Your first English Mild

Hoskins & Oldfield Mild, at the Great British Beer Festival in 1994. I think it won the Gold medal that year. Good stuff.

 

Ron,

My British drinking days were during the 90’s. If there was a beer called ‘mild’ on tap at the pubs I was totally unaware of it. I drank a lot of different cask ales in various pubs but to the best of my knowledge none of them were a ‘mild’. I drank mostly Bitter ales in England and Caledonian Scottish Ales when I was in Edinburgh.

To specifically answer the question, the only beer that I had with the word “mild” in the description was Yards Brawler. I have had this beer on cask, draft (CO2) and bottles. Needless to say but to my palate the cask was the tastiest.

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/450/46504

I did have a Stewart’s 60 Shilling Ale on cask (at a Yards Real Ale Invitational beer festival). That beer only was 2.7% ABV but it had a ‘ton’ of flavor for such a low gravity beer! It was a beer of beauty!! It is listed as being a Scottish Ale on BA but with a strength of 2.7% maybe it is close to being a ‘mild’?

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1754/67393

Cheers!

 

Probably Home like the OP.Back in the 70s used to bundle into a car and drive over from near Nottingham to a pub near Boston where exquisitely kept Bateman's mild was 10 pence a pint.
Generally though my formative drinking days were Home and Shipstone's (our village had 3 Home Ales pubs and one Shippo's)
I can tell you what my last pint of Mild was-yesterday lunchtime at the Belvoir Brewery tap where a pint of Dark Horse went down singing hymns.Dark Horse is a reincarnation of Shipstone's Mild and the brewer said that much of the roundness in the flavour comes from a lot of #4 brewing sugar.
Jack-Scottish Ale never was a style of beer.It should be reserved for beers brewed in Scotland as Scots beers are just the same as English and Welsh.Scotch Ale is a different matter.

 

First English Mild, from cask, at the Cheshire Cheese in London, mid '90s: Samuel Smith Dark Mild. An epiphany. Sadly, I don't believe it's brewed anymore.

 

First Mild I remember drinking is John Smith's Chestnut and then followed quickly by Theakston's Traditional Mild, all back in the early 90's. Then it was Banks's Original; a light mild which totally threw me with it looking like a best bitter. Still a nice quaff though!

 

Not 100% but reckon it was probably either Holdens or Bathams during my first year at Aston University (93)

Reckon I'd probably also encountered keg M&B Mild around the same time but not really counting that!

Have also had US brewed Mild on cask at DBA Brooklyn, Wandering Star - Dark Mild (which Alex Hall had a hand in)

 

In the UK - Hartley's Mild in 1985. (When I check the beers I had on that trip, it was overwhelmingly bitters - not even one stout. I'm wondering if milds, too, were just not commonly found at the time?)

In the US, bottled Gale's Festival Mild (with a pretty high ABV as I recall) was about the only beer labeled "Mild" I can recall until Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild showed up in the late '90's - with an even higher alcohol level.

 

Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby is a treat on cask and one I always look out for and re-visit

However it is 50+% stronger than any typical English mild in terms of ABV @ 6%

 

Highgate Mild at the White Horse on Parson's Green, 96 or 97.

 

Toohey's Old back in the 70s. I've had a few since then with Black Cat being my fav.

Okay, first English Mild, I don't know because back in the day, I never saw Mild on labels or at least I don't recall doing so.

 

Banks Mild was mine in 89. My favorite was the not so mild Sarah Hughes Ruby mild. I liked Hook Nortons as well

 

I was under the impression that Young's Dirty Dick's was a Mild, but looking over the BA entry I may have been mistaken. No mention of it in my MJ Pocket Guide either, so where the hell did I get that bit lodged in my brain?

Interesting semi-related quip about the style from one of the brewers at BridgePort in like 1992 or so. They brought their cask Blue Heron over to the GBBF (the beer was quite a bit darker back then, and dry hopped with domestic Tettnangers, very nice on cask and quite well rounded for a PNW brew) and his favorite comment that they got back from their British colleagues was "well, it starts out like a Mild...but then seems to get lost along the way."

Anyway, if Dirty Dick's doesn't qualify, then that era's Blue Heron is as close as I've gotten.

 

My first English Mild was a homebrew for my wife to drink while doing homework. Never had a commercial version sadly.

 

Dirty Dicks looks like a mild to me. Problem is that mild has never been defined. As everybody knows it simply denoted an ale which was drunk young unlike Old Ale which wasn't! But over the years it has appeared in so many different guises that any attempt to tie it down will always come against counter examples.
There are plenty of quite strong milds being brewed; low strength isn't a pre requisite even these days.

 

Sadly, to the best of my knowledge the only one we get here Stateside (and then, it's scarce) is Moorhouse Black Cat Mild. I never came across a cask mild in my two trips to the north of England, but my desire to have authentic British session ales is one of the main reasons I started homebrewing. In fact, next on my brewing schedule is what I'm calling Fuggles' Dark Mild: a 3.5% brew named after our feline friend, Fuggles.

Also looking to do a pale 'Match Day Mild' (loosely based on AK, maybe?) for enjoying by the imperial pint when the EPL gets going again.

 

Last night I did a bit of digging on the topic and came across this article:
http://allaboutbeer.com/learn-beer/styles/stylistically-speaking/2006/05/ales-born-to-be-mild/
and it confirms what you've posted here:
" In contrast, mild brews didn’t have the complex character of the mature beers, due to the fact that the ripened beers had been laid up in wooden casks. They picked up a myriad of sour, vinous, and musty nuances from the porous wood and its microflora. Fresh ale had little of this and, by comparison, was quite mild. To this point (the early 1700s), “mild” defined a condition rather than a style of beer, as all beer was made from the same raw materials, but differed only in age and strength. By today’s standards, though, mild was actually a formidable beer, coming in at around 7% ABV."
...as well as includes Dirty Dick's among its suggested examples. So I guess that means I wasn't totally off base with my assumption about the style, and it likely came from somewhere. I didn't find anything from Young's as to what style they classified DD as, but no doubt somebody (their importer perhaps?) was introducing it as a Mild in the States somewhere along the line.

 

First English (cask) Mild?
Highgate Mild. Damn, it was fine.

First ever cask mild?
Maclay 60/

Is it any wonder I have a very soft spot for mild?