Buffalo Brews Podcast

BEAR-ly Getting Started 6.1 - English Mild

Season 4 Episode 115

Happy 1st Anniversary to Bear-ly Getting Started! Year two starts as we explore 'UK in a Day'. Twenty-four hours of fine European selections, eight hours at a time. In this first episode we learn about English Style Mild Ale. What is it and what makes it, the original? What is a morish quality to beer? We ask the question of what people may not like about dark beers. Featuring Dark & Mild from Destination Unknown Beer Company (DUBCO). 

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So we've just come off of IPA for days. For days. Now, so that, and that was six days, because we couldn't call it IPAs for a week. 

 

Yeah, we didn't, I didn't have the foresight for that one. I should have just tacked on the bonus IPA and just, you know, we could have had seven for the week and, but you know, six, I think I told you before, did I want to do five? Do I want to, I like the even numbers. Six just felt right. 

 

And it was a nice day, you know, because one of the comments I did get was that things in threes seem to flow. So people like the fact that it was six, so it could be like three and three. Although we haven't, as of recording this batch recording today, we haven't put out the sixth one yet, but we're going to finish strong. 

 

Here we go. So, so where, so where does that take us now? So we've gone from IPAs for days. Now we're into UK for one, for a day, in a day, in a day. 

 

Yeah. Well, you know, I like to have all these quirky and fun names to kind of remember our classes by. And we do, you know, we do multiple, we offer these classes. 

 

We're in person. You would try a similar style beers and we go in depth, last longer than a podcast. We don't speak as much about each beer as we do with the podcast here, but we will try a flight of four, five, six. 

 

Usually I keep it to around six max of beers and it could be based on the cultural. So we have done UK and we're doing UK in a day, which is our UK, English, Irish and Scottish styles. Earlier, I think our first season was German because we came out a blazing with an Oktoberfest. 

 

So we started with Get the Most of Prost and then we had done Blissfully Belgian. We do have a Cheers to American Beers, so that might pop up as a series here with Barely Getting Started at some point. Then the style classes, we did Shout for Stouts, Sour Power. 

 

We just are finishing up, so make sure you catch that last episode of the IPAs for Days. And I, you know, wanted to get us back into a cultural. I'm also thinking of what haven't we done yet? And then there's obviously some crossovers between styles and cultures. 

 

So I wanted to do the UK in a day because we had done that class a little bit ago, not too long ago, and I had some good beers on the shelf to do for it. So I was like, all right, you know, let's let's let's do the UK in a day. And and I do know that Northern Ireland is a part of the UK, but Ireland is not. 

 

So when we do our Irish beers, it just sounds better to say UK in a day and include an Irish beer. But I do know what makes up the UK. So some people have gotten onto the finer points of that. 

 

And, you know, the idea is I feel like the English ales don't get not that they don't get the respect that they deserve. They just they're not brewed as much. And, you know, they're not as exciting as some of the beers that receive some of the hype from the U.S. breweries. 

 

But they're, you know, a very traditional beer that laid the groundwork for a lot of the beers that you see on American draft boards and brewers lists to make. So being able to kind of just try a bunch of different beers from, you know, England, Ireland and Scotland kind of lets you know, hey, there's this other family of beers out there. And when you see one of them pop up, just like everything we do here, it's meant to kind of let you be a little bit more educated about what you're ordering and what to expect, because a lot of times people don't know what to expect. 

 

So they don't order it because maybe they only have a short period of time or a short allotment of calories or alcohol or whatever their reasoning is. They just, you know, gloss over the board and skip some of these beers. And hopefully with these series, when you hear something, whether it's cultural or about a style, you try one of those or at least ask for a sample of it or put it on your flight board so that you can try something a little bit different. 

 

And that's a part of the education and elevation we strive for here at Magic Bear. Now, you've so you've talked about UK in a day that you've done as part of your your education series that you do here, your tasting series. Now, when you're doing that, is something like what we've got on the table here or what kind of what kind of selections have you used in the past? Just kind of doing an honorable mention for the series we're about to do here. 

 

There you go. All right. So we a lot of times I would use kind of like an organic pale ale from Sam Smith. 

