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09-02-2014, 09:02
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A new day brings more inconsistent Milds. This time from a brewery I've not only researched in depth, but whose beers I've drunk.

At the time, I didn't realise how fortunate I was to try beer from of couple of London's great breweries. No matter what its quality. Truman and Courage were the two, if you're wondering.

Truman had gone all keg, but in the late seventies brought out a cask beer, Tap Bitter. I can remember drinking it in the Tenterden on Devon's Road, just around the corner from where I lived in Bromley-by-Bow. If I'm honest, it wasn't great. Mixing it 50-50 with bottled Guinness improved it greatly.

Then in 1982 they brought out a full range of cask beers including, to my delight, a pretty decent Mild. Sadly, the Mild only lasted a couple of years and the range was slowly whittled down as the brewery approached its 1989 closure. All of the beers were pretty good, when looked after probably. It was the last hurrah of the old guard of London brewing.

These are the beers:



Truman cask beers in 1982


Beer
Style
OG


Prize Mild
Mild
1034


Bitter
Pale Ale
1036


Best Bitter
Pale Ale
1045


Sampson Extra Strong
Pale Ale
1055


Source:


1983 Good Beer Guide



Rambling reminiscences done, let's take a look at how shit (or otherwise) Truman's Mild was in the 1920's. Once again there are two different Mild in the table, a 5d Ale and a 7d/6d X Ale. Seems to have been pretty standard in London back then. My guess would be that all the breweries we've looked at would have had beers in this 5d Ale class, just that Whitbread didn't analyse ones from every brewery.



Truman Mild Ale quality 1922 - 1925


Year
Beer
FG
OG
ABV
App. Atten-uation
Appearance
Flavour
Score


1922
MA
1006
1027.8
2.79
77.34%
bright
American wood cask
-2


1922
MA
1008
1029.6
2.85
74.32%

poor
-1


1922
MA
1007
1028.4
2.73
74.30%
fairly bright
poor unpleasantly bitter
-2


1922
MA
1010
1029
2.46
65.52%
bright
only fair
0


1923
MA
1008
1030.8
2.98
74.68%
bright
v unpleasant odour going off
-3


1923
MA
1007
1029.5
2.92
76.27%
not bright
fair
1


1923
MA
1007
1027.8
2.72
75.54%
gray
moderate
0


1923
MA
1007
1029
2.88
76.55%
bright
good
2


1922
X
1008
1040
4.16
80.00%
not bright
going off
-2


1922
X
1011
1042.1
4.02
73.63%
very hazy
v fair
2


1922
X
1011
1041.4
3.96
73.67%
bright
bitter flavoured but poor
-1


1922
X
1013
1039.9
3.43
66.42%
brilliant
fair (sweet)
1


1923
X
1015
1040.7
3.29
62.65%
bright
v fair
2


1923
X
1010
1041.7
4.09
75.54%
bright
rather bitter
-1


1923
X
1013
1041.5
3.69
68.67%
brilliant
fair
1


1923
X
1012
1040.5
3.69
70.37%
bright
v good
3


1923
X
1010
1041.4
4.02
74.88%
bright
good
2


1923
X
1012
1041.2
3.76
70.39%
bright
fair
1


1924
X

1040.6


grey
sour
-3


1924
X
1012
1041.5
3.85
71.57%
bright
fair
1


1924
X
1014
1043
3.74
67.21%
brilliant
poor
-1


1925
X
1011
1041
3.92
73.66%
bright
good
2



Average MA





-0.63



Average X





0.50



Average all





0.09


Source:


Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/001



Starting as usual with the watery stuff, you can see it's threatening to be intoxicating without ever quite making it. The ABV bubbles just below the surface of 3%. The gravity lurks just below the waterline of 1030º in all but one case, which just pokes its head above the waves. Attenuation is mostly around the bog-standard 75% mark.

As for its quality, things don't look good. Only half the 8 examples are bright. And only two examples get a positive score for flavour. And there are a couple of pretty bad ones, with American oak showing up again.

I'd thought American oak wasn't usually used in Britain and I was scratching my head as to why it's shown up so often. I think I know the answer: the war. The Memel oak from the Baltic would have been unobtainable during the war. And, with the chaos of the Russian revolution, I doubt that situation had improved by the early 1920's. Brewers may well have had no choice but to use American oak.

An average score of -0.63 is, well, crap.

Let's leave the Boy's Mild and get onto the man's stuff. The X Ale has the typical gravity of just over 1040º. But the average attenuation of 71.44% is low for this class of beer. About 10 points lower than we've seen at other breweries. Which obviously means that the ABV is relatively low, only over 4% in a couple of cases and only then by a small amount. It averages out to 3.82% ABV.

This is much better. Eleven out of fourteen examples were bright. It doesn't do so well for flavour, with five negative scores. Of which a couple sound pretty undrinkable. The average score of 0.50 says to me: buy, but with caution.

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