Belatedly, here are some notes on Mild Magic 2024, Stockport and South Manchester CAMRA’s annual celebration & promotion of mild.
This year, Mild Magic featured 97 pubs divided into 60+ areas; even after ticking off 48 I had visited less than half of the places on the list. There were several pubs I didn’t get to this year – no Ladybarn Social Club, no Wobbly Stamp – although I made up for it with a few new discoveries.
But first, Manchester. There were no fewer than 15 pubs (divided into five areas) in the city centre, making for a couple of pleasant crawls as well as a few hit-and-run visits.
I had Holt’s Mellow Mild – a seasonal mild put on for Mild Magic – at the Lower Turk’s Head one busy Saturday. The pub was rammed and I didn’t fancy stopping, but if any beer could have changed my mind the MM could have done it; it’s a really excellent upper-end-of-session-strength dark mild, which I’ve had in very good nick in a few different Joeys’ pubs. That day, though, I had places to be – specifically the Smithfield, where the Blackjack Pub Ale Dark Ruby Mild was every bit as good (and a full % stronger at 5.2%). I was less enamoured of the Angel, either in terms of the general vibe – nothing wrong with it, it just didn’t make me feel at home in the way the Smithfield reliably does – or, more importantly for present purposes, with regard to the Bank Top Dark Mild, which struck me as thin and a bit weedy; perhaps my palate had been spoiled by the previous two. It was nice to see Marble Mild at the Marble Arch; I keep wanting to add ‘…again’, but on reflection I don’t remember Marble ever having a regular mild. Good stuff, anyway. There wasn’t anything crying out at me to stay for another – I was intrigued by the Blackcurrant Stout (on keg), but not quite intrigued enough – so I swung back to my favourite bar (in the city centre), the Smithfield, for a half of the Blackjack East India Porter (on keg and 6.7%). Which was terrific, and to be fair would be quite hard to shift quickly enough on cask.
A weekday afternoon crawl took me to some more familiar pubs, mostly serving beer that struck me as fine but a bit unremarkable; perhaps the relative lack of atmosphere affected my estimation of the beer. Holt’s Mellow Mild at the Ape and Apple was terrific; the (standard) Mild at the Old Monkey was also good, and as sinkable as a 3.2% mild should be. My visit to the Grey Horse just up the road was similarly brief, the Hyde’s Dark Ruby qualifying as a decent but unspectacular dark mild (although without owning that category quite as solidly as the Joeys’ mild does).
Spoons’ were a bit slow off the mark with this year’s MM – as they often are – but by the second week in May there were milds in pretty much every local pub I could find on the app, quite often Brightside Inn Crowd mild specifically. Both the city centre Spoons’ in MM went their own way, the Waterhouse with Titanic Classic Mild and the Paramount with Lord’s Dark Mild; the latter was a bit ordinary, but the Titanic was a surprisingly ‘big’ dark mild, with Titanic’s characteristic bitter finish. I did see Brightside Inn Crowd at the Molly House – a pub of which I’m sure I’m getting a very misleading impression, as I only ever see it as a chilled-to-the-point-of-torpor afternoon drinking den – and at the Briton’s Protection. It’s a nice example of the malty, dark-best-bitter area of the mild spectrum; it was in good nick in both places, although in quality terms the Molly House edged it. I finished off at the Briton’s with Cloudwater Piccadilly Porter. Interesting – and gratifying – to see Cloudwater reinventing themselves as a cask brewer; they’re pretty good at it, too.
Speaking of hipster cask (if that’s still a thing in 2024), I’m afraid I was less impressed by Strut, Track‘s venture into dark mild, at the City; I’m not sure if the beer was getting tired or if it’s just not a very successful recipe. The Mellow Mild at the Crown and Anchor, meanwhile, wasn’t so much tired as defunct; I was on the clock, so I reported it and then knocked it back rather than stay for a replacement. The things we do for Mild Magic…
Not everywhere in the city centre was on a ‘crawl’ route – I had bobbed into the Crown and Anchor on my way somewhere else, and the same was true of the Piccadilly Tap, which I hit on my way home from a different crawl. The Red Willow Dark Mild was unexciting but in good nick; I followed it with what was meant to be a third but turned out to be a half of Marble Earl Grey IPA (which worked well on keg, as it always has). Lastly – and in other ‘Tap’ news – the Victoria Tap was very nearly standing room only when I paid it my first visit, and the Leeds Midnight Bell was terrific. Even rammed as it was, the beer list was nearly enough to get me to stay for another – I mean, they had Torrside Grubby Bastard (on keg)! – but I had places to be.
So that’s 15 pubs/bars (one of them new to me); they were serving twelve different milds from eleven brewers, almost all in good nick, and there was no trouble getting a MM sticker at any of them. Looking good so far!
Oh Good Ale 