Well, interesting stuff. This, along with Shuttle, Bomber and Double Century have recently made it to the US in 500 mL bottles. The presentation looks good and some thought has gone into this. They seem to be retailing for $4.99 across the board.
I am worried about a couple of things about the range in general. These beers tend not to travel well, and in any case they are simply beers that are infinitely better in their cask versions, close to the source. Hardly any bottled beer of this type is drunk in England, so these are simply not the best rerprentations of these beers that you will ever get.
One of the infamous “Golden Ales”. These beers had never been heard of in England until about three or four years ago. To my mind they are dilutions of real English Bitters that are a manufactured piece of marketing that is designed to capture a small part of the macro lager swigging crowd/market. From that point of view I am against them on principle.
Having said all of THAT, they DO generally offer a drinkable, refreshing and balanced low ABV option that is tasty. This beer is no excpetion and I think that my real objection is to the style description of “English Bitter” – if it were me, I’d create a separate style of “English Golden Ales”.
In terms of taste and appearance it is what it is. Simple golden body with little head or lace. It’s a very lightly hopped beer that has carbonation and other lager like character. Some decent, simple malts and it is unoffensive. That’s just about the best I can say for it.
At the time of writing the only other review was that of the cask version and essentially my review and it are not comparable – these are two TOTALLY different brews in these different serving styles.