 

But if you remember, we did that as the beginning of our IPAs for days to kind of talk about the roots. That's where like the crossover is. So a lot of times I would do like an English pale ale or I would do an oatmeal stout or some sort of English stout because a lot of, you know, traditional beers from England were darker and maltier. 

 

Then I would, you know, Ireland usually would do some sort of dry Irish stout or, you know, we're a Guinness family, but we talked quite a bit about dry Irish stout with our shout for stouts. So I decided not to do that with this UK in the day. Again, it's that all those crossovers. 

 

I got to make sure I'm picking good stuff for our content. But I, you know, obviously we do a lot of different Guinnesses to represent Ireland or we'll do an Irish red like we will do in this series. Those are the main that you think of when you think of Ireland. 

 

I typically I'll do some sort of Scotch ale. When I do UK for a day, I try to get actual beer from the UK or imports versus American interpretations of the style. And with the podcast here, that's not always the case. 

 

Because, you know, we're more talking about it and, you know, me and you are drinking it. But people aren't experiencing the beer firsthand. They can take the classes to try some of the beers that way. 

 

So I will just make sure that it's the style because, you know, we're just mainly talking about it when we do the podcast. So I'll get Scotch ales from Scotland. I've done Scottish ales. 

 

We'll talk about a little bit more about that when we get into that, because there's a difference between Scotch ale and Scottish ale. I mean, both from Scotland, but we'll get into that. Then, you know, I've also done, you know, English bitters when I can find them in cans or bottles. 

 

So those are kind of the main ones, obviously, English porters or any type of English. I had an English IPA once that I was able to get and we did that. But for the most part, you know, it's Irish reds and stouts, you know, Guinness and dry Irish stouts for Ireland, Scottish and Scotch ales for Scotland, and then some sort of darker beer and then a either pale ale or bitter from England. 

 

Nice. This will be a fun series to play around with, just like you said, covering that gambit going from, you know, an English, an English mild. Like you said, we're going to be having some Scottish ale at some point as well. 

 

Personal favorite of mine. So, yeah, we're going to have some fun with this series. Yeah. 

 

So let's let's, you know, start focusing on what we're doing today. So we're going to go a little bit more chronologically. So and we're going to we're going to start in England and then we're going to hit up Ireland and Scotland with our later episodes. 

 

So we are going to start with an English mild or also known as a dark mild, a mild beer from Dubco or Destination Unknown Brewing Company. They are a New York state beer, but they're from Bayshore, New York. And again, like I've said in previous episodes, one of the things I do is try to look at something that we can talk about, have some tangents, reel myself back in because we're barely getting started. 

 

But, you know, enough to fill a full podcast without just saying, yep, this tastes good on to the next or this tastes bad. Let's hurry up to the next. So the dark and mild is the name of this beer, but the style is dark mild or an English style mild. 

 

One huge characteristic about English ales is they're usually lower ABV. The taxation in England still is based off of ABV. So to keep the taxes down, you know, alcohol has always been kept lower. 

 

But the pub and the pub culture in England is very big. OK, it would be something where you do your hard day's work and then you're at the pub for quite some time. And I think we might have brought it up before, but there's a word that they call about some beers that have a moorish quality where you just want more of it. 

 

And I think it was explained once that it's one of the beers that it has a moorish quality. It means you are stopping because you don't need to, but you ought to. It's not something where it's like, oh, I need to stop. 

 

I've had way too much. It's just, you know what? I've been I've been drinking. I have to say no at some point. 

 

And but it just has that quality of I just need more. I want more. So they want lower ABV so they can drink it in session. 

 

They drink larger pints, their imperial pints, a little bit like 20 ounces of a U.S. pint. So to lay the found work of what this style is, you know, we'll get a little bit of the history and then talk about a little bit the flavor profile. But the history we'll talk about first is, you know, all ales prior to, you know, mid 1800s, you know, we'll just say before the 1800s were pretty much darker beers, a little bit more murkier, not so clean and crisp like we got into with the lagers when we were talking about that in our Get the Most of Prost because the technology wasn't really there. 

