Boddingtons Draught Bitter
(has 1 batch)

Cask at White Lion, Stockport. Pours bright copper with a small almost white scummy head and good lacing. The aroma is quite simply bitter hops. In the mouth in is superficially sweet but with underlying bitterness. Flavour has bitter hops and corn with some underlying citrus initially (though this fades). Hints of honey and ginger later. Finish is quite bitter. This is decent – a good attempt as recreating the much missed classic.

Old rating from 1998 - Pint from the cask. Pours golden with a creamy white head. Aromas & tastes of banana, citrus & malt. Medium body. Slight dry light bitter finish

Can 0,5: Big black "B" on the side on the can with widget, clear amber colour with an decent fruity sweetbitter taste. Quite well balanced Bitter just like all other megabreweries will produced

Ah, good old Boddington's - the Manchester ale so justly accused by CAMRA of killing 'real ale' back in the sixties and seventies with their still popular Pub Ale... Apparently though, there are a few other versions, now produced by AB InBev, including this draught bitter, a canned bitter with nitrogen widget trying to fabricate the creaminess of a true cask-conditioned bitter. Thanks to my girlfriend Goedele for bringing this tick over from northern England. In spite of its reputation and it being owned by AB InBev, I will try to remain as unbiased as possible. Snow white, frothy and dense, quite thick and regular, indeed nitrogen-fuelled head (with the tiny nitrogen bubbles merging into it immediately after pouring, a sight more familiar in e.g. draught Guinness); crystal clear 'old golden' robe with 'metallic' pale orangey tinge. Aroma of breakfast cereals, that typical 'cooked cloth' smell of pasteurisation throughout, rusk, margarine, unsugared chewing gum, kitchen towels, bitter green tree leaves, rubber, leftover dough, grass, wallpaper paste, wet white paper. Slightly sweetish onset but very low in esters, rather neutral actually, with fine-bubbled nitrogen creaminess but in an 'empty' and thin kind of way, over a slender cereally core with light toasty bitterishness round its edges; very slick and thinnish, the nitrogen adding a bit of body against better judgment. The toasty edge makes it a tad more interesting than the ordinary Pub Ale in this infamous brand, while the hops do add a certain grassy bitterishness in the end - but no refinement or complexity at all. Ends rather neutral and watery, with plaster-like effects overruling any malts and hops that went in here. Cooked to death, cheaply and very industrially made and ultimately thin and boring: as much as I love a good cask-conditioned English bitter, this clearly has very little to do with it and is barely more than a bland, fake, macro-industrial imitation of it. Just a notch better than that awful Pub Ale perhaps, but I am not even convinced of it, it has been a very long time since I had that one. In any case unworthy of the name 'bitter'!

Canned, 440 ml, shared with Boris and Brada. Pours amberish with short lasting white head. Some caramel, malts, pretty much bland and watery.