is today a relatively low-strength, lightly hopped ale, mainly found on (most is keg or brewery-conditioned) draught in some regions of England and Wales. Despite its low alcoholic strength (around 3.0%–3.5% alcohol by volume [ABV]), it can be quite full bodied, with a sustaining fruity sweetness, sometimes primed with sugar. Most versions tend to be dark ruby brown, but they can be light colored as well. Mild has a blue-collar image, as it is seen as the industrial workers’ beer, brewed for drinking in quantity. It is considered a comforting, refreshing pint after a hard day’s manual labor, a malty meal in a glass.

But this meek and mild beer once ruled Britain’s bars. The Brewers’ Journal estimated that in the late 1930s mild accounted for more than three-quarters of all beer brewed in Britain. Mass Observation’s detailed survey “The Pub and the People,” recording working class social life in Bolton, Lancashire, in 1938, stated, “Mild is the most commonly drunk beer. It costs five pence a pint. … As well as mild there is best mild, penny a pint more, stronger than the common mild. It is light in color, like bitter, which is seldom drunk here.” Most local breweries produced an ordinary mild and a best mild and sometimes three varieties, usually of differing colors—and little else. A landlord questioned at the time estimated that 92% of his trade was mild.

Originally “mild” had been a general term for fresh beer, brewed and sold within a few weeks, unlike the “old” stock ales kept for many months before sale. All beers were once known as mild until they had matured. And because mild did not have to be kept, it was much cheaper. Some drinkers liked to mix mild with old to improve the flavor. The porter beer style developed out of this blending habit. See porter.

Although mild was once the basic “running beer” of the bars, it was no weakling. In the past it flexed much more muscle, with double its strength today. James Herbert’s Art of Brewing of 1866 gives a typical mild ale an original gravity (OG) of 1,070 (15.2˚Plato), resulting in well above 6% ABV. In 1880 Chancellor of the Exchequer Gladstone estimated that the average OG of mild was 1,057.

Even in porter-saturated London, mild ale became the dominant drink during the 19th century. Mild also spread to Britain’s colonies, notably New Zealand, where English-style ales rather than lager went down well in a climate similar to northern Europe, and a tradition of brewing amber-colored malty “brown” beers developed. Canadian brewer Molson was also brewing mild at its Montreal brewery in 1859, as did brewers in South Africa and Australia.

Mild’s robust body was buried by the restrictions of two world wars. The British government wanted beer to become weaker, all the better to have the workforce at full strength in the armaments factories. And although it bounced back from the first conflict to around 1,040 (4%), it never recovered from the ravages of World War II and the long period of rationing that followed. With its strength slashed amid widespread complaints about wishy-washy “war beer,” mild never regained its reputation.

Whitbread, which prided itself on the quality of its pale ale, rather dismissed mild in TheBrewer’s Art, published in 1948, as “the X or XX of the public bar” (the “public bar” being the part of the pub separated from the more upmarket “saloon bar”). The London brewer’s book described it as “a dark, full-flavored beer brewed from malt that has been heated on the kiln to a higher temperature than the pale ale malts, thereby acquiring a characteristic, slightly burned flavor: “This beer usually has a sugar syrup known as priming added in cask … guaranteeing the slightly sweet palate demanded by the drinker of this type of beer. Mild ale is a draught beer brewed for quick consumption.” It added that bottled brown ale was usually afiltered and carbonated mild ale.

As Britain recovered, drinkers increasingly turned to the sharper taste of bitter or the consistent promise of heavily promoted bottled and later keg beer. Mild’s working-class image did not help. It was increasingly seen as a cheap old man’s beer.

As sales slipped so did the quality because mild had less hops and alcoholic strength to protect it once it became a slow seller. Many darker milds were adulterated in unscrupulous pubs, the dark color disguising all manner of ruses. Breweries gradually dropped their milds—or sometimes just dropped the discredited term. McMullen’s of Hertford renamed their AK Mild simply AK to boost sales.

But pockets of demand remain, notably in the northwest of England and the West Midlands, where Banks’s of Wolverhampton produce Britain’s best-selling mild, Banks’s Original. Helped by CAMRA’s Make May a Mild Month campaign, some craft breweries have had surprising success with their milds, notably Moorhouse’s of Burnley with Black Cat. In South Wales, Brain’s Dark of Cardiff has gone from being the brewery’s best seller to becoming an award-winning niche beer. The historic Sarah Hughes Brewery at the Beacon Hotel in Tipton, near Wolverhampton, has brought back a strong blast from the past, with its famous Dark Ruby Mild at 6% ABV.

In the United States, many craft brewers have developed a respect for mild as a “sessionable” beer style, a beer that has plenty of flavor without the alcoholic wallop of many popular beer styles. Although it is rarely bottled, mild is increasingly part of the roster of the American brewpub.