OnTap Magazine

STYLE GUIDE Although craft beer drinkers are seemingly on a permanent quest for bolder flavours, ever more hops, higher ABVs or an increasingly pronounced bitterness, our editor still has a special fondness for something malty, understated and classic. Lucy Corne takes a look at the proud past and the uncertain future of mild ales. T he 2021 “Not” Fools and Fans Festival will forever remain one of my all- time favourites. It was small – although larger than you’d expect for a festival that didn’t actually exist. It was raining, but that didn’t matter. It had been the first proper beery gathering in over a year, pretty much all of my friends were there and the beers were great. There was one in particular that stood out for me. One that I still crave to this day in fact. It wasn’t bold or fancy; not a massive hop bomb nor a luscious, warming stout. It wasn’t even a commercial craft beer. It was a dark mild, brewed by Chris Pryor, then president of the SouthYeasters Homebrewers Club. “Mild is the UK’s most misunderstood beer,” wrote British beer historian Martyn Cornell in his book Amber, Gold & Black. But if this centuries’ old beer style is misunderstood in its native land, it is barely even heard of here in South Africa. 40 | Winter 2022 | ontapmag.co.za