English Bitter in bottles - between 3 and 4%?

Available English Beers

Buy Here

Try this one too.

http://www.beersofeurope.co.uk/

Best site up to now Black Dog even has Brakspears!

Oxford Gold...................marvellous!

Beers of Europe - highly recommended - and I don't even have to order over the interweb ... passing trade

Bitter is a live drink and needs to be in a barrel with headroom space to work & breath to give of its best & it needs to be sucked out with a hand pump. It does not like being trapped in a bottle or can.
Your light strength beer is called Session, Ordinary or boys' bitter with a strength up to 4% abv.

It also needs to be drunk in a pub where all sorts of highly desirable side benefits can be found. People with interesting views on life, soccer, rugby, cricket, gardening, fishing, shooting, food, TV, music, mending houses, solving whatever & fixing the ills of the world etc etc etc..

Buying on www means drinking at home and being limited to a introverted self opinionated existence and a scope limited to whatever your home spouse & dog has to offer

Breweries are screwing our national heritage of a real pub. If you don't go to your local it will close - as so many are doing - or worse still turn into a Thai diner. Pub life as we know it dying thanks to short term quarterly focused business plans satisfying only shareholders & the "city". They sell in high volumes to www "off licences" & supermarkets at stupidly low pricing and sell to your local pub landlord at a price higher than you can buy at www or Tesco (et al)

Get a life, save the British pub, get out and drink.

Couldn't agree more - use 'em or loose 'em.

quote:

Despite fears for the future of UK pub culture, independent microbreweries are one industry success story, with over 500 nationwide. Here are some of our favourites, but where can you recommend?

Ten top UK brew pubs

And if you must drink at home why not take a pre washed two pint milk bottle and ask for a take out of REAL ale (in fact Greene King pubs use to sell refillable carry out containers should you wish to take some ale away). I am sure you're local licensee would welcome the trade.

quote:

Originally posted by Roy T:
Couldn't agree more - use 'em or loose 'em.

quote:

Despite fears for the future of UK pub culture, independent microbreweries are one industry success story, with over 500 nationwide. Here are some of our favourites, but where can you recommend?

Ten top UK brew pubs

No8 Evening Star ,Brighton. It was just as well it was only 100yds from Brighton station, (and my workplace at one time). We used to get regularly hammered there, such a lot of choices , so little time. Before it was a brewery, they had something like 400 different "guest" beers in a year, he was able to get small barrels "pins?" from a lot of micro breweries for us to try out.
It was a tough job ,but someone had to do it!

If only I could remember just one of these beers!

As a longtime CAMRA member, I agree Mike, assuming one has a nice pub in walking distance.

Unfortunately I do not find any of our locals a nice place to be in particularly, and - apart from when I go with my wife - cannot remember the last time I was able to have a conversation with fellow pub-goer[s] about something that interests me - art, literature, architecture, music, rugby (though I accept they may have been very happy talking about stuff that interested them).

I am not being snobby or up myself here, but why pay up to £3.50 a pint for the privilege of drinking somewhere where you're bored out of your skull?

It also has to be said that 15% of the shelving of Beers of Europe, for example, is devoted to locally-produced bottle conditioned ales from the many excellent local micro-breweries, who simply couldn't survive without their bottle sales. (And about 50% of BoE's shelving is dedicated to largely obscure beers from Europe, particularly Belgium and France; the remaining 35% is dedicated to British breweries - small regionals and independents, again for whom bottle sales are a very important aspect.)

James

quote:

Originally posted by Mike-B:
Bitter is a live drink and needs to be in a barrel with headroom space to work & breath to give of its best & it needs to be sucked out with a hand pump. It does not like being trapped in a bottle or can.
Your light strength beer is called Session, Ordinary or boys' bitter with a strength up to 4% abv.

It also needs to be drunk in a pub where all sorts of highly desirable side benefits can be found. People with interesting views on life, soccer, rugby, cricket, gardening, fishing, shooting, food, TV, music, mending houses, solving whatever & fixing the ills of the world etc etc etc..

Buying on www means drinking at home and being limited to a introverted self opinionated existence and a scope limited to whatever your home spouse & dog has to offer

Breweries are screwing our national heritage of a real pub. If you don't go to your local it will close - as so many are doing - or worse still turn into a Thai diner. Pub life as we know it dying thanks to short term quarterly focused business plans satisfying only shareholders & the "city". They sell in high volumes to www "off licences" & supermarkets at stupidly low pricing and sell to your local pub landlord at a price higher than you can buy at www or Tesco (et al)

Get a life, save the British pub, get out and drink.

thanks for the help guys
it is appreciated
ah... going out, I have fond memories of that
best wishes
SJ

Down here in sunny Emsworth, the beer is £1.50 a pint all weekend. The only downside is that you have to belong to the sailing club; nevertheless this does seem the price that beer should be. £3.50 is just silly. No wonder pubs are closing.

