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It’s Dark Around Here
by John Cryne
During March CAMRA was urging pub-goers to seek out a pint of real stout or porter to celebrate St Patrick's Day in style. Aware that in recent years large brewers have used massive advertising campaigns to promote pasteurised, filtered and chilled stouts, CAMRA’s suggestion for March 17th was to ask your pub for real, cask-conditioned stouts and porters and indulge in an authentic taste experience.
Although our local beer festival came a week later, we were happy to keep this theme going, and help promote what at times can seem like an endangered beer style.
Stout, Porter and Old Ale are considered by many to be the most traditional of beer styles, and yet are often misunderstood by those unfamiliar with their taste, or hard to find in pubs.
Festival goers palates were excited by Dark Star Oatmeal Stout and Original, Goacher's Crown Imperial Stout, Grand Union Honey Porter, Whitstable Oyster Stout and the joint winners of the Stout/Porter of the Festival award, Fuller's London Porter and Wentworth Oatmeal Stout.
The one thing you can say about stouts and porters is that they are dark. And that is often the case with another of the country’s unique beer styles – namely mild. However, to confuse the issue but adding to the drinker’s enjoyment, a lot of brewers also produce low gravity beers that do not use a dark malt, producing a light mild.
During May, CAMRA will be looking to celebrate this style of beer and the North London Branch will be directing its social events to those pubs where mild is more likely to be found, details can be found on the Diary page. Mild is one of the most traditional beer styles enjoying a revival in today's real ale market. However, despite a revival in parts of the country, cask conditioned mild is a rarity in many other parts, especially London, which is a crying shame, because mild is a distinctive and tasty beer and is one of, if not the oldest of beer styles in the country.
So what is it? It is a beer which has tastes and textures all its own being less hopped than bitter. The darkness comes from the use of darker malts and/or roasted barley. "Chocolate ", "fruity", "nutty" and "burnt" are all tastes to be found in the complexity of milds. However, as already noted, not all milds are dark. Yorkshire brewed Taylor's Golden Best is one of the best examples of a light coloured mild, as is Banks's Original.
Milds today tend to have an ABV in the 3% to 3.5% range, although there are some notable exceptions. In fact, a lot of the micro-breweries who try their hand at mild are bringing the alcohol content back up somewhat! In the latter half of the 19th Century, milds were brewed to about the same strength as bitters, as a response to the demand for a sweeter beer from the working classes, and in those days most bitters were around 6 to 7% ABV.
Hence you will find something like Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild at a whopping 6.0%. And from April 24th, Fuller’s will be offering Gales Festival Mild at 4.8%. This beer was a gold medal winner at CAMRA’s Winter Ales Festival in the strong beer and dark mild category and won silver in the overall competition. This will be a unique chance to sample this complex, fruity beer.
So hopefully, as the weather turns milder, why not turn your thoughts to mild and sample the range of flavours that are available to us. Good drinking!
John Cryne
Reproduced from the Full Pint, Issue 35.
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