Brewing History: Dark Mild Ale inside The Pale?

Unless you have been living under a large rock you will be aware of Beer Twitter’s current obsession with Dark Mild ales, and although most of the noise on this topic is coming from across The Small Pond the cry has been taken up in certain circles in Ireland too. Currently there is a scarcity of that style on these shores apart from one notable - in every way - exception from Four Provinces Brewery, although there are probably some that would argue that certain brown ales - and perhaps even porters - are close in many ways to that style.

But it would be a mistake to think that this was a beer that was never popular in Ireland - and I use the word popular in a relative manner, as obviously it was those ubiquitous drinks called stouts and porters that ruled here for much of our relatively short ‘proper’ brewing history. It is probably better just to say that ‘mild’ ales, even dark ones, were being brewed and drunk here in the not-so-distant past. A good example is a beer that is awaiting bottling in my fermenter which was/is a dark coloured XX ale from Perry’s Brewery in Rathdowney in county Laois, that I am fairly sure could only be called a ‘Dark Mild’? Annoyingly the Perry brewing records that I have seen do not record their beers as ‘Milds’ in their records, just X and XX ales, but as I have shown previously the use of the word mild with either a small or large M was in quite common use in Ireland for a long period. Perry’s certainly used the word ‘Mild’ on their bottle labels so they appear to have used one term for the recipes and another for their marketing. (I am aware that ‘Mild’ at one time meant fresh in that same way that ‘Stale’ meant stored/aged but as the language changed I am also sure that over here at least Mild became a word for - well - a mild tasting ale that was relatively low in bitterness.)

With all of that in mind I would like to share an advertisement from The Irish Independent in 1915 for D’Arcy’s Anchor Brewery on Usher Street in Dublin where they specifically point out the colour of their ales:

Here we see that under their O’Connell’s Dublin Ales brand they were selling a Dark Extra Strong ale and a Pale Mild on draught - and let us not forget a rare mention for an Irish Best Bitter for bottling! Allowing for dubious marketing and the leeway that advertisement writers have with the truth this might be a nice mention for a Strong Dark Mild? Even if I am stretching terminology, styles and descriptions to the limit then if nothing else it is a nice record of what D’Arcy’s were brewing at this time. If we look at the table I previously posted on the strengths of Irish beers just prior to this period we can see that O’Connell’s Strong Ale varied from 5.1% to 5.5% in alcohol content and although we should not really make any assumptions as to how bitter it was - and alcohol strength has no bearing on a ‘Mild’ anyway as we know - it still seems to point the finger at there being a draught dark ale available in Dublin at the start of the 20th century that was not classed as porter or stout.

Hardly an earth-shattering find or observation but still of note.

Incidentally, D’Arcy’s were also brewing an ‘I.E.P. Ale’ (East India Pale Ale) in 1907, so they seem to have had a relatively interesting range of ales, although this could be what morphed into the ‘Best Bitter’ from 1915 perhaps? As ever, lack of information on our brewing past leads to much guesswork, 'maybes' and - perhaps - dubious assumptions …

Liam K.

Newspaper images © Independent News and Media PLC. All rights reserved. With thanks to The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk). 

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