Best bitter

Clive Arthur snipped-for-privacy@nowaytoday.co.uk> wrote

Can't be given that Courage Directors has a higher alcohol content.

If you are driving then you should not drink any alcohol, surely ?

No it's not. "Original Bitter - Hatherwood"; "Bitter beer" in the small print. No mention of IPA.

Well thats because Ale is trendy and sells. Bitter isn't trendy and invokes images of the rovers return in early episode of coronation street.

In fact historically "bitter" was a draught beer so has never been commonly found in bottles.

Perhaps for shandy try some of the darker "ales" such as Sharps Doom Bar, Old Speckled Hen, London Pride, Black Sheep Ale or Ruddles County.

Perhaps Newcastle Brown but I find that a bit sweet...

Dave

Just adding water produces an unbalanced beer. You need to formulate it as a weaker beer.

Marketing...

Except for the Northern Clubs Federation Brewery which being owner by the members of the working mens clubs, always displayed the ABV on the pumps and bottles.

Dave

They have pumps labelled "Bitter" and "Best Bitter" connected to the same keg.

If you are looking for the 'best' beer to get blotto on, then strength may be the measure to use. I doubt you can use it to judge quality or flavour.

Water down the higher alcohol beer to make the weaker alcohol beer (and further watered it down for supermarket cans).

Only in marketing terms where the descriptions are pure fantasy. The overall taste for both is malt (which many people like).

Courages was local to me in Reading, I worked there for a summer holiday job in about 1972 or so. I know of what I speak despite whatever marketing guff there is.

You're quite right, however (a first?), to say that Directors had a higher ABV. That's why it was watered down to make the lower ABV Best. You see, when you add water... oh never mind, the highly advanced science is clearly beyond you.

(In fact, the Best was a fairly decent beer, and could sometimes be found in wooden barrels, albeit rarely.)

You never could drink your way out of a beer-sodden paper bag.

In my experience, the strength and subtlety of taste seems to be roughly correlated to the alcohol content. A brewer will normally choose malt and hops to 'balance', leading to the stronger beers containing more taste-carrying ingredients.

Today's weak bitters still taste of bitterness only, with a varying brown colour, exactly as almost all beers in my younger days tasted (my nearest breweries were Watneys and Ind Coope, and they owned almost all the pubs for miles around). We had to travel several miles to find Courage Directors', and I remember where and when we discovered Abbot *. After Double Diamond and Watney's Special (formerly Red Barrel) they were amazing.

There are a few exceptions, such as Wibbler's Dengie Gold, which is now shown as 4% but which was in the high 3s last time I found it locally. That tasted to me like a 4.5% beer.

• 21/9/75 at the Blacksmith's Arms in Epping. We had actually gone there to see Pete Atkin and Clive James.

Same experience having been brought up in a Watneys area and drinking the same for years before then moving to a Whitbread area and thinking the beer was far superior.

Much later I discovered that Watneys (Combe Reid) still produced some decent Real Ales before their ultimate demise.

The best Ind Coope bitter was when it was brewed by Shepherd Neame :)

Over the years my taste in beers have changed and I prefer a very hoppy golden type beer rather than the malty beers of my youth.

Not in the bar I ran. The keg was for lager. Beer came out of a firkin.

Had Red Barrel been any weaker, it could legally have been sold without a licence.

Having had pancreatitis, I haven't been able to drink alcohol for at least 20 years. However, there are some zero percent beers that taste just the same as the, sometimes quite strong, alcoholic beers of the same name.

Sex in a canoe?

Give Adnams Ghost Ship a try from Tesco. (there are two versions, one with ethanol and one without ethanol so check the label!)

On 13/09/2022 16:43, SH wrote: <snip>

ASDA here usually have the 4.5% bottles (and 4 for the price of 3)

Reading University Students' Union Bar - they didn't check age when I was sixteen.

Watney's Red, 12p per pint. Watney's Starlight, 11p per pint. Even weaker.

(Though I'm not sure if 'Red' was the same as 'Red Barrel'?)

Yep . Stale piss tastes the same with or without alcohol.