 

You kind of either could do light malt and when you're, you know, talking light and dark malts, it's how much it's been roasted, you know, so we take the barley, we're roasting it, you know, some a little bit more familiar to people as coffee beans, think light roast, dark roast, espresso, but, you know, light roast malts mean that it's very, very pale. OK, very pale. And it was hard to get that until 1817, I think it was when Daniel Wheeler came out with his roasting drum and you were able to use indirect heat to roast your malt and you could get a roasted malt at a very lower color range on the SRM scale versus it was kind of I always bring up the roasted toasted marshmallow analogy where, you know, if you have the patience and you keep it away, right, not the it's an indirect heat and you toast your marshmallow, especially Fourth of July was just last weekish, you can take your time and get that low, golden, perfect marshmallow if that's the way you like it. 

 

Or if you're directly over flame and it catches on fire, it goes from light to dark, immediately blow it out. And that's kind of like what happened with, you know, these beers before the eighteen hundreds. Everything was a little bit smokier, a little bit darker because it just had to have that dark roast. 

 

It was hard to get the light roast. And then it was kind of over open flame or close enough to the the source of the heat, which was fire. And at that time it was wood fired. 

 

So you got some smokiness in there. So that was all, you know, a part of the characteristics of a lot of English ales. Most of them were brown. 

 

I believe a long time ago they would call it two penny brown because that's the cost of it. And, you know, it was just it was what you were drinking at the pub. It was just what was available. 

 

And you kind of just expected that you were getting this slightly smoky, slightly, not slightly, pretty dark beer and you're just drinking it. And after a while there was, you know, only a couple of options available on draft and people would start having the publican, the person who owned the pub or your bartender. They would start blending. 

 

They would say, you know what, let me get a little bit of the number two, the number three and the number one. We talked about that before. Yeah. 

 

And they call it like three threads. So each beer was a thread and they were basically when you only had a couple of beer options, you can make additional options by basically blending the beer. Well, this slowed your bartender down and that's kind of like the birth of Porter. 

 

So Porter would be, OK, well, people like their stuff blended. It's a little bit of the older beer with a little bit of the newer beer with this, that to give it this, you know, just different flavor profile, because basically there was stale beer, which, you know, sounds bad, but they're using that term to say that it's been aged. And when people were aging it, they're aging it in, you know, large barrels and it would get some of that sour flavor because we talked about with sour power, there'd be the microorganisms that would be in your wood that kind of just became permanent residents. 

 

And it would get a little bit of a sour flavor. And one of the reasons they wanted to age it is to get that smoke flavor and let it kind of rest out. They just wanted a smoother, easier drinking beer. 

 

And when you had younger beer, it might be a little bit more aggressive in flavor, but it didn't have that that stale, like slight sourness to it. So that is where mild came about with the name because it was a mild, not meaning it just wasn't sour. It wasn't aged. 

 

It was a mild beer, didn't have too much character from the aging in the barrel. That's getting a little ahead of myself because we're still talking porters here. Porters were huge in the 1700s, kind of was a part of the, you know, the Industrial Revolution in England. 

 

It was like, OK, we got a steam engine now. How do we produce more of this? Because it wasn't cheap to make it. And then since they're aging it, you're storing it. 

 

You have these massive warehouses that are storing, you know, kind of like how bourbon, you know, just has so many, you know, so much is being stored it and whiskey and scotch. Same thing was kind of going on with porter because they would want to take stock ale. That's the stuff that's being aged. 

 

And you take fresh ale and then they would mix it and then you would have, you know, a porter, which is now this blended, well-balanced kind of like when you think of wine and they're blending it and it's less, you know, just, hey, this is one single vintage. It's more of, hey, this is a red blend. Well, this was a blend to give it a nice rounded character. 

 

So you had some of the mild, some of the stale or the aged beer and, you know, just kind of mixing it. We also talked about that with lambics and goose. So think of all that in the same vein as of how the porter brewing kind of took place. 

 

Well, then things got cheaper because that Daniel Wheeler's roasting drum came out. So they were able to make paler malts, which pale malts were cheaper. And they realized that, hey, if we just use more of the pale malts, but then add in some of the dark roasted malts, we'll still get our dark beer. 

