Monday 11 September 2017

Historic Mild Festival

Someone suggested this on Twitter. It's not a bad idea.

Sticking to a single style might seem restrictive. But because Mild has taken so many different forms over the last 200 years you could have beers from 2% to 11% ABV, bitter, malty and every colour you like.

Of course, Mild being as fashionable as spats, persuading punters to show up might be a harder sell. But, what the hell, I'm an optimist.

Anyone interested in either hosting or brewing a Mild for it? I've plenty of recipes to choose from.

6 comments:

mentaldental said...

I would be up for brewing one. And drinking a few.

Clearly I am as unfashionable as spats too.

Alistair Reece said...

I've toyed with the idea of a mild festival as part of American Mild Month. Hopefully for 2018 I will have more time to actually look into it.

qq said...

The M word is the kiss of death in most parts of the country - maybe it would work in Brum but nowhere else.

Why not just call it the "Historic Beer Festival"? Set a cut-off date of say 1971 (CAMRA foundation) or 1942 (Michael Jackson born). Actually, Brum might still be a good place to hold it - it doesn't really have a big beer festival of national significance to call its own despite its central location, and the locals have the greatest taste for dark beers as many of them would be.

Bosh said...

Mild's also an easy style to give to people who normally won't drink homebrew while still having some flavor. It should be right up there with wheat beer in craft brew lineups.

James H said...

Could do a beer for this too. Depending on location though, we don't currently deliver further south than Newcastle at the moment!

BrianW said...

I definitely vote for a historic beer festival or homebrew competition. I finally just bought the 1909 style guide. I would love to see a style guideline for each decade. I've been browsing through 1000s of old posts and finally figured out that if you search for the word "grists" you can find roughly drawn style guidelines for lots of styles and time periods. Creating a guide or index to all of those posts would be a very useful project.

As for mild, the next quarterly style competition for my homebrew club in Worcester (in Massachusetts, not England) is dark mild. I'm brewing a protest beer, as all of the other dark milds I have ever tasted from this group and many local breweries are basically session porters. I've imported some Brupaks Brewers Caramel and I am going to brew a mild that has no dark or roasted malts. All the color will be from invert sugar and caramel. I'm leaning towards brewing the 1945 Tetley's mild, which I've brewed before (albeit without the caramel). I'm sure I won't win, but I'm looking forward to drinking it.