And so a glass of mild it is, a dark sensuous looking
creature with a collar of foam the colour of freshly exposed apple flesh after one guilty bite.
Regulation toffee and mocha notes with a thin skein of orange existent just
over the taste horizon. The mild is 4.3%, so there is also a weight of alcohol
that you don’t normally find in weaker milds. However, there’s
also an acidity, a twang of sourness, a slight tartness suggestive of apple, which suggests to me that the beer is the first one pulled today (it was early afternoon)
and that it also might be a slow seller. So do I take it back? No, as I
don’t actually mind the staleness in the beer, in fact I think it makes it more
interesting and that leads onto another question. Would this have been
something similar to what stale porters tasted like in the 1800s? Who knows but it was enjoyable — and this then begs another question,
is it a case that some British cask beers retain a level of palatability (or even improve)
when they are on the turn?
Had a similar experience with a rauchweizenbock the other day, it was a bit sour. I don't think it was the beer the brewer intended, but it tasted great just the same.
ReplyDeleteThere is a style here just called Dark Ale that may as well be XX mild and, yes, on keg it can sit for a while. I like the surprise of the pint with odd tang.
ReplyDeleteSounds like we should be talking about these as the Duane Eddy of beer?
ReplyDeleteIt's a classic beer geek trap: if you're given a pint blind and its sour, you've got no way of telling if you love it because it's Belgian and obscure, or hate it because it's badly made...
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