English beers and ciders

Hi, if it helps, my fav one when I lived in England was Newcastle Brown. It is usually pretty easy to find, hope you're lucky.

Cheers,
Maria

Don't know of anywhere NI but I've found a lot of little bottle-shops in ChCh often have one or two British imports (with appropriately steep prices) tucked away in the chiller. Richmond Liquor (?) on the corner of Stanmore Road and North Avon Road in Christchurch has things like Old Speckled Hen and Bishops Finger (?or simialr name). Not sure if it's any use but best I have to offer.

#1 "Newkie Brown" is indeed an excellent choice - best drunk cool, not cold; a fridge will kill it.

#2 Speckled Hen is also good - there are 2 different beers, Bishop's Finger and Bishop's Tipple.

I have no idea if you can get them in NZ, but my recommendation to try would be any of the "Black Sheep Brewery" offerings - Black Sheep Bitter, Emmerdale or Riggwelter.

Fuller's London Pride (although southern) is a good 'un as is Wadsworth 6X.

Happy drinking :-))

We live in Wellington and have no problem buying British ales from New World. Pick your area though.....one that we sometimes go to doesn't have any, but it's out in the burbs, the three in the city have quite a large selection.

Not sure about cider though.

Young's Barley Wine Ale.

New World should have it.

It's fantastic sh*t.

Sometimes you see gift packs of British beers in the supermarkets. From what I remember they have about 4 or 5 bottles in them.

cool

thanks guys, that gives me enough starters to go on with.

Boddingtons is the Manchester beer, and readily available in most bottle shops.

Comes in 4 packs of tall cans with those gas widgets in to give it a nice creamy head.

Otherwise most people in England these days seem to drink carlsberg and stella in pubs.

"Boddi's" is more of a mainstream beer though, imo - akin to Carlsberg & Stella (by that, I don't mean it's a lager, just that all 3 are mainstream and - apart from Stella, which is Belgian anyway - don't have a lot going for them). It's not bad, just not great. Actually, I think it was the first bitter to come with a widget and thus was fantastic, as canned bitter used to be dire.

Basically, there are 3 general types of English beer - Bitter, Real Ale (which is a buzz word for stronger, more traditional bitters with a stronger flavour) and stout/porters which are thick, creamy and full of flavour and hard to find these days. But there are also loads of side shoots, like Brown Ale (eg Newcastle Brown), Pale/Light Ale and Mild - the latter tends to be a bit weaker than bitter but dark and strong in flavour. And cider, of course, but that's a very different animal.

The beers mentioned above are all far superior (and probably more expensive) and if you can find them, leave the cans alone.

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>Young's Barley Wine Ale<hr></blockquote> Isn't that a contradiction? Wine/ale?? Actually, I used to drink Gold Lable Barley Wine when I was about 17 or so - I think it was about 12% and came in bottles just over 1/3 pint - rocket fuel :-))

Cheers!