Nigel

A good listen via bbciplayer about the death of pubs from this afternoon's edition of Off the Page R4.

quote:

With pubs all over Britain closing at a rate of 52 per week, the role of the public house is called in to question by three writers who have spent many hours propping up the bar. Ian Marchant went on a nationwide pub crawl and wrote a book about his adventures, Simon Fanshawe remembers winding up the locals in 1970s Brighton, and Melissa Cole, who is also a professional beer taster, deconstructs one of the key phrases in drinking culture: 'fancy a pint?' Presented by Dominic Arkwright.

Broadcast on:
BBC Radio 4, 1:30pm Thursday 26th November 2009
Duration:
30 minutes
Available until:
2:02pm Thursday 3rd December 2009

The Culture Show was on a pub demise theme tonight.

Yuk ???? I bet it tastes vile.

Problem is this is not and cannot be a bitter, beer or ale. Its impossible to make such a brew with natural ingredients in a natural process. The "normal" higher ABV beers we see in pubs - 4.5 to 5.5 - normally have added sugars at mashing or wort stages and usually in some form of molasses, fruit concentrate or honey. Therefore it would have to be from very artificially high concentrated sugar levels.

Also I have doubts about its design intent, is this just supplying the binge drinking get pissed quick mindset.

If you attempted to raise the alcohol level using the most alcohol-tolerant wine yeasts you'd be lucky to get beyond 15%. Additional or residual sugar will just make the "Beer" sweet.

For this sort of strength the stuff would have to be fortified in some way by distilled spirit. (hic..)

quote:

Originally posted by stephenjohn:
Does anyone know where on-line I can order English bitter in bottles? At the moment I am trying out beers with an alcohol content of approximately 3 to 4%? I find at this level I don't fall asleep after two, as I do with stronger ones. I enjoyed a Hooky Gold recently [it was 4.2% tho'] and like the lighter coloured ones.

Hi

As a longstanding real ale drinker with similar taste I understand your requirement.

You wont see beers at 3.0% in bottles,nor on draught for that matter .Most light and hoppy beers with citrus or floral overtones and not cloying malt would be from 3.8%-4.2%.

The bottled equivalents are usually the same but sometimes slightly higher.

Unfortunately many fine cask ales are not sold in bottle form and because the beers are bottled and not cask conditioned they taste different.

However I had a beer a couple of weeks ago which was a great substitute for the cask version

This was:

Harvestoun "Bitter and Twisted" 4.2% from Scotland.

Another fine ,light hoopy ale that I was drinking last night from cask is:

Atlas Brewery "Latitude cask Pilsner" 3.6%,also from Scotland.

Latitude is available in bottle but I have only had it from the barrel.

If you are a regular pubgoer keep a lookout for:

"Brewers Gold" 3.6% and "Alchemist Ale" 4.3% from the Pictish Brewery in Rochdale.
"Hophead" 3.8% from the Dark Star Brewery in Sussex
"Brewers Gold" 4.0% from the Crouch Vale Brewery in Essex
"Swift One" 3.8% from Bowmans Brewery in Hampshire.

A less rare, and these days generic beer seen eveywhere in the South East is "Deuchars IPA" 3.6%or 3.8% from the Caledonian Brewery in Scotland.They are a very big outfit producing vast quantity but it also fits the bill and is available bottled.

These are for me all special beers that I love to drink.

By the way 20 years ago Scottish beer would not have figured but there's some serious brewing talent these days.

I hope you try them out and enjoy.

Regards

Colin Macey

WYSAH Beaconsfield.

quote:

Originally posted by Mike-B:.... The "normal" higher ABV beers we see in pubs - 4.5 to 5.5 - normally have added sugars at mashing or wort stages and usually in some form of molasses, fruit concentrate or honey. ...

Most real ales have no additional sugar of any sort.

You can brew beer, quite easily, to 10% (and with a bit more care up to 12% or 13%) ABV using only malt, water, hops, and yeast. I have done it myself, at home many a time. My standad bitter was a 4.5% brew from malt, water, hops, and yeast only. My barley wine, at 10% abv was the standard bitter brew but with half the water.

The Bew Dog effort is not really beer at all. You cannot produce beer by fermentation beyond 14%. After that you have to either use distillation by heat or "freeze" fractional distillation.

Derry, sorry my friend but I have been around the pub business & brewing a few years.
By sugar I am talking about sugars (carbohydrates) - e.g honey molasses etc..

I agree you cannot brew beyond aprx 14%, and even that tastes yuk. So as already pointed out we guess this stuff is fortified somehow.

You surprise me that you have been in the pub trade and know so little about brewing.

I would be intrigued to know what beers you know to have "added sugars at mashing or wort stages" - not least because adding sugar in the mash would be pointless - before the boil, yes, but not at the mash.

Derry I am not getting into this.
Sugars can be added at any stage prior to fermentation, the later stages add flavours more than if added at boil

Over & out

quote:

Originally posted by Mike-B:
Derry I am not getting into this.

very wise.

Thanks for the recomendations Colin. But what is a pilsner?
atb
SJ