Bottle conditioned?

Suggest for advice and purchases you visit the Utobeer stall in Borough Market during Friday/Saturday market hours.

Whether it's any better is a matter of personal taste however.

youngster in real ale drinking terms, and I don't know

if Boro Mkt is tricky to get to, most supermarkets, some off-licences & ssome smaller stores (e.g. Co-op) have some bottle-conditioned beers (aka bottled "real ale") - I've not tried all of them recently, but good bets in my mind - Hopback 'Summer Lightning', Freeminer 'Goldminer (Coop exclusive?), Fuller's '1845', Young's 'Special London' (now brewed in Bedford!?), Brakspear's 'Triple' & 'Live Organic', Worthington 'White Shield'.

Additionally (1) there's a list of brewers who've signed up to CAMRA's "real ale in bottle" logo scheme here -

0974 (it links to a PDF file)

Additionally (2) bars, shops & supermarkets often have a few Belgian bottle-conditioned beers.

I'd certainly say it's not as simple as "all RAIB is better than all filtered bottled beers" - it's very much a case by case (punintended) thing - I've had some superb bottle conditioned beers & some undrinkable as well as fountainous!

If I'm honest, I've probably had more truly awful beers in BCA form than filtered ones. That's why I'd recommend getting a few of the above BCAs, as IMO they're consistently well brewed & bottled. good luck & let ys know what you think. cheers MikeMcG

Sainsbury's do 75mcl bottles of Meantime stout and IPA, plus you can get

750cl bottles of Duvel, and some other Belgian beers. M&S now have a range of BCAs (bottle conditioned ale), and Tesco has recently released their own "finest" BCA.

It can be, but you have to be careful how you store it - and pour it!

On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:05:12 +0000, Jim Brittin wrote (in message ):

UTOBEER at Borough Market is undoubtably the place to go - I strongly recommend going on a Thursday afternoon when they're good for a chat. Friday and Saturday they're too busy for anything but brief recommendations.

In a senior moment I said stout when I actually meant porter! Great beer whatever the style though.

Thanks for all the advice! I'll try to get to Borough Market on a Thursday sometime. Seems if I buy now, I won't be trying them til mid-February though in order to let them settle :S

I was a little surprised (though I probably shouldn't be) that the general sentiment of bottle-conditioned versus filtered is "whatever tastes good", and I've certainly been through most of the filtered beer that my local Tesco's sells.

Phil

My husband and I have drank our way through about 60 bottled beers, differing between BCA and "normal" bottled beer this Crimble. I have to say my absolute favourite was the Hobgoblin, closely followed by Marstons Oyster Stout, neither of which are BCA. Personally (committing heresy here I know) I'm not really bothered whether a bottle contains BCA or not - I ask a question before - is it from a craft or traditional brewer, and then a question after - was that nice?

Much BCA is filtered and then reseeded with a specialist yeast for conditioning. To my mind this defeats the object of RAIB because the filtering must have some effect.

I wondered where they had gone, because (obviously) I rarely have a drop touch my lips. :-)

It has to be said though that it was an effort to recover from the shock of being side swiped by a 17 tonner on the M40. (have I annoyed my Great British Beer Festival transport "pals" perhaps?)

I agree - filtration strips out flavour & colour, which can perhaps be added to, in order to counteract the loss?

But I do find it a bit odd that CAMRA turn a blind eye to this when promoting the 'Real Ale In Bottle' logo, or awarding 'Champion Bottle- conditioned Beer Of Britain' - I can't think of a non-filtered BCA that's won CBOB?

If it was common knowledge that a brewery filtered & reseeded its cask beer, I think there'd be a big stink (no, not literally - I'm sure it would smell OK) - incidentally the only time I've known a brewery to do this was at Brakspear's trying to brew a veggie cask beer by rough- filtering & reseeding with a small amount of yeast.

I really am in 2 minds about this, though & I strongly suspect that (like my experiences) by far, the vast majority of really bad BCAs haven't been filtered & how much damage does that do to a company's reputation or that of real ale as a whole? cheers, MikeMcG.