Dark Mild Ale (part three)

It was areal shock just how few hits I got in the British Newspaper Archive for "dark mild ale"' Literally, just a handful.

I had more luck - expanding the search, or rather, contracting it - to "dark mild". Which threw up this one:

 Suffolk and Essex Free Press - Thursday 18 December 1924, page 1.

Weird that they call it "Mild Beer" but "Bitter Ale". Even weirder that I drank a pint of XX, in the brewery tap, Less than two years ago.

I've occasionally seen the term "Mild Beer", but not very often. Being the sort of person who obsesses about this sort of rubbish, I've some data to back up this assertion.

I've spent years dredging information from old UK brewery price lists. Which I've put in a spreadsheet, as you do. It has over 4,000 entries. These are the only breweries I could find using the term "Mild Beer" to describer one of their products:

1902 Brook's Cubley Brook Brewery, Sheffield
1884 Leney, Wateringbury
1884 Adey and White, St. Albans
1890 Shepherd Neame, Faversham
1891 St. Anne's Well Brewery, Exeter
1882 Mackeson, Hythe
1882 Gardner, Ash Brewery, near Sandwich
1875 Devenish, Weymouth
1898 WE & J Rigden, Faversham

It's an extremely small subset. While there are hundreds, probably thousands, of instance of the use of the term "Mild Ale".

Why was I in the Greene King brewery tap? Because I was visiting their archive. Which is why I know exactly how strong all those Greene King beers were.

Greene King draught beers in 1935
beer	price per barrel	price (per gallon)	OG
XX Dark Mild Beer	68	23	1029
AK Light Bitter Ale	88	29	1033.2
IA Best Bitter Ale	114	38	1040.7
S Stout	114	38	1046
BA Burton Ale	130	43	1044.6
BBA Strong Ale	154	51	1059
Sources:
Suffolk and Essex Free Press - Thursday 18 December 1924, page 1.
Greene King brewing records held at the brewery, document numbers AC93/1/1.

Interesting that Greene King still had a Stout and a couple of Strong Ales on draught. Even more unusually they brewed three Stouts.

Draught Stout and Extra Stout are obviously the same beer. Special Stout really was pretty strong - 1065.4º. There was also an Oatmeal Stout at 1044º. With, as was traditional in most of the UK, bugger all oats in it.