Whitbread Pale Ale

Maybe somewhere in Belgium.

 

Hi Coventry
There was a BA thread about Whitbread a few years ago that might offer some clues
https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/the-return-of-whitbread-pale-ale.500388/

If you're in NY then try NY Beverage $45/case https://www.newyorkbeverage.com/product/whitbread-pale-ale-12oz-bottle-case/

You might want to hit up the regional forum for your area to see if anyone knows of an online store that carries Whitbread.

 

I drank this a few times back in the late 1980s, I think. It tasted like nothing else. I'm not saying that it was the tastiest beer out there. It was interesting. Was it the yeast that was being used?

 

That could most definitely be a factor along with fermentation conditions.

I have no experience brewing with the Whitbread strain but when I brew my annual batch of Bitter Ale I make sure to use a characterful English yeast strain (lately Wyeast 1469 - the Timothy Taylor yeast strain) and I make sure to ferment warm (e.g., 70 degrees F) to encourage the yeast to produce fruity flavors (i.e.,, esters).

Cheers!

 

It was quite pale in color too, as I remember. Whitbread then went bankrupt and reemerged some years after that with a new owner and then disappeared again.

 

Quite pale, but full of crazy flavor -- very shocking and foreign (yet intriguing) to my young palate.

I remember using Whitbread yeast in one of my first home brews -- worked quite well.

 

The Whitbread Co. is still in existence - they sold their brewing division to Interbrew (forerunner to InBev) in 2000, a few months before Bass did the same, making Interbrew the largest brewer in the UK. Whitbread had brewed Stella Artois under license for the UK market since the 1970s - at the time of the sale it was the #3 beer in the country.

At the time, in the US, Whitbread Pale Ale and Mackeson Stout were being brewed under license at the BBC brewery in Cincinnati, continuing the contract with Hudepohl-Schoenling, the brewery's previous owner.

 

Oh, Mackeson Stout, that's another blast from the past. Super chewy and dense stout for the time.

So are you suggesting that the Whitbread my friends and I enjoyed in the 1980s were brewed in the US?

 

Nope. "At the time" meant the year 2000, when Whitbread sold to Interbrew. Hudepohl-Schoenling had previously been the importer of Whitbread and Mackeson brewed in the UK in the 1990s, before that the Whitbread brands were imported by All Brands Importers (Pilsner Urquell, Foster's, Dos Equis, etc).

 

Whitbread didn't go bankrupt. They just got out of the beer business. The company how operates as a hotel and restaurant chain.

 

From a purely American perspective exiting the beer business = bankrupt.

 

Young's Ram Rod and London Special, along with Watney's Red Barrell were distinctive and informed my early palate. I kept them around, cool, in an old pantry and drank many of all of them for years.

 

Watney's Red Barrel was all the rage in southern California in the 70s when I lived there. On draught at so many places. I was not the biggest fan but I drank my share.

 

"Bankrupcy" usually means that a company is reorganized or liquidated, often leaving some creditors unpaid. Many companies end (wind down) or sell operations without stiffing creditors, sometimes reaping a big profit, other times leaving little for the owners. These are not the the same thing.

 

Well, there are many and varied "American perspectives" - on that I think we call all agree* - and there's a very prominent one that the adherents of which (especially those who know the meaning of that funny "L" thing and the equivalent in US$, anyway) upon read the article in one London paper at the time, might not agree.



* Even among the beer geekery, "cashing out" for the bucks (or pounds) is seen as, not bankrupt, but a win. See the thread about Bell's being sold to a subsidiary of the Japan-based multinational beverage company, Kirin.

 

Loved Watney's Cream Stout back in the day and later Mackesons. Never had Red Barrel.

 

We drank a lot of Whitbread back in the 70’s. It was still imported and had a very distinct flavor. Moved down South and Whitbread fell off my radar. Came across it again in around 2001 and grabbed a six. It was not the same beer. Looked at the label and read “brewed under license”…. I may be mistaken, but I seem to recall it was being brewed by either Molson or Labatts. A true tragedy.

 

I think it was brewed in Cincinnati, which spooked my innate Anglophile. I never did buy that iteration. Kinda like Miller brewing Lowenbrau in Eden, N.C.

 

Ahh but the Labatt brewed Lowenbrau was damn delicious.