 

We'll get everything that we're looking for, but at a cheaper price because we got to cut corners somewhere because, you know, things are costly to, you know, store everything and everything that I had mentioned about the production of such a large amount of beer. Well, people got upset because they didn't really, you know, you change it. It's like, you know, you change the recipe on us and it's like, how dare the. 

 

And, you know, people were upset that it wasn't the same old, same old and Porter kind of took a backseat a little bit. And then now we're talking, you know, even till today, like dark milds and a mild that was for the longest, that was basically the number one beer in the pubs in England. And we'll talk about how bitters took over in our next episode. 

 

But we're sticking with the dark here. We're sticking with the dark mild because this is very English in character because low ABV, it's mild, meaning not stale, not soured. So a very easy drinking, slightly roasty, dark beer. 

 

So we got some of the history on that. And, you know, one thing I realized listening to some of our last episodes is I never ask if you have any questions. You know, I always ask in my classes, do you have any questions? And I know your knowledge is quite, quite up there. 

 

But, you know, if you ever have any questions of what I'm saying, feel free, because I might have stumbled over something that's in the fishbowl of my brain that I didn't bring up. But if you feel I miss anything or have any questions before we crack this bad boy up and start talking, tasting notes. No, I'm still stuck on how dare thee. 

 

How dare thee. How dare thee. Yes. 

 

Well, with that being said, let's get to looking, tasting, smelling, all the good stuff. Right. So it's called a dark, mild or just an English mild. 

 

But if you hear it dark, mild, we're expecting a dark beer. Now, when I think of dark beers, especially when people tell me I don't like dark beers, can you know, first thing I ask people is would you drink coffee? And they're like every day. And I'm like, OK, well, you should probably try some dark beers on a flight board or however you can to see if there's something out there that might appease your palate a little more. 

 

So go ahead. Yeah. No, I was going to say, what would be the most common feedback that you would get? Because I'm sure you're asking the question, well, what don't you like about dark beers? People usually equate dark beers with heavy. 

 

OK, they think it's going to be a heavy beer, it's too heavy or it's too much like. And those to me, you know, especially as, you know, an educator, a tour guide, a Cicerone, like what does too much mean? You know, because you could think that a sour beer is way too much because a lot of people that don't like darker beers, you know, it's like they get their gateway beer into the sours or something a little sweeter. And I'm like, to me, that could be too much. 

 

So too much how you like coffee. Is it too roasty? A lot of times I think it's the bitterness that gets them. There's just too much of that, you know, when we talk more of like American stouts or the imperial stouts that have that heavy roast bitterness. 

 

You know, I'm not talking any pastry stouts where there's a ton of additional flavors in there. Right. A whole different thing. 

 

A whole different thing. Yeah. So a lot of times people just think it's too intense. 

 

It's too much. So, you know, we're doing a let's talk lagers class next week or in a couple of weeks here at Magic Bear. End of July. 

 

I know, you know, timing is going to be different when this comes out, but keep your eye out for that. That's another styles class. But there's dark lagers where, you know, it's just a lot lighter on your palate. 

 

I always tell people, have you had a porter? Have you just tried brown ales? So I kind of look at things as if you if you really want to look at the spectrum of darker beers, I tell people, think you've got brown ales, which are a little chocolate, touch of caramel, a little bit of vanilla and slightly roasty. Then you take it up a notch to porter and you still have chocolate, caramel, vanilla. But those are a little less still pretty chocolatey, still a hint of caramel. 

 

But the caramel kind of comes down and you're getting a little roast here. OK, now you're you're you're approaching that light roast coffee. Then you go and you're hitting a stout. 

 

Stout is like, yes, there's still some chocolate kind of lost the caramel. I'm basically just a little bit of chocolate. And I'm definitely at just coffee now. 

 

You know, regular roasted, a medium roast coffee. Now there's some little bit more bitterness involved because, you know, there is bitterness that comes in beer that's not from hops. It's it's just from the the roast of the beer or of the malt to give you the dark beer. 

 

Then you get that imperial stuff that's basically like espresso. Now, you know, almost no chocolate left. It's it's like coffee through and through with almost an acrid bitterness. 

