Sunday Beers - In Praise of Milds, Bitters and Brown Ales

 

 Imagine a lazy Sunday afternoon in a warm and cozy pub, maybe on a patio if the weather is nice, but the main components are still the same. Good friends, good beer and hours with nothing to do but enjoy both at your leisure. For a lot of people, the beer is as much a part of the experience as the folks you spend it with and while we are ways off from just all getting out there and filling the pubs and taprooms, the time is coming round again. While many chase the latest craze in haze or double down on big, boozy stouts, I want to take a few moments and talk about the low ABV offerings, why they are so important to me and why I call them Sunday beers.

Sunday Beers are all about the hours. They imply a leisurely pace to drinking them and a focus on good conversation and interaction with your companions than getting hammered while pounding back 8% pints of something hopped up or barrel aged. It is about the 5% and less English Milds, Brown Ales and the like, which bring a fine sessionability to the table along with great flavour and a complex profile that is also ready for multiple pints. Rounds for the table and enjoying food while imbibing in an unhurried atmosphere are what I feel when I pop the top on a Mild. It lends itself to easy drinking, with the low alcohol allowing more than a couple without falling into drunkenness and as I continue to evolve as a beer drinker and a person, I appreciate that a lot more than I used to.

While I suppose any sub 5% beer would do, a lager or pils perhaps, I think there is something about the flavour of these styles that brings this feeling of communal drinking, no time frame and an easy afternoon with your pals. The base maltiness delivers more than a simple lager can and the toffee or caramel combined with a solid bitterness that isn't overwhelming and actually invites another sip and then another. They are easy going beers in a busy world and my love of this style continues to grow. I wish there were more of them and that they were easily accessible for drinking at home right now, at the pub in the future. The problem, of course, lies in profitability and giving the shiny things to the loudest people. IPAs sell, hazy ones all the better. Big and bold pastry or barrel aged beers stouts bring a big price point and fruited sours still drive the pretty pictures on the internet. But and it's an anecdotal one I know, I think their is a market for the Milds, the Brown Ale or even the English style Pale or ESB. These beers have loads character but their accessibility to the novice craft beer drinker is a big plus to their potential.

  I often wonder what things will feel like when we can gather once again in larger numbers in taprooms and pubs. Will it be different? Will we appreciate it more, the connectedness of us all sharing a few pints on a lazy Sunday afternoon? Will we finally find a peace with enjoying a good beer without chasing the hype? I have been feeling nostalgic for a thing I never had when it comes to these styles, perhaps it is my longing for that kind of friendship again that I had when I was a denzien of a Dive Bar...but with better beer. 

Take the road less travelled and marvel at what you'll find in your glass.

Polk

Dive Bars at the end of the street

  When was the last time you ordered a pitcher of beer? Put salt in your glass? Dropped a shot of whisky into your pint and downed the whole thing in one go? Funnelled or shot-gunned a beer?
  The not so distant past of my life is filled with such things and while I appreciate the wonderful experiences craft beer has brought into my life, I sometimes miss the carefree way I used to enjoy a pint or seven at my local, not so shiny, pub.
  In my youth until my early 40's, I was an unabashed drunkard. I sought and found refuge in the bottom of many different intoxicants and while I am no longer on that particular track, I have a weird affinity for the smoky, dank dive bars of that era. There was an undercurrent of anger in some, jovial drunken happiness in others and a fine variety of either Canadian or Blue in both. The cheapness of the pitcher should have probably tipped me off to the quality of the beer, but who cared about that when you could get destroyed for $20 and stagger home, off track and blacked out. This was many of my nights in the late 90's and while I wrote about it last year in my post Frankie and Cat Stevens - When I was a Drunk in a Dive Bar, it still rolls around in my head to find a comfortable booth in a questionable local and just have at 'er.
  The days of old are usually romanticized to some degree by the nostalgia industry and we all yearn for "simpler" times while slow sipping a $15 Imperial Stout and bemoaning the complications of this modern life. Would I trade my new found love of great beer for those days still being my life? Not a chance, but I do miss them nonetheless. Karaoke, darts and the raucous laughter of my bar fly pals remain a memory that grows only fonder with the passing years as the characters of those long ago days begin to disappear from this planet and I feel like a little bit of me goes with them. There are old drunks and young punks, but for one glorious period of my life I was one in the same and it was wonderful.
  While I would love to go out and visit all the dive bars and beer soaked, out of the way, neighbourhood places that dot The Hammer, I know none of them will live up to the memory of what was. The feeling of closeness with a bunch of other down and out working folks who wanted nothing more than a respite from the drudgery of every day life. I'm sure it still exists but I have left behind those days and will let the hazy visions of my nights spent in that warm embrace of nihilism be just that, a piece of who I am and now long gone.
  Perhaps a brewery will open within walking distance of The Manor one day or even a half decent bar with a nice tap and bottle selection. That would allow me to return to the days when I sat down and felt like I belonged without having to go so far from home. My undying loyalty will go to the place that does just that and perhaps it will happen before I shuck this mortal coil for that old bar stool in the sky.
  A guy can dream, can't he?

Cheers!

Polk