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.

440ml can on the Island Princess. Nose is grassy and malty. Dark gold with a medium white head. Flavor is lightly bitter with hints of caramel.

Tasted from tap in De Beiaard in Amsterdam. The head is too thick for a British beer. Just a faint hoparoma with caramel. You could say: the taste is almost neutral. There is some late hopbitterness and a very faint sourness. Still this beer is a decent thirst-quencher.

Can from Aldi. Amber with a fat coat of white head Pretty watery with a touch of cardboard as well as honey and a little stone fruit. But oddly the lack of body (combined with rather tentative nitro) brings the modest bitter finish into greater prominence - which for me makes it beat the Pub Ale. You could drink buckets of this but you wouldn't enjoy it much - if that isn't authenticity, I don't know what is.