What is the best readily available bottled ale?

[Mr Larrington]

Meanwhile the Camden Town Brewery has just been Borged by AB InBev

[citoyen]

It's a hot topic of discussion in the beer thread at the other place. The Brew Dog boys have taken a William Wallace-esque stand against The Man, which is much to their credit (even if their beers sometimes aren't).

Meanwhile, I am drinking a pint of salted liquorice stout, against my better judgment, to numb the pain of shopping at Westfield. It's really rather good. Feckin' hipster brewers winning me over with their ridiculous concoctions. Not available in Tesco, I imagine.

[ian]

Camden was pretty much set up with this kind of acquisition in mind, so no surprise. Their beer was never more than indifferent. Same goes for Meantime and their insipid and ubiquitous pale ale. I can't imagine InBevSABMillerDeathStar will change much.

I quite like Brewdog. OK, they overdo the PR at times, yelling like a mouthy teenager, but they're genuinely successful and do some brilliant beers and are willing to be hit and miss. OK, you can't get into their bars these days because they're stuffed full of hipster beard, it's like tunnelling into a teddy bear's stuffing-filled guts. It was a pleasant surprise the other week in the Gatwick Premier Inn (I'm living the dream so you don't have to) to find they had Dead Pony and Punk IPA as an alternative to the nasty fizz on tap. Not the best two beers in the world, but several parsecs away from Stella. More power to them if they save me from that fate.

[ElyDave]

A very underrated beer in my opinion is Ruddle's, even the one with rhubarb in it.

Flowers used to be good, and relatively local to me, but was spoiled by Whitbread when they moved it to South Wales

[caerau]

Ooh, Flowers, yes that was good - not seen it for decades


Ruddle's County, my college used to sell that for 60p a pint in the 90s.  Awesome, I can still remember being impressed at 8 pints for a a fiver.   Shame they never cleaned the pipes.  Twas a very nice pint when I found it done proper.


Some of this thread is a proper blast from the past 

[caerau]

The only issue I have with Brewdog is that it costs a second mortgage to buy a pint of their finest.

[Jaded]

I grew up on Ruddles County and Greene King Abbot. When they were beers. Never out of a bottle though.

[contango]

I should confess that my haul the other day included at least one bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout. And I'm actually very much looking forward to the gooseberry sour.

Yesterday's demolition included a 22oz bomber of chai spiced Imperial Russian Stout. It's not all that often I buy a case of bombers but this one was good enough. The other such case I have in my cellar is Dogfish Head's Theobroma. That one was a punt - reduced from $108.99 to $50 on the basis it had sat on the shelf for 11 months in the beer distributor. The punt paid off, it's good stuff, but a 750ml bottle that's 9.5% abv (more or less) isn't something I drink very often.

Yesterday's demolition also included what was possibly the last ever bomber of the original Ruination double IPA. It was marked as "enjoy by October 2013" but still tasted much like it did back in, well, 2013.

The final touch was a shot of Talisker Dark Storm, which was spectacularly good.

[contango]

A lot of craft brewers are now using cans – small-run canning lines are modestly cheap, no more so than bottling lines, and bottles cost more than cans, they're heavier, take up more warehouse space, are harder to store (light and breakage), and cost more to transport.

My only reason for preferring to buy beer in bottles is that I can re-use them for my home brews. I don't think canning is a viable option for the home brewer yet, and cans aren't re-usable. I could use Kilner jars, I suppose.

I tend to find beer from cans a tad fizzier than bottled beers but that may be my imagination, or it may just be a characteristic of the particular canned beers I've tried.

What is a keg if not a giant can?

The only comparison I've been able to do in recent times has been with Redd's Apple Ale. It's one I'm almost ashamed to admit drinking at all but in the summer months when I want something refreshing and still want to be able to legally drive home it ticks the boxes.

Bottled Redd's was noticeably different than the canned version. The canned version had a taste that I could only describe as somewhat metallic. If I'm buying it (which I don't do very often and even less often at this time of year) I pay the extra to get bottles. Glass isn't recycled here, and bottles are a bit of a pain to get rid of, but it just tastes better.

[jamesld8]

Ooh, Flowers, yes that was good - not seen it for decades


Ruddle's County, my college used to sell that for 60p a pint in the 90s.  Awesome, I can still remember being impressed at 8 pints for a a fiver.   Shame they never cleaned the pipes.  Twas a very nice pint when I found it done proper.


Some of this thread is a proper blast from the past 

60 p !!! I recall 37 p a pint in early 80s, Flowers/ Hook Norton Old Hooky / Directors ---Morlands @ Cricketters Arms, Iffley Rd, indeed all a blast from past  and all real good stuff 

[Wowbagger]

I used to buy "beer" for 1s 2d a pint in the Black Horse in teh Roxwell Road, Chelmsford, when I was in teh sixth form. School uniform was never a barrier to us drinking then. I bet you couldn't get away with it now.

One of my brother's boasts is that he paid half-fare on a bus to Chelmsford once to go on a pub crawl with his mates.

[Pingu]

£9.20 for 1 1/6 pints 

Hipster prices