Another Mild Magic round-up, this one covering a few separate trips around Chorlton and Didsbury.
I’m perversely fond of the Sedge Lynn (JDW), and they didn’t let the side down; Peerless Dark Arts was rather good. Down at the Chorlton Green end of town, the Beech has Timothy Taylor’s Golden Best as a regular beer; they had Rudgate Ruby Mild as well, but GB was fine for me. Further along Beech Road, the Parlour – a nice relaxed bar, one of those places I always think I should go to more often – had Moorhouse’s Black Cat, also in good nick.
(SCRUPULOUS HONESTY UPDATE: if I’m scrupulously honest I don’t actually remember what I had at the Sedge Lynn – it was my first tick of this year’s MM, and is some time ago now. But it was a dark mild; the chances seem pretty good that it was one of the three dark milds I’ve had at other Spoons; and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t either of the other two. It was pleasant and well-kept, that I do remember.)
A trip to Didsbury started (thanks to the tram) at the Railway, a pleasant and welcoming Holt’s house serving (alas) the brewery’s weak and uninteresting dark mild. Down the road at Wine and Wallop, the staff claimed never to have had their MM stickers; this didn’t seem very likely to me, but I wasn’t going to argue. The W&W is a smart, attractive bar with a good range of beers, albeit with only one mild: a second appearance for Titanic Nautical Mild. (Something not quite right on the condition front, sadly; it was in better nick at the Bishop Blaize.) The sign board features a quote from 1984 supporting their contention that ‘wallop’ means ‘beer’; interestingly enough, the quote actually defines ‘wallop’ specifically as mild ale. They missed a trick there – or perhaps not.
Some way further down the road (I can be less precise) I arrived at the Parrswood Hotel, a JW Lees‘ house serving their (unexciting but perfectly serviceable) Brewers’ Dark. When I opened the door I thought I’d stepped back in time; the first thing I saw was a hippieish-looking old bloke standing at the bar wreathed in smoke. It was an e-cig, obviously, but he’d clearly found the ‘produce maximum vapour’ setting and given it some welly. He engaged me in conversation, which was sadly rather one-sided; all I could make out was that he’d worked for forty years and didn’t want to pay any more taxes (well, who does?). I’m a confirmed fan of Lees’ MPA, so I ordered a half of that too; sadly it had gone off. Not being a fan of Lees’ ordinary bitter, I did something I’d never done before in a pub and requested a refund instead of a replacement. I soon regretted it, though: the young lad serving had to go off to find somebody more senior, after which the two of them spent the next five minutes entering menu options and authorisation codes on a touch screen at the back of the bar.
Another Didsbury trip began up in Rusholme at the Ford Madox Brown (JDW), where Arundel Black Stallion was flanked (as I noted at the time) by no fewer than four beers I would have preferred; Moorhouse’s Farmhouse was particularly intriguing. Hopefully another time. Back on the bus and down to the Victoria in Withington, for the first (and very nearly the last) sighting this time round of Hyde’s Owd Oak, which was fine. I should say at this point that this was a lunchtime trip, and one of my resolutions when I left (along with “stick to the half of mild to begin with” and “have another half in the last pub or two, if there’s anything interesting”) was “get something to eat, only not in Spoons“: it takes the shine off trying new and interesting pubs if you end up ordering off the same menu they have in umpty-three other pubs. The Vic was one of the pubs I was hoping might be offering food, but no such luck.
The next pub on the list – the Red Lion – did have food on; it was clearly a chain menu, but at least it wasn’t the same chain menu I would have faced at a Spoons’. The trouble here, ironically, was the beer. When I lived in Withington the Red Lion was a bit of a cut above – it served Marston’s! On this visit they had quite the range: beers from Jennings, Wychwood and Ringwood as well as the Marston’s mothership. I had a half of Ringwood Boondoggle – Jennings’ Mild had just gone off – which was… fine. No, it wasn’t fine: it was mediocre. It wasn’t actively bad – if it had been a mild it would have been Holt’s rather than Coach House, put it that way – but it was bland. It struck me then that this is what Marston’s do, these days – they make bland brown bitter (Pedigree), alternating with bland malty brown bitter (Cumberland), bland dark brown bitter (Hobgoblin) and bland yellowish bitter (Boondoggle). And now they’ve got Wainwright too. Yippee. CAMRA still have a job to do – there’s plenty of ale out there that still needs revitalising, and breweries that (sadly) aren’t helping.
Anyway, I had to force the half down – which is an awful thing to have to say of a beer under the Ringwood name – and there was no way I was staying for another, of anything. So it was ho forth to the Dog and Partridge, where they had a couple of signs up suggesting food, but no sign of a menu. (To be fair, there was no sign of anything much – I was the only customer.) I consoled myself with a Timothy Taylor’s Golden Best and headed for my next and final stop… the nearest Spoons’. The Milson Rhodes (JDW) had an extensive (if familiar) food menu; they also had some really rather excellent beer. I ordered some food and had it with halves of Peerless Dark Arts and Partners Tabatha (a 6% tripel). More messing about with technology here, rather more successfully than at the Parrswood: it turns out that the JDW till’s meal-anna-pint discount system can’t handle a meal and two halves, but that it can be induced to price up a meal-anna-half-anna-nother-half for less than the meal and the two halves would have been separately. (This has just taken longer to explain than it took the woman behind the bar to process.) I then finished off with the Adnams/Sixpoint collab Make It Rain, an IPA-ish golden ale that gave new meaning to the word ‘sproingy’. There was never a better illustration of why I tag posts “Love/hate relationship with JDW’s”.
But soft, what scores are those on yonder doors?
Light mild: 7 (4 different beers)
Dark mild: 20 (14 different beers)
No qualifying beers: 5
Breweries: 21 (16 producing mild)
Pubs I go to anyway: 5
Pubs worth going back to: 11
Once-a-year pubs: 16
Oh Good Ale 