White Horse Bitter
White Horse Brewery Company Limited

 

 

 

 

A 500ml bottle with a BB of Aug 2012. ABV is stated as 5.1%.

Poured into a tulip pint glass. A hazy golden-amber hue with medium carbonation. Forms a large head of creamy white foam that lasts for a couple of minutes before collapsing. Aroma of mild caramel malt with notes of stewed hops and a hint of stale cardboard. Weak.

Tastes of caramel malt with a harsh, dry bitterness. Notes of stewed hops and wet cardboard. Quite bitter upon swallowing, with a harsh, astringent quality. Mouthfeel is dry and tingly, with decent body. Aftertaste of bitter stewed hops and cardboard.

Pretty crappy. I've had this for a while but still. The aroma/flavour are just nasty - this brew really doesn't have anything to offer. Avoid.

Not a bad brew, but not very bitter and I thought it was under-carbonated (although most of the cask ales I had in the UK were).
It looked nice; a pale orange with a small amount of white head.
No aroma hops that I could discern. Not much nose at all, really.
Tasted decent, especially with food. Bitter-sweet. Lacked hop balance (could have used more bitter for my liking).
Kind of flat and uninspired in the mouth.

Serving: 20oz pint glass filled from a traditional English "pump."

A: Coppery-bronzed color with about a 2cm head which lasts throughout the drink, leaving a wonderful lacing down the glass. Slightly cloudy at first, but clears up to be mostly opaque as the drink goes on. Occasional bubbles are evident after a big sip, but otherwise not much carbonation is detectable.

Sm: Not much to report, but a faint sniff of malts, earthy floral hops, and a slight bit of alcohol are evident.

T: A smooth hit of malts mostly enabled by the creamy head, then grassy hops take over, and the bitterness really comes through. The aftertaste lingers with savory tea leaves.

MF: Slides over the tongue, with a detectable acidic layer, smooth and slightly creamy. A few tingles of the tongue, but due more to the bitter hops than any carbonation.

D: I'm starting my second right now, goes down smooth.

Overall, I think a better than decent choice of a session beer for a fun night out at the pub.

Clear 500ml bottle, best before 23rd Oct 2009, drank 20th July 2009. Poured into a standard UK pint sleeve glass. My bottle claimed 4.1%, not the 4.5% on the site information.

Pours a dull golden amber colour, almost clear and see through, a white head arrived and then left very quickly leaving a thin collar and a wispy covering.

A slight grassy aroma, no hint of the Challenger Hops or Yorkshire Malts as advertised on the label.

The taste was weak, again no sight of the ingrediants mentioned above, a thin bitter in all aspects, fizzy and boring to be honest.

This is the second beer I've had from this brewery and so far I've been unimpressed with either brew.

Purchased at the Sainsbury supermarket. The beer comes in a 500ml clear bottle of the same shape as Young's beers. BB 24/11/07, served cool in a straight imperial pint glass.

A: dark golden hue; as soon as the bottle is popped open, the carbonation gets extremely hyper in the bottle... resulting in the glass a fiercely fizzy body that decreases in force in but one minute... then followed by very even flows of artificially-looking small bubbles, like the work of excessive amount of added CO2--looking rather like a keg beer.
S: a sharply skunky smell comes out during pouring, then followed by very sweet maltiness, an intense flow of burned-sugary note as of pasteurisation, a weird yet sharp edge of burned-plastic or chemical smell of washing-up liquid, coupled with rather intrusive sweet lemons and floral scent of hops. I'd like to say something nice about the aroma, but the overall note is way too sharp and weird.
T: on the palate, the texture is effervescent at first (more than necessarily fizzy for a bitter, that is), while a thin, peachy-floral taste of hops (like First Gold) manifests itself, bringing on board very shallow spicy and straw-ish bitterness, burned sugar, and a nutty/bitter-biscuity taste of pale malts... a sour-sweet edge of fruitiness accompanies the flavour closely throughout the drink as well.
M&D: effervecent on the mouthfeel, with rather artificial fizziness to stand in the way of more enjoyable flavours. Overall, pasteurisation has left a deeply unpleasant mark in this thin-bodied beer, making the mouthfeel, taste, and smell all below average (esp. the nose...). I heard the cask version is very good, but how come it could go so wrong in a bottle? Not recommended.