Pumpviken påskøl is the Easter offering from the Nynäshamn Steam Brewery. I have written about beers from this brewery before, as I had the pleasure of trying out two of their draft beers when I was in Stockholm last year. They brewery is located in a coastal town an hour south of Stockholm by commuter train – an excellent starting point for exploring the Stockholm archipelago.
Their stout and IPA are fine examples of a micro with a focus on quality. Until recently, their beer was only available on cask in a few select pubs in the area, but luckily they are bottling some of their brews now.
It was very convenient that their Easter beer this year was a mild, as beer bloggers around the worlds are focusing on mild today. So, what is a mild? Today this style is rather hard to find, but some decades ago, this was the standard cask ale in the British Isles. The usual cask ale nowadays is a bitter, and in the nearly 30 years I’ve been drinking ale in England on my yearly visits, I have rarely encountered it. It is most often a low alcohol beer, a type of ale I associate with coal miners and farm labourers wanting a fairly neutral and a fairly weak beer they could enjoy in quantities without getting totally wasted before last orders.So, a cask mild would typically be 3.0-3.5 % ABV, while the bottle in front of me lands at 5.8%. Yet, I think the taste profile is true to the type. It is less bitter than a bitter, and more flavourful than a (standard) brown ale. It is nutty, with lost of sugar from the malt, which is not subdues by dryness from the hops. There are hops, sure, bur they add more of a flowery full flavour. There is some dryness in the finish, though.
This beer reminds me of a good schwartzbier or bock, using the same caramel malt to give it a coca-cola colour. It is pleasant enough to sip, but it is like those Austrian lagers – the low level of bitterness ends up a bit boring on my palate, not really refreshing enough.
I’m happy to raise my glass for those – inside or outside CAMRA – who struggle to keep this style alive. But I can understand why this has gone out of fashion.
These ramblings about the style are from the top of my head. For more accurate information, you should read the posts of the other bloggers!