With Session Beer Day right around the corner (April 7th), it’s time to visit one of Drew’s absolute favorite beer styles - Mild. This blandly named style has a long and interesting history with many variations of what it means to be mild. So how about digging into one of the best beers you can quaff over a long session. Flat caps optional, but awesome beer is mandatory.
That was a good one.
Thank ya, sir!
Dang, it’s been a long time since I brewed a mild. I’ve got a big move planned for next week and probably not be brewing again for a while, but I definitely need to put a mild on the short list once I can manage to brew again.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a Mild. Is it a type of IPA?
Originally, Mild could have turned into IPA! In the 19th c / early 20th c Mild meant a beer that was not aged, served as soon as fermentation was complete: What we call cask ale, and back then Americans called cream ale. If the beer was aged for months with Brett going at it, it was stock ale: IPA was a marketing term for stock ale. So a split batch of pale ale could yield a Mild right away and grow up to be an IPA, in theory! Notice that not one of those terms (Mild, Cream Ale, IPA…) means now what it did 100 years ago! And then there are the counterparts on the Dark Side, 100 years ago called Porter (fresh on cask) and Stout (Brett aged)…
Thanks Robert.
I haven’t got around to listening to the podcast yet, but I’m sure it’s about what they call mild now in England. That’s the descendent of porter: really low alcohol, dark, a little roasty. Nearly extinct on its home soil. You could probably make one from a batch sparged third running of one of your big double mashes!
EDIT 'cause Mild today was Porter then, and what was Mild then is now Bitter, and… :o
Sounds like there are multiple levels of “back then”. I dont doubt Drew. So the take away is Mild, depending on when, is any beer drank fresh. I’ve made a lot of those, and had a few commercial examples. If you narrow it to current mild, <3.8% English ~10 IBU… No, I’ve never had one.
Yeah, that’s the thing with historical beers, the same names and words have evolved over time, and beers have too, but not locked together: a beer and its name can break up and go their separate ways. So in 1900 “cream ale” in the US was essentially what “English Bitter” is today. Is that the “historical” cream ale? Not if you mean the 1930s beer of the same name. It’s the same with just about every style and name. I think the mistake that’s made in tracing the history of a style is just tracing recipes under the same name. So a book on today’s “mild” would have to work its way through things called porter, brown ale, and a dozen other names at some time. A book on everything ever called “mild” – or any other style name – would make no sense, it would just be listing random unrelated beers.
I’ve had mild in England.
This one had loads of flavor at 3.0%.
The time we went to Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham, they had 2 Milds on the handpumps. One was ~3.4%, and the other Susan called an Imperial Mild at a little over 5%. It was a fun day, and I switched from the 3.8% bitter I was drinking to the Mild, as it was milder, and we had time to kill waiting on the next train.
I spent a few years in England at the end of the 80s. Mild was rare as a unicorn at that time, but only recently so. It was a joy to find one, especially as I recall 3.0% was high end of the examples remaining. Some were 2.5ish.But more often than not they were found kegged, not casked. You could enjoy one anytime, savor the flavor, and not worry about the alcohol. I recall Thwaites, which I believe a friend recommended at a pub called the Station, next to (of course) the station in Preston, Lancs. Indeed a good choice if you have time to pass waiting on a train!
My favorite Drew quote, “I’m not a pilsner guy.”
Thank you!! There’s two of us now.
Pilsner malt or beer? I’ve had a good Pilsner (beer) but don’t particularly like Pilsner (malt). Not sure why. Just not a fan.
In context, pilsner beer
Yup… I like a well made pilsner when it’s fresh and super high quality, but most renditions just leave me flat. I want a beer with more to it, even when the alcohol is lower. I’m glad people liked the show, and yes, I did walk through all the variations of the word mild. Didn’t talk much about porter->mild because I didn’t see as much to be confident about when talking about that.
I love the style shows for the Brew Files, just wish I could research and write them faster!
You made them sound tasty, and one day when I have a dual regulator I will try it out. Thanks Drew
Maybe I’m not sure just what a Mild is now. But the author of the old Brewers Publications style book on it, Dave Sutula, is the brewmaster at a brewery around here, Royal Docks. They have a distinctly English inclination. I have never been disappointed with any beer I’ve had from them. Right now a staple in my fridge is his “+44 Brown Ale,” 20 IBU, 5.5%abv, and the blurb tells you it’s for guys who don’t overanalyze their beer. On the high side for alcohol, but everything else I loved about English Mild.
I could not disagree more. I think this type of research (and Ron Pattinson is the all-time king of this, with research based on thousands and thousands of brewing records covering centuries of British breweries–including two books on Mild with lots of historical recipes) is absolutely crucial so that we avoid saying things like “mild is a descendant of porter” or that mild is roasty. There are so many misconceptions among homebrewers about beer styles because they make assumptions and don’t read beer history. Just because beer evolves does not mean that it doesn’t make sense to use the same name. And these beers aren’t unrelated. They evolved in a way that actually does make sense. Tastes change. Taxation policies, wars, shortages, etc force change.
Mild is a great example, if not the best. Ron Pattinson’s “The Homebrewer’s Guide to Vintage Beer” has a table on page 104 that shows the OG and hopping rate for Whitbread Mild from every decade between 1836 to 1950. This beer did not become porter or descend from porter. It did become darker, probably because it also became weaker and there is a psychological trick that darker beer is stronger than lighter beer. But the darker color came from caramel coloring, not roasted malts. Now, late 20th century homebrewers came along and saw modern dark mild and the only way they knew to make it dark was to add roasted malts, so we ended up with modern roasty dark mild. But all along mild was a beer meant to be served fresh (“mild”).
And I am glad that the BJCP is taking this history more seriously. Frankly, I would love to see competitions that specify a decade for a certain beer style. We can see this so clearly now in the way IPA is evolving. West Coast IPA from 5-10 years ago is way different from a New England IPA, but I wouldn’t say that they are unrelated or that it doesn’t make sense to call them both IPAs.
Sorry I’m no Ron Pattinson (though I have read and do admire and trust his work.) But I have done some historical reading of my own which clearly leads to my conclusion that names and fashions change in sometimes misleading ways. Is today’s mild descended from 1850s porter? Of course not. But have the names mild and porter crossed paths and been used in different ways in different times and places? Absolutely. In turn of the 20th century brewing texts, mild refers to any beer not aged/vatted, and in some sources the terms stout and porter refer respectively to the stock and running versions of similar dark beers. So a porter would be referred to as mild – possibly clouding the historical picture. Especially as 50 years earlier, porter itself was always a vatted beer, and stout referred only to a particular strength, even applied to pale ales. You have to understand the context in which terms have been used by various sources, so as not to assume that ANY beer ever called mild is in the same category and lineage. Ron is an outlier among writers in his attention to the evolution of particular lineages and ability not to be misled by current conceptions of style or popular usage.
EDIT Note that the distinction between “mild” and “stale, vatted, old, stock” goes back centuries. It is only after the decline of stock beers around the turn of the 20th century that mild could be exclusively applied to one style of beer, the one we know.