Dark Mild wins Champion Beer of Britain 2025. Calling time on the enormous condescension of posterity
The Campaign for Real Ale’s Great British Beer Festival is underway at the Birmingham NEC from 5-9th August.
As usual on the opening day the Champion Beers of Britain are announced. From time to time there is comment about the partiality of the judging process but this year’s winner underlines that it is based entirely on what the judges find is the best beer on the day.
The winning was a 3.6% dark mild from the Penzance Brewing Co. Its produced by a brew pub with a five barrel brewing length. In short that means that unless it is contract brewed somewhere as the CBOB (it can happen but is a considerable commercial undertaking) the chances of tasting it beyond a visit to Penzance or the NEC may be limited.
Champion Beer of Britain – CAMRA – The Campaign for Real Ale
However if it promotes the style of mild, dark of light, its still a very good thing
The beer writer Pete Brown had a lengthy Q&A about all matters beer in the Sunday Times magazine on 1st December 2024. It was of course well informed and entertaining. He posed, to give one example, the question ‘does anyone drink mild anymore’ to which he answered simply ‘no’.
I’m not sure whether this was a joke (fair enough) or a personal view but either way it is of course not true. Mild has long been characterised as an old man’s drink, and I am an old man (well 68 anyway) so I would say that. Except I’ve been drinking mild for decades even when I was younger, so much younger than today etc.
Pete Brown later atoned for the comment by featuring a selection of mild’s in a more recent Sunday Times column.
Mild is of course not a strength of beer but a style or arguably styles as it comprises light and dark milds.
At the annual CAMRA Pigs Ear Beer Festival in Hackney in early December 2024, I tried the annual release of a Victorian Mild from Kernel and Redemption Breweries. It was first brewed in 2011 and in recent years has made a pre-Christmas appearance.
The Kernel version was in a wooden cask at 5.5% and that gave it in my personal view fuller flavour. The Redemption version was 6%.
I had a brief chat with Evan from Kernel and Andy from Redemption where the consensus seemed to be that the latter’s version is better that year.
You can of course form your own broader view by drinking some mild and at the same time proving Pete Brown wrong but the judges of the Champion Beer of Britain right.
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