From folk to heavy metal, Britain’s boozers are full of talented bands – our expert picks some of the best places to find them.
Sorry- this one’s behind a paywall! Source: England’s best pubs for live music
Ale
There are two basic types of beer: ales and lagers. Ales came first, and are considered one of the oldest beverage humans have produced. The main styles in the UK are Bitters, Porters, Stouts and Milds.
Can Mild Ale Make it in America?
By Jeff Alworth
Alistair Reece is a peripatetic Scot currently living in Virginia, and a bit of a contrarian. “My dad used to tell me as a kid that ‘if it’s easy, it’s not worth it,’ and anyone can advocate for super hoppy strong ales when they are 10 a penny.” So of course he’s championing mild ale, a style so obscure many Americans have never encountered it in the wild. Each year, the United Kingdom’s Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) promotes mild ale in May, and Reece decided to launch American Mild Month to run concurrently on this side of the Atlantic. “Mild is such a rare beast that I wanted to give it it’s own moment in the spotlight.”
Rare this beast is—even in England. Mild was, as recently as the 1960s, the best-selling style in Britain. (Just after World War II, it had a staggering 70 percent market share.) Bitters finally supplanted them in 1968, and milds went through a precipitous drop in popularity, bottoming out at around 1 percent of the market. It got so bad that CAMRA created Milds in May to promote the style. Ales have made a booming recovery in the U.K., but stronger, hoppier beers are leading the resurgence, and milds look out of step with the times, even there.
Recently, the Guardian published what amounted to an obituary for the style, arguing, “Tastes have changed. People have moved on. Mild looks destined to wither away. … During Mild Month, CAMRA encourages pubs to carry at least one mild, but the idea it will ever return as a regular feature feels farcical. Tastes are heading in the opposite direction. Modern beer drinkers crave flavour—trying to hold back that tide back seems pointless, retrograde even.”
And that’s what they’re saying in England.
But hold on. There’s a countervailing trend in the U.S. toward smaller beer, led by the rapid growth in “Session IPAs.” Furthermore, the “traditional” British mild is actually vastly different from milds of earlier centuries, so we can’t foreclose the possibility of further adaptation. What Reece proposes is not the manufacture and sale of extinct curiosities, but something living, speaking with an American accent. “Part of the project has been to encourage brewers to create an ‘American Mild’ style using American ingredients,” Reece explained. “So while I love the traditional dark mild, I am happy to try new things within the style as well.”
All About Mild
Let’s back up and look at that nearly-extinct curiosity struggling to survive in Britain. From the 1700s through to the early 20th century, a mild was any beer served fresh, rather than aged (or “stale”). Ales aged in casks picked up the characteristic flavors of Brettanomyces, which the young ales lacked. The word “mild” could apply to any beer, light or dark, weak or strong (and a lot of them were quite strong), so long as it was un-aged. It was an adjective more than a style.
Modern milds developed as a consequence of two events. The first, in 1880, was a change in the law that allowed brewers to use sugar and adjuncts in beer. Then came the world wars, rationing, tax hikes and what came to be known as the “great gravity drop,” as ales made do on far slighter grists. Milds, typically dark, weak (3% to 3.5%), and, well, mild-tasting, emerged after Hitler’s fall and slaked the thirst of the war generation.
They declined in the 1970s in part because they seemed out of fashion and in part because they were made very cheaply, but then enjoyed a quality renaissance when the first wave of small breweries started arriving in the 1970s and 1980s. (Unlike modern British “craft breweries,” these earlier pioneers made classic cask ales.) One of the practitioners of quality mild is John Boyce, founder of Essex’s Mighty Oak Brewing. His Oscar Wilde Mild has won the mild category twice and in 2011 won Champion Beer of Britain, the country’s highest laurel.
Boyce believes good milds should be made with quality malts and no sugar. “Milds are predominantly dark colored beers,” he says, outlining the style. “They usually use black malt to build some burnt/malt flavor to make up for the low bitterness.” The malts should layer in flavor, and the hops, “traditional English varieties such as Goldings, Fuggles, Challenger,” should round out the flavor profile, making a classic British cask tipple. Boyce’s is stronger than most milds (but still just 3.7%), and when it won champion beer, judges said it had a “great depth of character, and for the style has a lot of hop bitterness as well.”
Milds may be a niche style in Britain, but at breweries like Mighty Oak they manage to become flagship brands. The Guardian’s opinion notwithstanding, there’s no reason to think characterful examples of mild won’t find an audience in Britain.
American Mild?
That can’t be said for the U.S., though. Milds still fall (barely) within the British palate, but even great beers like Boyce’s are well outside America’s. They start out with three strikes against them: 1) they’re weaker even than light beer, 2) they’re mostly dark, and 3) they depend on an appreciation of subtle flavors. Americans are warming to session beers, but anything below 4% isn’t going to fly unless it’s intense. Dark beers are on the wane in the age of hops, and Americans love strong, vivid flavors. So while a Berliner weisse (super-low alcohol, but super-high flavor) or a session IPA (low alcohol, high hops) might make it, English-style milds are doomed.
But could they be Americanized just enough to creep into our preferred palate? What if you dialed down the color a notch or two to something between an amber and a brown, added a specialty malt or three (oats, rye, or something curious like buckwheat, spelt, or quinoa), and added the requisite level and type of American hopping? Would a dark amber oatmeal mild, dry-hopped with Citra, sell in the U.S.? And perhaps as relevantly, would an amber oatmeal Citra mild still qualify as a mild? (Color Reece skeptical. “Just because Citra tastes great doesn’t mean Citra is all I want to taste in my beer.”)
