London Pride

Name: London Pride.
Brewery: Fullers, The Griffin Brewery Chiswick, London.
ABV: 4.1% (cask - the bottle arrives at 4.7).
Style: Traditional bitter.
Season: All year round.

Availability: Available in most good supermarkets and numerous pubs in and around London and Berkshire.

What I paid: I had mine bought for me at the delightful Bull Inn at Sonning but I have picked bottles up in nearly every supermarket at around the £2 mark.

Try if you like: The taste of a solid, traditional bitter like Spitfire or HSB. Sweet but with a dryer finish which lends itself to those of you who like a hopped pale ale but desire something more rounded.

Beer, like all things sensually orientated (yes, I did say sensually), triggers association and memory. London Pride triggers association with my old local - a Fullers pub that has the quintessentially aged and weathered country English charm. This beer also has a certain significance of being my friend away from home. In my part of the world, London Pride has very extensive distribution and when many establishments boast of a 'cask ale' they usually count this, sometimes exclusively, as being the range of 'cask ale' available. Pride has been my 'go-to' guy on a multitude of occasions when it is either a pint of this fine tipple or a baseless, flavourless lager beginning with F or C (both also being the opening consonants to the word I would use to describe them to proceed -ing awful'). London Pride has been a dependable choice when all other options have been thin and sparse. For this reason, it holds a special place for me. That and because it is an excellent expression of its breed: the British Bitter and it comes as no surprise that this quaffer from the capital has snatched a host of awards, CAMRA's Champion of Britain among them. Pride has provided me with flavour in those places where such options are few and far between - it also has a habit of being so established that people whip one of these bad boys out when they don't know what else to give me but they know that "you like ale right?". It's a dependable friend. Guardian angel? Let's not get too whimsical.

Enough of this indulgent preamble - how does it taste and pour? 

As it glides glasswards, the drinker is rewarded with the russet-auburn brew with very little carbonation. A pint of Pride looks every part the epitome of 'bitter' and indeed the same can be said for the taste: awash with sweet and deep malts encircled by a hopping that has the sugary precursor quickly finished by a dry (indeed, a very dry) hop bitterness with a bite more removed from the 'grapefruit' floralities of a pale ale and closer to that of a best bitter - the flavour is grassier, more earthy. However, the finish is not too bitter nor is it overwhelmingly dry but it is far more so than the likes of a Doombar. If you like an honest pint of bitter, Pride will be like coming home to a warm hearth after a hard day's work for you. Perhaps a little dry for my pathetic mouth to session on but I can certainly understand, given its depth of flavour, the grand status is rightly holds. Yet, as I say, Pride and I have history and I will always go back to it when the occasion arises.

 Image courtesy of: https://shop.fullers.co.uk/collections/bottled-beers/products/london-pride where one may purchase a whole host of Fuller's goodies.