I’ve always found it curious that CAMRA promotes mild in May. If the urban myth is correct and it’s simply about alliteration, why not do it March?
Because, in Truro, on Saturday, it was one of the hottest days of the year so far. The city was buzzing, with its football team due on an open-top bus, parading their National League South trophy.
A CAMRA mild mini beer festival had been organised “upstairs at the Old Ale House” with “up to six different milds on show”. It was downstairs and there were three. In pins.
Still, I generally favour quality over quantity, and the three were excellent. I’d made a point of going for the national CAMRA award-winning Penzance Brewing Co Mild (3.6% ABV) , and it didn’t let me down. A solid five out of five on anybody’s scale. Very deep red with a slightly off-white head that laces beautifully, a hint of boozy dark fruit on the nose, leading into smooth, roasty, chocolately notes in a remarkable smooth body.
As it happens, the other two cask offerings were on great form, too. Driftwood Spars’ Blackheads Mild is darker than Penzance and has coffee on the aroma, again very smooth and lightly roasty, with a hint of spiciness. Pressed Rat and Warthog, from Triple fff Brewery, in Hampshire, is more fruity and lighter in colour and tone, with some red apple skin and cherry notes in there, but some balancing lactose sweetness.
The Old Ale House is an award-winning pub, and flies the flag well for cask beer, promoting a mostly Cornish menu. In addition to the mild, I tried the Tintagel Brewery Sir Lancelot, a very citrussy pale ale, and Penzance’s revamped Crowlas, now labelled an amber ale rather than a bitter. Both on excellent form.
The Old Ale House and me go back a long time, some 35 years. I’d just joined the local newspaper, The West Briton, and this pub was the lunchtime haunt/satellite office. Anyone who was anyone in the city, from councillors and council officers to members of the cathedral choir, drank in there. It’s where I developed a taste for Courage Directors, when it was still made by Courage, and original Old Speckled Hen, made by Morland, in Oxfordshire.
The major difference these days is the addition of a craft beer tap wall, tucked towards the rear of the big bar area, but the ethos of the place remains the same. Beer and conversation, and free monkey nuts, the shells of which are scattered across the boarded floor. Well worth a visit when you’re in Cornwall’s capital city, right next to the bus station.
If I was organising a mild month, I’d do it n February. A quiet month for pubs still, before the weather warms up, and a time when a campaign to get more people through the door would go down well with licensees, I’m sure. Okay, Mild February doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, but on Saturday milds — lovely though they were — seemed counter-intuitive, and the hops that followed were welcome!
