’s South Manchester branch, in the January 1975 edition, in which he considered why this might be the case and what should be done about it. Members were blinkered, he said, and, in London especially, should stop demanding new and interesting beers while overlooking what was on their doorstep. ‘To those trying an unfamiliar brew,’ he went on, ‘and to those organising future beer exhibitions… the message must be don’t neglect the mild.’

It can’t have helped, he also pointed out, that CAMRA had tended to obsess over the decreasing original gravities (OG) of beer. Celebrating the relative potency of, say, Fuller’s ESB, and using the ever-dwindling alcohol content of keg bitter as a stick with which to beat the Big Six, sent the message that only strong beer was good beer.

Joe Goodwin, who became CAMRA Chairman, and sadly died in 1980 at the age of 31.

Joe Goodwin, who became CAMRA Chairman, and sadly died in 1980 at the age of 31.

Gears ground and the conversation continued until, in January 1977, this announcement appeared in What’s Brewing, echoing the point above.

CAMRA is to launch a determined effort to promote mild ale… Joe Goodwin, the NE [National Executive] member responsible for organising the venture, told What’s Brewing: ‘CAMRA exists to preserve choice. Since mild ales represent a significant portion of the range of real ales available in this country and since several milds are under threat of extinction, this has become a vital national campaign… As a campaign, we’re in danger of becoming too frequently associated with the promotion of over-priced, high-gravity beers. It’s about time we did something positive to change that image.’

That’s interesting for a couple of reasons. First, that ‘over-priced, high-gravity’ accusation is something now applied to ‘craft beer’; and, secondly, because it also represents a sign of CAMRA’s often-criticised drift into the ‘responsible drinking’ camp.

Has Mild Month been effective? Perhaps in preserving mild as a seasonal special, but there are relatively few that are brewed year-round, and those that are can be hard to find. As one veteran brewer said to us: ‘Breweries aren’t museums, but all good products ought to have a place.’

Old recipes, etiquette and wallop

1912 St Austell Stout

Being some notes and queries on subjects diverse.

Even more beers brewed to historic recipes

About this time last year, we tried to compile a reasonably complete list of beers being brewed to historic recipes. Now we note that one of the beers in the Sainsbury’s beer hunt is J.W. Lees Manchester Star, supposedly brewed to an 1884 porter recipe, and also hear news of a St Austell 1913 stout. (We’ve seen a recipe in their books from 1912, pictured.) The latest Fuller’s Past Masters beer, 1931 Burton Extra, has just been released. This summer also saw Camden brew a 1908 pale ale which was very tasty, but seemed (too us) rather too far from the original spec to really deserve the ‘historic’ tag.

Questions of pub etiquette

Maxwell asked this question on Twitter last night:

It’s a good question. Our feeling was that, if you need to ask, then you’re not eligible, but can anyone give a more helpful answer?

The meaning of ‘wallop’

Watching the BFI’s Roll out the Barrel DVD again the other night, we particularly enjoyed Down at the Local (1945), a propaganda short made for British troops serving overseas. It was designed to remind them of home, and of why they were fighting, and shows scenes of pubs in London, Lancashire and Somerset. In London, the narrators decide on mild and so ask the barmaid for ‘two pints of wallop‘. In Preston, incidentally, they decide on bitter and mild and so order ‘mixed’.

A second talk at Eden

The Boak and Bailey edutainment roadshow was at the Eden Project again last weekend. There was no Oakham Green Devil  IPA to demonstrate with this time, though, as it all got pilfered from a store cupboard. They left behind the St Austell HSD and Franziskaner.

 

What Gives a Beer Value?

A chart showing relative values we place on beers.

This is another attempt to ‘graph our relationship with beer‘. This time, it’s about capturing the various qualities that give a particular beer value in our eyes.

  • Sentiment: homesickness, happy memories, family connections.
  • Taste: how nice is it?
  • Complexity: and how deep?
  • Tradition: does it connect us with history and a particular culture? (Cask ale does this.)
  • Value: i.e. value for money.
  • Rarity: how likely are we to find this beer again any time soon?
  • Novelty: Schlenkerla’s smoked maerzen scores highly here.
  • Sessionability: we like beers we can drink a few of.
  • Refreshment: sometimes, we want beer to quench our thirst and cool us down.

For example, we know, objectively speaking, that Butcombe’s cask bitter isn’t the world’s best beer but, nonetheless, we value it more highly than almost as highly as Duvel. That sounds nuts, right? But we’re not saying it’s as great a a better beer, only that, for us, a pint of Butcombe Bitter is tied up with happy times in Somerset pubs with Bailey’s parents (sentiment); and, especially when we lived in London, it had a certain rarity value.