 

And that then needs to be balanced with something. So the hops in there play a role where, you know, that brings different flavors, some citrusy notes, and then the sweetness usually goes up, which means that's, you know, when sweetness goes up, that's due to the gravity, meaning the alcohol content and all that has to to balance. Because in the end, what we're looking for is well-balanced beers. 

 

So if it's, you know, very roasty bitterness, then usually it's going to be a higher ABV, just like when we were talking IPAs. If it's going to be a very hoppy beer, then it's probably going to be a little bit maltier to kind of balance it. So all of that being said, that was to give you kind of like the forefront of how all of this works. 

 

And then you've got this dark, mild that sneaks in kind of right around where that brown ale is, if not right underneath it. To me, it's almost similar to a Schwoz beer or black beer from Germany or a dark lager. Yeah, so I like a Schwoz beer. 

 

There you go. It's going to be easy drinking, lighter on the palate. Most of the time this is going to be served, you know, in America we would serve it on nitro, but you would see this on cask. 

 

A lot of pubs in England still do what's called real ale or cask ale, where you're serving it using a beer engine and it is mechanically pulled out of the cask versus carbonated and CO2 pushing it out. So that's what's a lot creamier. That's what you think of when you think of nitro Guinness and anything that you would see on cask. 

 

But we just have this as regular, but it should be a very light mouthfeel. Let's start. I've already talked a little too much, so I'm going to have you hold this beer up to the light. 

 

Tell me what it looks like before the light, what it looks like after you hold it to the light. Well, you know, it's dark and mild, just like the can says. Now you hold it to the light. 

 

You're getting no light through this. Barely at all. Yeah, I mean, pretty, pretty opaque. 

 

I do see like at the bottom of my glass when there's a little light refraction, I see some under, you know, some red undertones. OK. You know, and all of beer is basically built off of red hues. 

 

That's that SRM scale is like different. When they first came out, it was just different shades of like red and blue film. And you would just combine them until you got the shade that you were looking for. 

 

And that's, you know, basically how the SRM standard reference method came about. But I mean, yeah, definitely a dark beer. I wouldn't equate it to as dark as like an Imperial Stout. 

 

It does have kind of an ombre gradients to it where it's definitely darker at the bulge of the glass where there's more volume because we're drinking out of Belgian tulip glasses here and they're stemmed. So towards the stem, we have a little less volume and we can see some of those red amber undertones. So, you know, that that leads me to believe like, OK, this is going to be a darker beer that isn't as roasty. 

 

It should be, you know, maybe a little bit maltier and not as roasty. So when I say malty, I mean, you know, those kind of like bread crust, those type of flavors versus coffee flavors. So. 

 

So when you when you first poured this, probably had to get about a half inch head on that and then it settled down. So one of the questions I got before we cut into this is English ale I know is sometimes it's served at a little higher, a little higher temperature than typical beer storage. Are you are you pro or or against? I I'm pro whatever people like the most. 

 

OK, so I have people that will order beers that I like. I was doing a Cascale here and people wanted ice cubes in it. And it was like, oh, my God, you know, you feel like this is blasphemous. 

 

Ice cubes, ice cubes. They know you just had the word blasphemy. Or, you know, I've got some people that they want that ice cold lager. 

 

And even though we have our system set to 38 degrees here, people want ice in their beer sometime. And, you know, it is what it is. If you're drinking it quickly and it doesn't melt. 

 

But some people like the melt and the dilution. So, you know, I'm getting, you know, getting off. I'm on a tangent here. 

 

I personally want to try. I want to try all beers how it's suggested to try. So it's called cellar temperature because your cask would be in the cellar, which means it's cool, colder, but it's not under refrigeration. 

 

That's how most all beers were because you just didn't have refrigeration a long time ago. So if you do have a Cascale to get all the nuances and the flavors, and this is also true for a lot of stouts, you want it to warm up a little bit. So to me, I don't want it right out of the fridge. 

