boring brown bitter

[sheffield hatter]

Your assessment is quite correct, although I am guilty of using the term, usually its tongue in cheek, the culprits are the national brands which are bland and subsequently boring to my taste. Of course I am well aware there are tasty brown beers out there as indeed there are boring golden and pale beers,more often than not from the national brands again. So from now on BBB stands for Boring Bland Beer.

Thanks Mick. I know your BBB references are more often than not tongue in cheek, though that knowledge doesn't necessarily stop them getting under my skin!

Two of the blandest pale beers in my experience are Thwaites Wainwright, now just known as Wainwright, a nationally available brand named after a famous son of Blackburn, and the locally popular Bradfield Farmers Blonde. Always referred to by me and my Sheffield mates as Farmers Bland, this beer is the most popular choice in the Kelham Island Tavern. Boring Bland Beer indeed.

[Aqualung]

Two of the blandest pale beers in my experience are Thwaites Wainwright, now just known as Wainwright, a nationally available brand named after a famous son of Blackburn, and the locally popular Bradfield Farmers Blonde. Always referred to by me and my Sheffield mates as Farmers Bland, this beer is the most popular choice in the Kelham Island Tavern. Boring Bland Beer indeed.

I agree with you about Wainwright and I know all about the name as well as the newish Keswick pub. As far as I'm concerned all those Farmers beers are rubbish and it's totally appropriate that Farmers is Cockney Rhyming Slang for piles. Many years ago Thwaites opened a pub in London and certainly then their bitter was a proper brown bitter. Another real Turkey is their Lancaster Bomber but the Marston stable seem to have a plethora of rubbish beers nowadays.

I still quite like JW Lees bitter although I'm not sure whether it would be classed as brown. I also quite like some that are more orange in hue like Old Hooky, Wherry and one of the Triple fff ones (Moondance?).

[Mobyduck]

Thanks Mick. I know your BBB references are more often than not tongue in cheek, though that knowledge doesn't necessarily stop them getting under my skin!

[Mobyduck]

I agree with you about Wainwright and I know all about the name as well as the newish Keswick pub. As far as I'm concerned all those Farmers beers are rubbish and it's totally appropriate that Farmers is Cockney Rhyming Slang for piles. Many years ago Thwaites opened a pub in London and certainly then their bitter was a proper brown bitter. Another real Turkey is their Lancaster Bomber but the Marston stable seem to have a plethora of rubbish beers nowadays.

I still quite like JW Lees bitter although I'm not sure whether it would be classed as brown. I also quite like some that are more orange in hue like Old Hooky, Wherry and one of the Triple fff ones (Moondance?).

Moondance is nice, plenty of flavour, I'm not sure Wherry is what it once was, possibly suffering from increased output?

[london calling]

There is no such thing as a boring brown bitter its just a phase us beer geeks use to describe regional and national blands.It alliterates better than boring brown pale coppery amber coloured bitters.I have just passed the 9850 different beers mark so have drunk more bbb than the average drinker.One thing I will make clear is that if someone tells me they like a particular beer (recently a guy I met thought Sheps -Master Brew was perfection) I say great keep drinking it.One mans meat another mans poison.

[london calling]

I tend to go for more of a pale ale or something from Hammerton, Purity, XT, Five Points or Thornbridge (not their Curse of the Cucumber stuff); I also quite like Ghost Ship.

I'm quite partial to Landlord and don't mind Special if on good form, likewise Tribute and Spitfire in limited quantities, Sussex too; Ruddles or Badger I'd avoid as both remind me of the 1980s.

Worst beer? Doom Bar, which doesn't seem to have seen a hop, tasting a bit astringent. I was told by a quite reliable source that it's stocked so liberally (in London at least) because of its low wholesale price. I've also really gone off Pride which for me is just Doom Bar in a red satin basque with suspenders and black fishnets.

None of the first six beers meet the bbb rules.

[london calling]

Interesting, I haven't had a decent pint of Bass for nearly forty years now. Young's and Fuller's have priced themselves out of my market and I' won't go to a McMullen's pub after the way they trashed their outlet on the outskirts of Chingford. Badger Best and London Pride are both sweet beers. London Pride is £2.79 in the Wanstead George with guests up to 6% abv just £2.15. I'm really not sure about Young's Special but Tribute can be decent and is more orange than boring brown. To me Landlord isn't even a boring brown beer, it's mainstream. I generally go for less ubiquitous Harvey's beers than Sussex but I do have an attachment to it in one of their tied houses. When I was going around West Country JDWs I fitted in a couple of Palmers tied houses and found their beer a lot better than I remembered from decades ago. I'm not even going to comment on Doom Bore. Shep's Master Brew and Spitfire are very poor compared to that they have been in the past. I had their Spitfire Gold in a Cheshire JDW and it was superb. Shep's still can brew some decent beer and occasionally do.
Ruddles Best is a rubbish beer brewed for JDWs and deserves the same disdain given to Younger's Scotch from over 20 years ago. It's a disgrace that GK are allowed to use the Ruddles brand,
When I was in the Wolverhampton Lych Gate Tavern one day last year they had Wimbledon Copper Leaf on which was going down really well and I also enjoyed. I think I've mentioned elsewhere the excellent Black Sheep Bitter I had in a Flint pub last year.
The biggest problem is that there are so many pubs around with not enough demand for a real ale and / or they just can't be bothered to look after it. This is even more pronounced outside the major cities of Scotland and Wales. It doesn't seem to be so pronounced in England.

Wimbledon brew basic styles but do them well.

[london calling]

Yes.

Cut my teeth on Brakspear's ordinary and Morland's bitter. If either (especially the latter) were around today (and not any Marston's or GK fakes) I'd live on them. Later on in London, I coped fine with Chiswick or Ordinary or even, for a while, Charrington's IPA. As the years passed we moved a bit further south and perfection in Harvey's Best was in striking distance. Forty years on, now in the Midlands, the Hook Norton - Hooky - or Purity (Ubu or Goose) we get round here are excellent. And a run out for some Batham's is always a treat.

My son lives in Sunbury where there are 2 possibly 3 Breakspears pubs and the pint of bitter I drank about a year ago would fit in the lowest category.

[london calling]

By 1979 I'd been round every Brakspear outlet and knew their beers very well. For me the ordinary never tasted as good in London as in one of their own pubs. Taylor's Landlord always seemed the same. I knew Morland's but not as well as Brakspear. Their ordinary bitter was very dry for a Southern beer. I think Morland probably went wrong by buying a shed load of dross pubs being offloaded by the big six. I still have some faith in Hook Norton but the Hooky used to be quite cheap in their tied houses and is a low abv pale. I've never been all that struck with Purity but haven't really tried a lot of it. I agree about Batham's but generally only ever drink it in their own pubs. It's not really a brown beer (neither are Holden's standard bitters).

I had a couple of Holt's bitters this week and quite enjoyed them. It is brown but has a good bitterness. The price tag of £2.96 was a lot higher than I expected!

Purity are a good brewer like Wimbledon and seem to sell a lot of beer round London.

[rpadam]

Any BBB drinkers out there?

Yes, so thanks for asking!