Even we were surprised to see that St Austell’s Black Prince Mild has the highest value of any beer on the chart, but then again, it is remarkably rare; gives us a powerful sense of engaging with brewing tradition; taps into all the sentimental associations we make with mild-loving grandparents; and is a wonderful session beer.

Schlenkerla Maerzen scores highly because, not only does smoked beer have novelty value, and a taste we happen to like, but even the merest whiff of it transports us back to Bamberg.

We could record marks for every beer we drink against this system. It might be interesting to see, after a year or two, which ends up having the most ‘value’, and whether we would also consider it our favourite beer.

What beer meant, what beer means

A glass of Pilsner beer in Wuerzburg, Germany.

A question from the Beerprole about what is and isn’t entitled to call itself ‘lager’ recently surfaced  on Twitter, before once again disappearing beneath the tide of the timeline. This reminded us of a similar discussion we’d had a few weeks before with about the term ‘mild’. UPDATE FOR CLARITY: In both cases, the question was a variation on “can beer X really be called a lager/mild”.

What confuses these and many other conversations is the co-existence of several meanings, each of which is equally correct, depending on context.

Historical (19th c.) Common understanding (what it’s come to mean)
 US homebrew judging guidance
Mild Any young beer (not aged) — could be strong, could be hoppy; not necessarily dark. Weak, dark, not bitter. Weak, dark, restrained hopping, top-fermented (“ale”).
Lager From the German “to store” — cold conditioned beer. Yellow, highly carbonated, cold — “refreshing”. Made with bottom-fermenting yeast.

Anyone attempting to sell a beer which is perfectly correctly described as lager or mild in historical or technical terms, but which confounds people’s expectations based on common modern usage, is setting up their customers to be disappointed.

Unless, that is, they take care to explain all of that in the labelling or through educated bar staff, when the difference from the common understanding might become an intriguing selling point.

Five suggestions for Greene King

Greene King, by all accounts, are puzzled and hurt by the disdain in which they (and especially their IPA) are held by beer geeks.

As usual, we (as Tandleman would say) sit on the fence a bit when it comes to Greene King: we recognise they make some good beers, but worry that their IPA is a Trojan horse — a beer so bland it has more in common with John Smith’s Extra Smooth than any other ‘real ale’.

However, inspired by this post at the Campaign for Really Good Beer, we thought we’d be constructive and suggest five things they can do to improve their image.

1. Instead of inviting critics and commentators one at a time to come and stand on your lovely roof and meet you charming head brewer, why not make a lot more information about how your beer is made available online? At the moment (unless we’re missing something) the website is all about branding and packaging.

2. Get out and try GK IPA as it is drunk in pubs all around the country: however subtle, balanced and well-made it might be at source, by the time it reaches, say, Exeter, it is usually, in our experience, warm, vinegary and flat. Has it got more market share than your quality control mechanisms can cope with?

3. As CAMRGB suggested, stop pretending that your pubs serve beers from a range of breweries and, in particular, nix the disingenuous London Glory. This is just cheeky and takes your customers for mugs.

4. With that huge London estate, surely there’s room somewhere for a pub which serves your full range of beers, from the rarely seen but apparently excellent mild, via Suffolk Strong, all the way up to the currently brewery-exclusive 5X? A flagship pub where you could send cynics to taste your best products as you intend them to be tasted?

5. On the subject of mild, given that anyone drinking GK IPA has already foregone any pretensions of youthfulness or trendiness, probably attracted by the low ABV as much as anything else, maybe there’s a market you’re failing to tap? We groan when we see your IPA on sale in a pub in Cornwall, but we’d be delighted to see your mild.

Some of this would also apply to St Austell and some other big regional brewers. If any of the above are already happening and we’ve missed them, let us know.

Canned dark mild to the rescue

Either we’re very harsh critics of our own homebrew or, after years of practice, we’re still crap at it. Whichever is true, we found ourselves this week with a polypin of what seemed to us very dry, very Cascade-flavoured, under-conditioned pale ale, which we didn’t much want to drink.

Then, in the supermarket, a sudden impulse saw us chuck four cans of Thwaites Dark Mild (£2.98) into our basket.

Tasted on its own, this was nothing special — watery, sweet with a little sickly caramel. As a mixer for half-and-half, however, it not only hit the spot, but transformed our pale ale into something magnificent. There was chemistry. The two beers complemented each other perfectly and produced something very like a good cask-conditioned stronger mild. Not a compromise but a real pleasure to drink.