 

I kind of treat it with the red wine kind of adage where, you know, store at room temperature and put it in the fridge for about 10, 15 minutes before you want to have it. Or if it's in the fridge, take it out for like a half an hour. So if I'm having a stout where I want to try some of the nuances, I'll take it out well before I plan on drinking it, you know, up to like a half an hour because I do want to drink it at around 45 to 50 degrees. 

 

That 55 to me, once you hit 50, 55, it starts, it just totally loses the chill. Right. And when it loses the chill, you feel like, you know, beer, you just think of beer as that cold, refreshing beverage. 

 

And when it's not there, I think that's when some people are like, oh, I don't want warm beer. But that that really is, you know, an American, it's more a modern thing. And I use modern loosely because, you know, beer has been tens of thousands of years. 

 

But, you know, if you go back to the 1500s, 1600s, beer was pretty warm always and, you know, be slightly cooled down because you would keep it in a cellar. So I would enjoy this at, you know, maybe 50. This is one of those where it's a dark, mild, so there's not going to be a ton of nuance in there. 

 

So I probably wouldn't let this warm up. I would just crack it from the fridge and enjoy it. But if it was on cask, I would definitely say go with your cellar temperature, get the full experience. 

 

We've said enough. It's time to drink. Cheers, brother. 

 

Cheers. So I didn't even ask. Have you had a dark, mild before? I've had some dark, mild before, experimented with them. 

 

There's a place out in the Finger Lakes again. I think we brought it up in Name Escapes Me every time, though. And I remember looking it up. 

 

It was like Lion Smith Brewing. OK, yes. I think that was that the one. 

 

Yeah, I remember. That's what you're talking about. I can't confirm that I've not been to it, but I remember you saying they do some English milds. 

 

They do some ESBs. They they they flirt around with a lot of things out there. Nose on this one in particular, light malt, even light roasty for me on the nose. 

 

Yeah, I mean, you smell this. It smells the aromas are more of a brown ale, right? Like I take a quick whiff. And the funny thing is, after my second pass on it, I lose that. 

 

Yeah, it's it goes away. So give it a little give a little swirl because that'll kick up some of those. The carbonation helps. 

 

OK, you know, the bubbles help help it travel to your nose. And then when you swirl it, it will, you know, especially we're using these Belgian. They're a little concave at the top. 

 

So it kind of, you know, not only is it good for your palate by sending the beer wide across your palate, but it basically sends the aromas. It concentrates them towards the center. So you can stick your nose in there, sniff it a little bit. 

 

Yeah, I mean, you definitely get a little chocolate vanilla caramel like none of those are super heavy. I mean, it would to me, if there was any smell of coffee, it's like an iced coffee. And I'm not talking, you know, 14 creams in there either. 

 

I just mean, you know, something that's very light like my heart. There you go. But, you know, again, to me, very akin to a Schwarz beer. 

 

Right. Very light on the palate. Good comparison. 

 

Yeah, but it lives up to it's very mild, right? Like if you were afraid of dark beers and afraid, not the right word, but if you're hesitant to drink dark beers because you think it'll be too intense, there's nothing intense about nothing. It's not like if you were to close your eyes and I told you this, you almost wouldn't think it would be as dark as it looks because there is not that much coffee flavor into it. This is this is actually more subtle than most brown ales when it comes to roast. 

 

Again, it just kind of have it has that hint of bitterness from roast. Sure. And, you know, tastes kind of like that iced coffee that has been sitting around for a little bit. 

 

So the ice has melted and now you've got slightly diluted black coffee and it makes for a very easy, you know, you can kind of gulp this. You see where there's a moreish flavor or moreish quality to it. You can enjoy it again. 

 

This is three and a half percent. So lighter than our light beers, you know, light beers usually four point two, four point five percent. So at three and a half percent, you know, let's just compare it to most IPAs or seven percent. 

 

You know, this is half of the alcohol you're going to get if you're sticking with the same volume of an IPA. Right. And less tax. 

 

There you go. Which is the reason for it. And I get a light caramel note on this flavor as well. 

 

Another big thing with English ales and just kind of the English brewing is, you know, they they have a little bit more pronounced esters and yeast flavors as well as in their brewing process. The malt sometimes you get a little bit more of a butterscotch and there's what's called diacetyl that gives you kind of this butterscotch.