Okay, I just found out that Boddingtons is considered a bitter beer.
This leads me to believe that I don’t know what beer companies mean by ‘bitter’.
It certainly doesn’t take bitter to me. It tastes like creamy goodness.
So…Does it taste bitter to other people? Does it make people’s mouths pucker up like mine does when I stick a lemon in my mouth?
A “bitter” is not really all that bitter, at least not compared with American pale ales. Here’s the Wikipedia explanation which goes into it far more than I could right now. Bitters tend to be lower alcohol session beers, anywhere from around 3.5-4% or so, although they are divided up into several different categories based on alcohol content.
And puckering up your mouth like tasting a lemon is not a bitter flavor…that’s sour.
DISCLAIMER: You are entering a world of hurt. Best just to turn back now, forget about it.
That said, what you must realize is that these terms are all couched in the history of British beer, which is complicated.
Let’s start at the beginning. In the beginning, there was Ale. Ale was malted barley fermented with yeast. Many people think that until Pasteur discovered what exactly yeast was, people just left liquid outside and hoped it would turn into ale. This was not the case. Well before science discovered what this yeast business was all about, brewers knew that the weird brownish stuff left behind after the ale was done fermenting could be used to start the next ale.
And this is what we drank. Instead of water. It was nourishing, tasty, and a bit intoxicating. It was heaven in a glass. It wasn’t smoky, cloudy, or even particularly sweet, no matter what any self-styled experts tell you. Ale was the drink of the people, but t’was also the drink of everyone, from Shakespeare to Henry VIII. Round 'bout the time of those two, as it happens, a new drink appeared. Came from the continent, the Low Countries to be precise, and they called it “beer”. It was like ale, but flavoured with “hops”, some kind of herb that made your drink taste bitter and decreased the libido.
Henry VIII had two breweries for his court, one producing beer, and one producing ale. They were considered quite different drinks. Well into the 19th century, Britain even used different measures for the two drinks; a barrel of ale was 32 gallons, a barrel of beer 36. Beer was not accepted by all, as it happens. Shakespeare, for one, loved ale but hated beer.
Regardless, beer and the use of hops caught on, as hops were a great preservative and extended the shelf life quite a bit.
Beer caught on to the degree that ale brewers began adding hops to their ale. Henry VIII had to specifically forbid his ale brewer from using hops, because that was what his beer brewer was for.
But despite the best efforts of everyone, hops found their way into ale. Round about the beginning of the 20th century, a new type of ale became fashionable amongst the wealthy and stylish social set. It was an ale, (as opposed to a porter or a stout, which were derived from beer and popular amongst the working classes), but it had a fair dose of hops includedwithin. They called it “bitter”, presumably as in “bitter ale”. Wealthy and stylish Edwardian kids talked about “doing bitters” as if it were some kind of new drug. With the postwar era, class divisions were starting to dissolve, and “bitter” formally, your boss’s drink, became your drink because, well, you’re at least as good as your boss, ennit? But the name remains. “Bitter” is an ale that has a bit of hops to it, bitter compared to the ales of old.
A “bitter” can be a technical term referring to a certain style of beer (typically an English bitter or an Extra Special Bitter). That’s probably what Boddingtons is referring to.
FWIW the only beer that has been bitter enough to really knock my socks off is Stone Ruination. I like IPAs but that was too much for me.
For the sake of reference, here’s an International Bittering Unit (IBU) chart that measures the degree of bitternessof the many styles of ales and beers. According to the chart, bitters rank as moderate in terms of IBU.
That’s not a bitter beer. This is a bitter beer!
In Britain, bitter (bitter ale in modern usage, pace santosvega) is so called to distinguish it from mild (mild ale), a less hoppy (and generally darker), but otherwise similar form of beer. In modern British usage, they are both called ales to distinguish them from lagers, the types of beer traditionally preferred in most European countries, and the USA.
Even many British people are probably not aware of this, however. Growing up as a teenager in the late 1960s and '70s in the south of England (and spending much time in pubs), I was not aware that mild existed, and simply understood “bitter” to be a word for British style draught beer, as opposed to continental style lager. Bitter was the default. If you asked for “beer” you would get a bitter. If you wanted lager you would specifically ask for that. (We knew the word “ale,” but anyone who asked for an ale would have been thought to be either a pretentious git, or else a Northerner, probably even a Geordie.) No-one ever asked for mild, probably because most of us did not know it existed, and I am reasonably confident that very few, if any, of the pubs round my way even stocked it.
I did not discover the existence of mild until I went to university in a city in the north of England, and, even then, only after I ventured out of the student areas and the city center and visited some pubs in the working class parts of the town. There, you could still buy mild on tap, although I think bitter and lager were still more popular, and mild was mainly a drink for the older generation. Some people, I discovered, liked to drink mild and bitter, a mixture of the two (also known as half and half, although that could have other meanings, even within the context of beers). Apparently, mild used to be widely drunk all over Britain until the 1960s, when, for some reason its popularity crashed, and it all but disappeared except, as I found, in working class areas in the north.
I cannot speak to more recent times, as I have not lived in Britain for twenty years, but according to Wiki, mild has recently made a little bit of a comeback. On the other hand, I have also heard that more lager than bitter is now drunk in Britain, although bitter (unlike mild) is still certainly universally available and widely drunk.
Some bitters, really are pretty darn bitter. One I remember is Greene King Abbot Ale, which some of my friends loved, but I always regarded as vile. Boddington’s (as I recall it) is pretty much at the other end of the scale of bitters. I think it might almost count as a mild if only it were a bit darker and heavier.
About to read the wiki:
So what does bitter taste like?
The pith (white stuff) from a lemon is bitter. But the fruit and juice itself is sour. Grapefruit is a mix of bitter, sour, and sweet. Let’s see, what else? Dark chocolate tends to be bitter. A lot of greens are bitter. Unsweetened tea is bitter. Aspirin. Tonic water is quite bitter, balanced with a good bit of sugar. Lots of herbs, roots, and most (if not all) barks are bitter: quinine, wormwood, quassia, rue, goldenseal, etc.
I had a Duvel for the first time last week, which is a Strong Belgian Ale with a high IBU. A friend who I had try it compared it to drinking aspirin or acetaminophen.
I tried Bitter as my first pint, didn’t like it and then was introduced to “Brown and mild” (Bottle of Brown and half of mild in a pint glass)which I loved then, but is far too sickly for my taste now.
Lager was considered then as a drink for women and lightweights.
(I am now a lager drinker)
The best way to find out is to try a little. The next time you are in a bar and it’s not too packed ask if you can sample an IPA or Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Any decent bar will give you a little sample to try before you pick your poison.
Your friend has no taste buds. Duvel is nectar.
I’m officially revoking your friend’s beer drinking privileges.
Duvel is da bomb.
I loves me my German and Bohemian Pilsners, with their nice bitter finishes. Not as bitter as many on the chart, but just enough of an herby bitterness to help me gain 25 pounds last year.
Nor is it terribly high in IBUs (in the low 30s–Bass is like 75, for comparison. Although BudMillCoors are generally in the 10s.)
I am currently sipping a New Belgium 2º Below Winter Ale, which they say is “brightly hoppy.” Well, to someone who drinks macros, maybe. 32 IBUs barely registers for me.
Tasty though.