If I'd known it was mild before I decided I liked it, I wouldn't
I got roped into being a judge of Champion Beer at the Kent Beer Festival some years ago. M'self and m'colleague John were put down to do the second round of tasting - the first round had whittled it down from around 30 contenders to something like 12, then we had to whittle it down further to a final 5 or 6 for the last round of judging. I forget the exact numbers but you get the general idea. Importantly, it was a blind tasting so we didn't know what we were drinking.*
Neither m'self nor m'colleague would describe ourselves as mild fans but we unanimously and unequivocally decreed that Millis Mild was easily our favourite, and if we'd had the option, we wouldn't have bothered putting anything else through.
We later found out that it had been summarily dismissed in the final round by a judge so prejudiced against mild that he wasn't even interested in tasting it. (OK, he must have at least tasted it, but having recognised it as a mild, he then wasn't prepared to consider it as a contender.) What a nobber. If I recall correctly, he was a pretty senior figure in Kent CAMRA, which just goes to show all that is wrong with CAMRA. Probably.
Anyway, the moral of the story is give mild a chance - some of them are actually pretty good (says the man who is currently drinking an excessively over-hopped IPA).
*My next favourite in the scoring was Hopdaemon Skrimshander, which I've long considered one of my favourite local beers, so it was quite satisfying to come to that decision in a blind tasting.
