What happened to Boddingtons !

[Al 10000]

I can remember drinking in the Manchester Cheshire areas in the 80s and used to look forward to going into a Boddingtons tied house the bitter was straw coloured hoppy and very tasty.

I recently went round to a relatives house and they poured a drink out for me when i tried it it did'nt resemble beer so i went into the kitchen and noticed an empty can of Boddingtons extra smooth cold flow beer,this beer was very sweet and sickly and tasted really bad.

I have read on this forum that Conrad is qualified in chemistry would it be possible to test this drink to see if there is any link with this drink and proper beer i dont think there will be.

:confused: Alan.

[Paris_Hilton]

The Strangeways brewery and the Boddingtons brand was sold to Whitbread for £50.7 million in 1989, Whitbread was then sold to Interbrew in 2000.

Don't touch the stuff myself, comparable to the smoothflow/creamflow beers of John Smiths et al.

[Farway]

Likewise, I loved visiting the Boddies pubs in Chester when I was working up there. There are no Boddies outlets around here anyway, so I will take Alan's review as gospel and save me a quid or so

Just checked, seems the brand has succumbed to mega corporate meddling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boddingtons

[Maldenman]

Boddington's Bitter had virtual cult status in the Manchester area when I started drinking back in the late 1970s. In my opinion however the beer was fairly light being of low gravity. It is my understanding that at some time in the 70s the gravity was reduced from about 1038 to 1035 to keep the tax down and keep the price competitive.

A cask version of the original beer is still brewed, I believe by Hydes, but I'm not sure how widely available it is. Many of the former Boddies pubs are now JW Lees houses.

[RogerB]

I too am fortunate that the "Cream of Manchester" doesn't filter down to my area too often. The last pint I had was in Mr Sams Chop House in Manchester and I swore never again unless I wish to remind myself just how bad it is.

A glance at the appropriate page on Ratebeer reveals that the recipe changed substantially in 2003 so it isn't surprising that people are questioning their previous experiences. 1 recent reviewer describes it as "comically bad" which probably sums the stuff up in 2 words.

http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/boddingtons-cask/693/

[Crossste]

We used to have a pre match pub crawl up to Old Trafford from Victoria station in the 70s/80s which used to feature many Boddies houses. The first port of call was usually the pub virtually in Boddies yard but for the life in me i cant remember the name (possibly Royal Oak?) and the onto the Braziers and the Blackfriers. All good boozers with the usual Boddies carpet i.e. red limmer.

We used to have 3 good un,s here in Rochdale pre takeover. May needs Robs help here.

Hare and Hounds nicknamed the Blood Tub
Bonnie Dundee
And i think the Citizan.

In beer drinking terms only it was a tragedy when it got taken over and Whitbreads still brewed and turned out something purporting to be Boddies. Shame on ,em. If it was still knocking about in its original form it would still be in my top five

[Soup Dragon]

Not seen it in cask for ages, but keg-wise it is all around me - in my local and i had two pints (thankfully watered into shandy) last night whilst reviewing a few of the more basic pubs of Willenhall:twigs::twigs::twigs::twigs:

[Al 10000]

Hi Crossste, I think the pub closest to Boddingtons brewery was called the Brewers Arms and it had a large copper kettle in the middle of the room that you could sit inside.
On the crawl from victoria we did the Old Ship, Black Friar, Braziers Arms and the Jubilee.
I can remember going in The Baths Inn in Rochdale this was definatly a Boddingtons tied house.

I hope that has helped to jog your memory.

[Crossste]

Hi Crossste, I think the pub closest to Boddingtons brewery was called the Brewers Arms and it had a large copper kettle in the middle of the room that you could sit inside.
On the crawl from victoria we did the Old Ship, Black Friar, Braziers Arms and the Jubilee.
I can remember going in The Baths Inn in Rochdale this was definatly a Boddingtons tied house.

I hope that has helped to jog your memory.

Hi Al. You may well be right with the Brewers but that pub was a new build after the takeover iirc. They knocked down a classic spit and sawdust boozer to build a new show pub. Yeah.

The Baths in Rochdale was also a new build pub again iirc after the takeover perhaps to replace the Hare and Hounds. This now has also been knocked down. Crazily it was probably only there for about 20yrs

[Maldenman]

Crossste/Al

This looks to be a pretty useful site for lost pubs in Manchester, certainly The Brewers is on there. There are references to older pubs on Gt Ducie Street too, The Crown and Mason's Arms. Certainly worth a browse through.

http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.com/

[Al 10000]

[QUOTE=Crossste;25795]Hi Al. You may well be right with the Brewers but that pub was a new build after the takeover iirc. They knocked down a classic spit and sawdust boozer to build a new show pub. Yeah.

Hi Crossste,

The Brewers that we went in was a modern pub we went in there in 1986 when Boddingtons bitter still tasted like it should do.

[oldboots]

I remember drinking Boddies in a couple of their pubs in Bollington, Cheshire in the very early '80s, lovely stuff and I had no trouble drinking 12 or 14 pints being used to Gales HSB and Courage Directors. There were people who thought it had been dumbed down a bit even then and of course when Twitbreads got their hands on it that was the end of a fine brew, strangely reminiscent of Ruddles - a legendary beer destroyed by Grotneys in the late 70s.

[ROBCamra]

Cask Boddingtons is still brewed at Hydes. It has to be brewed in Manchester or they have to drop the Cream Of Manchester tagline.

Boddies smooth is brewed in a beer factory somewhere in Manchester for the same reason although it's not brewed at Hydes.

The Baths Hotel replaced.... The Baths Hotel. The original was in a terrace on Smith Street that got knocked down as part of the bus station rebuild.

The new build was at 42 Smith Street not far from its original site. The last landlord was Roy Kenworthy, an ex work colleague of mine.

At one point in the 70's there were only 3 or 4 pubs in the whole of central Rochdale serving cask ale. The Baths was one of them. R.I.P. :(

[Crossste]

Must admit you,ve got me there Rob. I can,t remember the original Baths pub. In fact i,ve all on to remember how that area looked pre bus station. The only pub i can remember on the bus station side of the road was the Slubbers which was a Thwaites house and again iirc Thwaites got the new pub in the station (Travellers?) due to losing the Slubbers.

Appologies to none Rochdalians.

[ROBCamra]

Must admit you,ve got me there Rob. I can,t remember the original Baths pub. In fact i,ve all on to remember how that area looked pre bus station. The only pub i can remember on the bus station side of the road was the Slubbers which was a Thwaites house and again iirc Thwaites got the new pub in the station (Travellers?) due to losing the Slubbers.

Appologies to none Rochdalians.

The old Baths was on the same side as the new Baths, close to Cyril Watts' original chippy. They widened the road to allow buses access which cost us the old pub and the chippy. Cyril bought and relocated to "Dirty Marys" on Whitworth Road. The new Baths used the same frontage as the old pub and was massively extended at the rear.

You're right about The Slubbers, they let us have a 6th Form party in their upstairs room even though it must have been obvious that some were < 18.

The Travellers Rest was an awful pub, but I had my first ever game of Galactica there. :)

[Crossste]

Now there is a memory jerker, Cyril Watt,s chippy. We used to go there for our dinner on tech days. Still can,t get the pub though. I can still picture that part of Smith St with the side streets down to Yelloways i just can,t visualise the pub unfortunately.

Only made it in the Slubbers once myself also under aged and again on a tech day lunchtime.

Concur with your opinion of the Travellers but i did have a stroke of good fortune from there. The glass washer in our pub at Ossett had given up the ghost on the same day as our area manager came to visit. He had just left the Travellers after doing an inventory on fixture and fittings prior to emptying the premises when Thwaites gave up on the pub. He said there was a fairly new machine in the Travellers which we could have for £300, cellar service would bring it over and if we accepted it they would bill us on our next invoice.

Cellar service turns up with the all singing, all dancing glass washer, we accept it and the cellar service lad even fitted it for us.

Thwaites never did invoice us, despite a couple of reminders;) to them. It just cost us a bacon butty for the lad who fitted it.

Fat lad from Rochdale 1. Fat cats from Blackburn 0.

[Al 10000]

[QUOTE=oldboots;25812]I remember drinking Boddies in a couple of their pubs in Bollington, Cheshire in the very early '80s, lovely stuff and I had no trouble drinking 12 or 14 pints

Hi oldboots,

There were 4 Boddingtons pubs in Bollington when we went on a camra pub crawl there in the mid 80s i did 3 of them these were the Waggon and Horses, Spinners Arms and The Meridian which was a very basic drinkers pub the one i missed was at Bollington Cross which was a bit too far to walk at night.

PS,Thats some drinking.