I’m willing to see boundaries stretched. While I love a proper English mild, I think I’d really enjoy this oatmeal Citra mild, too. Styles survive when they evolve with the times—and they die off when they stick needlessly to tradition. (Had any good Cöpenicker Moll lately?) I have no idea if Americans and milds can come to a meeting of the minds, but I’d like to see them try. Alistair Reece has managed to coax 48 breweries into making a mild for this inaugural Mild Month, which seems like a decent proof of concept. I hope others join in, and I hope even more come back next year and try their hand at a mild.
(Extra credit to anyone willing to try a dark amber, oatmeal Citra mild.)
Read more posts from The Beer Bible Blog.
Jeff Alworth is the author of the forthcoming book, The Beer Bible (Workman, 2015). Follow him on Twitter or find him at his blog, Beervana.
Can a good pub sell a country house?
A good pub within walking distance is on most buyers’ wish lists and can even uphold an area’s value. But what makes the perfect village pub? Arabella Youens investigates.
If the idea that a village pub can sell a country house sounds a bit extreme, here’s a story to prove it. When the parents of James Mackenzie, head of the country-house department at Strutt & Parker, were in Oman and reading a copy of Country Life, they spotted an old rectory near Lyme Regis in Dorset for sale.
As soon as they could, they jumped on a plane and booked a viewing,’ says Mr Mackenzie. ‘When they reached the top of the drive, my father jumped up onto the gate to inspect the exterior and its aspect. Then, without venturing any further, he took the agent for lunch in the pub opposite. Once that had passed the test, they bought the house – barely bothering to look inside.’
The Bell at Stow is one such pub – gorgeously cosy with beautiful food.
That a pub acts as a binding force within a community was ever thus, but, today, this role is on the rise, believes Harry Gladwin of The Buying Solution, Knight Frank’s buying arm, who says a good village pub comes within the top three requirements of a country-house buyer. ‘It’s a place where everyone meets, regardless of background. This mix of people and ideas around an open fire is what breathes life back into many villages and – unlike village shops – can never be replaced by Amazon.’
In recent months, Mr Gladwin has handled two transactions where a good pub was at the top of the list of must-haves; as neither client enjoyed cooking, the pub would be an extension of their kitchen, to feed the family and house guests.
The Ebrington Arms.
‘Even in less extreme scenarios,’ he adds, ‘it’s great entertainment for guests at weekends, especially if they can combine a good walk with a pub lunch or have a late dinner there after driving down from London.’ The best landlords, adds his colleague Jonathan Bramwell, ‘will keep their kitchens open a bit late to accommodate this type of clientele. Now that you can no longer make a profit on selling pints alone, it’s the food that helps in no small way to keep these pubs alive’.
‘We will never do pea shoots or foams’
Village pubs that are successful tread a fine line between catering for the weekend crowd and looking after locals. Peter Creed runs The Bell Inn at Langford in west Oxfordshire, having taken over the pub, which was then derelict, with his business partner, chef Tom Noest, two years ago. It’s taken off and they now have an outlet in Soho Farmhouse (The Little Bell) and are in the process of negotiating on another pub nearby.
‘A pub needs to act as a hub for the village,’ says Mr Creed. ‘It has to be somewhere that everyone can afford to go.’ To that end, they ensure the menu accommodates local families, as well as those wanting to celebrate an important anniversary. ‘We will never do pea shoots or foams.’
Dogs friendly is a must – luckily, the Ebrington Arms welcomes all types of patrons!
Although it may not come as a surprise that the British public hankers after a regular pint to wash down wholesome grub, Charlie Wells of Prime Purchase, Savills’ buying agents, believes the pub factor is increasingly playing a role for international buyers, too. ‘Foreign buyers love a good old-fashioned English pub with horse brasses, which doesn’t really exist in Scandinavia or America,’ he explains. In addition, they attract buyers with families; as children become teenagers, the pub becomes particularly useful if they can walk there and meet friends, rather than using parents as a taxi service.
The Fife Arms, Braemar – The Flying Stag adds a unique decorative touch.
‘A good pub makes a good village and vice versa,’ concludes Mr Gladwin. With that in mind, if the current pub isn’t hitting the mark, it might be a good plan to take it over. That may sound like a storyline from The Archers, but these days, communities are beginning to take matters into their own hands and village-owned, village-run pubs are reversing some of the decline in pub closures.
In (albeit rare) cases, incoming buyers of large country houses are also buying the pub to turn it around – a move made by a number of Mr Wells’s clients. This can work to benefit everyone, argues Adam Buxton of Middleton Advisors. ‘It might underpin the popularity of the village and ultimately help hold up values.’
Britain’s Most Successful Pub Owner Gives His Recipe for Full English Brexit
James interviewed pub owner Tim Martin on this week’s episode of Delingpole, discussing how Martin built his $400 million business, what it feels like to own 900–count ’em–pubs, and why he has succeeded where others have not.Then it’s on to Brexit, of which Martin was the most vocal backer in the business sector – even to the point of printing pro-Brexit arguments on his beer mats.
Martin is optimistic about the post-Brexit future – and knows exactly whom to blame for Britain’s failure to implement it so far. It’s all those Oxbridge educated elitist types. Not James, obviously. Just all the others…
Listen to the podcast at: Britain’s Most Successful Pub Owner Gives His Recipe for Full English Brexit