Thursday 21 November 2019

Southwestern Mild Ales 1949 - 1951

We conclude this series on Mild just after WW II with a look at examples from the Southwest. Which, as I know from personal experience, was one of the first areas where Mild started to become rare.  By the late 1970s many breweries in the region had discontinued their cask Mild. It was difficult to find the Mild of the ones who did continue to brew it.

Looking in the 1980 Good Beer Guide, there was no cask Mild from any of these breweries: Arkell, Blue Anchor, Devenish, Eldridge Pope, Gibbs Mew, Hall & Woodhouse, Palmer, St. Austell, Usher, Wadworth and Whitbread Cheltenham. The only brewery still making one was the Courage brewery in Plymouth, with its excellent Heavy. Coincidentally, this is one of the breweries featured in the table.

Based on my later experience of beers from the region, I’d expected the Milds to be on the weaker side. While, in fact, the opposite is true. This could just be due to the small sample size. In most other parts of England, the West Midlands excepted, Milds averaged just over 1030º, with many examples around 1028º. Here the weakest example was 1032.6º.

As in pretty much every part of the country, other than London, the rate of attenuation is mostly pretty high. Leaving the average ABV only just shy of 4% ABV. Pretty strong for a Mild in the immediate post-war period.

With the exception of the Brain beer, which is from Wales so not really the Southwest, none of the examples is fully dark. A couple are very pale and the others what I would describe as semi-dark.


Southwestern Mild Ales 1949 - 1951
Year Brewer Beer Price per pint (d) OG FG ABV App. Atten-uation colour
1950 Plymouth Breweries Mild Ale 17 1038.1 1006.9 4.06 81.89% 42
1951 Plymouth Breweries Mild Ale 18 1040.3 1009.5 4.00 76.43% 42
1949 St. Annes Brewery Mild Ale 13 1034.9 1003 4.16 91.40% 20
1950 Starkey, Knight & Ford Mild Ale 14 1037.8 1008.5 3.80 77.51% 50
1949 City Brewery Mild Ale 13 1032.6 1006.8 3.35 79.14% 21
1951 Brains Mild Ale 15 1033.9 1004.3 3.85 87.32% 85
Average 15 1036.3 1006.5 3.87 82.28% 43.3
Source:
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/002.

No comments: