Mild in May 2013

Mild is always served in the form of a liquid, mostly.

 

It does generally on cask
though quite hard to describe
the milds I was brought up with were Dark Milds mainly Wilson's and Holt's
pitch black with a cream coloured thick tight head
the closest description I can give is straw with a touch of blackberry, very malty with a touch of sawdust

subtle flavours that bottling and canning diminish & kegging and bottle conditioning destroy

Back then finding a good pint of mild was difficult to say the least
penny pinching landlords and bar manager's had a tendency to exploit the fact that they had access to the contents of cask barrels.
Bitter from the drip tray and sometimes that of left at the end of the night in glasses would be poured back into the barrel

Mild, being dark had everything else's slops put back in
Mild, Guinness, lager, lemonade, cola etc

The thing back then was to find a place where the head honcho was a mild drinker

 

Yes there has always been a large number of exemplary bar keeps and servings of cask, otherwise the thing wouldn't have been worth saving.

I worked in a small social club that having had stewards that poured the drip trays into your pintpot before pouring right in front of you then got an ale lover in charge, though it only had Tetley bitter on cask
we refused the Warrington stock and only ever had the Leeds brew
and before where the lines were cleaned at most 3 times a year and then the cleaning fluid left in
going to regular cleaning, doubling the amount of ordinary water required to flush out the cleaning fluid
and even then we would on the end of that check by drinking that there was no taint to the water by drinking it before even thinking of allowing beer back into the pipes.
These simple actions (along with basic cellarmanship) turned undrinkable ale into premium bitter

I brought up the bad cask practices because it is the main reason that mild got a bad reputation
that and it being seen as purely an old mans drink.

 

Looks near perfect