Our conclusion: it’s worth keeping something like this tucked away in the larder. You never know when it might help you snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Hot Pub Time Machine

Sign outside a Plymouth pub advertising Courage Dark Mild

Wandering through Plymouth’s Altstadt, aka the Barbican, we stopped dead at the site of the sign outside the Queen’s Arms:

Special….. Courage “Dark Mild” sold here.

Courage Dark Mild? Really? We had to see for ourselves and, at any rate, needed a post fish-and-chips pint, so in we went.

We found ourselves in a clean, tidy pub which looked very like the one Bailey’s parents ran in Exeter in the early 1980s: velvet seat covers, dark wood, pickled eggs and high Victorian ceilings. The landlady greeted us cheerfully; the grizzled regulars at the end of the bar (possibly pirates) eyed us with suspicion.

We ordered Courage Dark Mild which was, indeed, on offer, albeit in keg form, alongside cask Bass and keg Courage Best Bitter. The antique pumpclips suggesting that someone put in a recurring order for those beers in about 1988 which has been magically fulfiled ever since.

You might be surprised to hear that it tasted pretty bloody good. As others have pointed out, mild benefits from cask conditioning perhaps even more than many other types of ale but, even so, this keg variant was fruity, dark and (being served pretty cold) very refreshing. It’s by no means complex but the darkness was from something other than a slug of caramel: there was a burned, roasted edge which made us want another.

How much Courage Dark Mild is actually being brewed? And are any other pubs in the country selling it?

 

Notes

1. This isn’t the first time capsule pub we’ve come across.

2. the pub wasn’t hot – a bit chilly if anything – but the truth cannot get in the way of a punning post title.

Nowt wrong with mild

A pint of Timothy Taylor's dark mild in a pub.

As Al at Fuggled has noted, there was a kind of collective howl of annoyance on Twitter when the Champion Beer of Britain was announced at GBBF yesterday. A mild again!? Is this really the best beer in Britain!?

Although we understand where some of this irritation is coming from, we didn’t share the outrage.

First, this was a decision by committee, and that’s bound to knock anything really wacky out of the running and lead to a safe choice — a beer at low to mid-strength without gimmicks. Even if keg beers were in the running, a light helles or pale ale at c.4.2% might have won, but not an 8% Blackberry Wheat Stout.

Secondly, however, it is actually a great beer. Of all the milds we’ve tried, it is easily one of the most flavourful, full-bodied and consistent. Where others can taste like mud and feel like water in the mouth, Mighty Oak Oscar Wilde, at 3.7%, has the coffee, chocolate and burnt grain flavours of a beer twice as big. We’ve spent whole evenings drinking nothing else.

Finally, this award doesn’t really mean that much.  What it probably does mean, however, is a significant boost in profile for a small brewery working hard to craft good beer. (Craft. See what we did?) It can’t be easy to make a 3.7% beer this good so let’s not begrudge them their well-deserved moment of glory.

And let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. Even if you’re annoyed at CAMRA, that doesn’t mean some of the things CAMRA supports, such as mild and cask ale, aren’t good things.

Mild pictured is purely for illustrative purposes. Does not represent actual mild mentioned in text. Any similarity to any other mild, porter or stout, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Now that's a good pint of beer

During two weeks in France and Spain, we drank lots of boring lager; some Basque cider; some wine; quite a few interesting beers; and a couple of downright nasty ones.

But, this afternoon, fresh off Eurostar, and having got rid of the accursed rucksacks, we popped to the local and had a couple of pints of Maldon Gold and Nethergate Sarah’s Ruby Mild, which tasted delicious, complex and exciting beyond belief.

It’s almost good to be back.

Bricklayers

On the same day we visited the Dove, we also made it to another legendary west London pub, the  Bricklayers in Putney. It’s beautifully done out, being neither trendy nor grotty, although it was bloody cold.

It was the week after their beer festival and the garden was full of spent casks — “Beer Fail!” Nothing was going to waste, though and anything left in the garden was going at a pound a pint.

We were excited to see a huge range of Timothy Taylor’s beers and didn’t even bother trying anything from the guest pumps or the garden. We’ve heard a lot about the legendary Dark Mild, and it is indeed fabulous: chocolate and vanilla and at only 3.5%. Ram Tam is a wonderfully fruity dark beer, also very special, with blackcurrant and clove notes. Why aren’t Tim Taylor’s other beers as well known as Landlord?