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And so a glass of mild it is, a dark sensuous looking creature with a collar of foam the colour of freshly exposed apple flesh after one guilty bite. Regulation toffee and mocha notes with a thin skein of orange existent just over the taste horizon. The mild is 4.3%, so there is also a weight of alcohol that you don’t normally find in weaker milds. However, there’s also an acidity, a twang of sourness, a slight tartness suggestive of apple, which suggests to me that the beer is the first one pulled today (it was early afternoon) and that it also might be a slow seller. So do I take it back? No, as I don’t actually mind the staleness in the beer, in fact I think it makes it more interesting and that leads onto another question. Would this have been something similar to what stale porters tasted like in the 1800s? Who knows but it was enjoyable — and this then begs another question, is it a case that some British cask beers retain a level of palatability (or even improve) when they are on the turn?



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