Readily Available English Bitter?

Picked up a 6 pack of this last night. The only other commercial esbs I have experience with are Fullers and one that a local brewery makes. This one is stronger (imperial) and so probably not the most traditional example but I liked it.

 

It's BRBP's house beer and has been the 11 years I've lived here. Always on cask. They also typically have a very good porter on cask, as well. I've just sold myself on having a couple pints there this week.

 

How is it a cliché?

At the time, all I knew was bitter in the pub tasted a lot better than American beer ("AAL" was not in my vocabulary... it was just beer).

My English host explained that, unlike American beer, it was "live" beer and was hand drawn from the cask (which was just another container to me, a keg), and had a very limited life preventing it from being distributed too far from the brewery. Also, I discovered that with each trip to the UK, it did a number on my digestive tract for a few days. My host talked about the Campaign for Real Ale, etc., as a resistance to the industrialization of the local breweries... but he also only drank lager!

I thought the big deal was that it was unpasteurized, and hence very perishable, had live yeast, and that it was an ale, not a lager (not that it was "on cask"). Heck, I didn't even know how ales and lagers differed, only that this English beer was an ale (and was good) and American beers were lagers (and not as good).

The whole experience opened my experiences to beer more flavorful and enjoyable that the American beer at home, which began my journey looking for something better.

Genuine English Bitter, even if exported in bottles and with a few months on it, remains a favorite, even if it is not quite up to the standard I was getting in the pubs in Leicestershire 35+ years ago.

 

Just a very poor choice of word on my part. Apologies, I didn't mean it in a negative way. I just wanted to express that your line below is a common story for people who ended up becoming very interested in beer. Bitter or cask should be more widely celebrated in these parts because of it. Here's one more example:
https://brooklynbrewery.com/about/the-brewmaster#welcome-link

 

I checked but couldn't figure out the date.

I already had enough beer so I didn't bother trying to decipher the code. I might do just that this week.

 

Altamont also canned one recently called Mr. Bigglesworth that's just making it into distribution around here, some pretty tasty stuff.

 

I used buy the Tetleys nitro cans. It's been a while since I have seen them, but I do recall enjoying them immensely.

 

I've basically given up on most imports. Fuller's seems to be the only one that arrives in acceptable shape in my area.
However, Denver's Hogshead makes cask ales that taste just like the real thing. That's not an exaggeration either. If I'm craving bitter, that's where I head.

 

Including draft?

Over the past 2-3 years the majority of the German beer I have consumed is via draft. The notion being that draft beers will be served fresh and so far this has been the case for me.

Cheers!

 

I just meant British/UK beers. I find them to be even more fragile than German imports. German imports aren't as fresh as the local CO stuff, but they're still usually drinkable. Especially draft and cans. My local pub usually has a few on all of the time, and even the Old Chicago near my house gets more than I expect.

 

Most (all?) of the British brewers put a "best before" guideline of 12-15 months, so...

Nevertheless, the Coniston Bluebird Bitter I picked up in Oregon was damn good. (I didn't even make note of the date... only the taste.)... and I can't get it here.

 

For me, when it comes to draft vs an import bottle w/o a date, it's: "draft isn't as risky, but it's far from a guarantee."

 

German beer seems to hold up incredibly well in bottles. I have no problem buying German imports with 5-7 months on them.

 

Shipyard Old Thumper should be very authentic. https://shipyard.com/beer/old-thumper/

Yards ESB is a nice Philly area beer. You can even find it sometimes at local bars on cask.

 

Further unprovoked Britpicking...

IPA was normally just one of a brewer's range of pale ales, normally but not always the strongest. This is why Greene King, Charles Wells and Caledonian make beers called "IPA" which are very much in the same space as things that other breweries call "Bitter". And ESB was literally just the name that Fullers gave to their strongest bitter.

In other words, English Pale Ale and Bitter are basically synonyms, and traditionally, (English) IPA and ESB have been subsets of that - the fact that these are now often treated as three or four separate styles is a slightly weird artefact of (mostly American) attempts to classify stuff from a distance, creating weird part historic part made-up styles that have subsequently taken on a life of their own.

English Golden Ale is pretty much a distinct thing - although the boundaries can be blurred with the pale and hoppy end of bitter - and is probably the most significant (and biggest selling) British ale style after Bitter. But no-one in the US seems to talk about it much.

This Has Been A Public Service Announcement.

 

I used to like this beer a lot. By no means is it anywhere close to as good as a cask English ale, but it fit the bill considering how little of this style hit the shelves. Especially at such a low ABV.

Yes, but for the most part ESB will be stronger than something called English Bitter, especially regarding what you'll see on the shelves/taps here in the US.

So if the OP is asking about "English Bitter", ESB might have a very similar taste profile, but will in all likelihood be stronger.

We've had a lot of suggestions for ESBs, I'm curious if that's what the OP was looking for or not.

For example, there are many similarities between Helles and pale Oktoberfest, but if someone was asking for examples of a Helles, I wouldn't tell them to grab an Oktoberfest.

@sportscrazed2

 

Yes, but the difference between a strong bitter and an ordinary bitter in the UK can be less than 1% ABV. differential The UK range in pales from an ABV point of view and considerably more narrow (and human) than what he have here in the US, where almost moronic ABV levels are touted

 

True, for American styles.

But my example of a Helles and Oktoberfest would also have ABV's that are less than 1% different.

Most Helles are 5%, and many Oktoberfests are around 5.8% - 6%.

 

Actually in the overwhelming majority of instances IPA was the weakest beer in a brewer's range. Hence the number of low gravity IPAs to this day.
Golden Ale is not a new style, Ron Pattinson has found reference to these from before WW1. And Boddingtons is as Pale as it gets. American hops were widely used before WW1 too, British brewers used half of the world's hops and had to source them from abroad.
Bitter has always ranged from very pale (Bathams, Boddingtons) right through to copper.
Pale Ale Incidentally simply means Ale brewed using Pale Malt, the Pale doesn't describe the finished beer. So our Victorian ancestors could talk of Black Pale Ale without contradiction.