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.