That sounds really good. I’ve never seen it.
You are Ena Sharples and I claim my £5!
Do you really want me to start commenting on your loose moral character? 
My favorite pub used to stock Mackeson. I’m pretty sure I was the only person to drink it regularly and that would be after an evening of Sierra Nevada pints.
I live in a town in the the UK.
We have several pubs, but the best beer is found in the one where they brew it upstairs! 
I once spent two weeks on the Isle of Man sharing a tent with a guy from Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Every night before turning in, he made it a point to down a six-pack of Newcastle Brown Ale. The consequences were predictable. 
This was my introduction to English beer.
Agreed. I’ll add Shepherd Neame 1698 as another fine bottle conditioned beer.
The difficulty I find in making recommendations is that it’s the large breweries (which are part of mega corporations) who are in the strongest position to export - and, of course, they make the worst beer. They bought up all the small regional breweries, closed them down, consolidated manufacturing (ahem), reduced costs (and strength) - and you know exactly where that leads you. Granted, it also opens up the domestic market for microbreweries, but they are rarely in a position to export.
To complicate matters further, the current generation of mircobreweries has been heavily influenced by the US IPA revolution - which is a godsend for the UK, but (I presume) a much less interesting development if you’re American.
From upthread I agree with Sam Smith and Fuller’s ESB, violently disagree with Greene King IPA (the beer that got me back into drinking cider). For traditional beers, I don’t know if these would be exported but I would add as recommendations:
Fuller’s Golden Pride. A barley wine - strong!
Timothy Taylor’s Landlord. Just a very good pale ale. Multi award winning, and rightly so.
Adnam’s Broadside. A good, strongish pale ale.
Caledonian Brewery Deuchars IPA. An outstanding (Scottish) beer.
From the newer generation of breweries Brewdog do some exporting, are unashamedly US influenced, and I haven’t had a bad beer from them (though some are… unusual). Punk IPA is their best known beer and very good, but see if you can find Mr President (American Double IPA) – now that’s an intensely hopped (very) strong beer. Actually, any IPA produced by a new London brewery (egs Beer Factory, Camden) is worth a punt - if you can find it in the US. BTW these new Johnnies are not averse to putting good beer in cans.
j
Brewdog now has a brewery in Columbus, Ohio so should be relatively easy to find in the US. They also took over the Stone brewery in Berlin and have one in Brisbane as well.
Intriguing - how does their US style go down in the US? At the weirder end, how do Americans react to a grapefruit IPA (Elvis Juice)? Any reports?
j
ETA - ah, on checking I suspect you may be from the UK - if so, can I throw that question out to US dopers?
- Yes.
- Yes.
It really wasn’t. Newcastle Brown bears no resemblance to any other English beer. It’s horrible chemical crap.
Don’t bother with Brewdog. You might as well drink the type of beers in the US which they are trying to copy. They are a simply overpriced hipster US ale and bear little resemblance to English Real Ale. It’s for people who feel the need to pay twice the price for their beer in the UK.
Brewdog beers are not supposed to be English Real Ale. I think their Punk IPA is one of the better IPAs out there and the company has built their success off the back of it. And 24 cans for £26 is pretty good value!
But agreed it might not be the thing to recommend for someone looking for something uniquely English.
There has been an explosion of small breweries in the UK since the 1980s, so far more beers are available. I don’t know what makes it over to the USA. Of those listed already, I know several of them and like them, but they run the gamut of flavor from light and hoppy to heavy and malty. There’s only one way to become an expert; try them, and see which you like.
Bitter is the usual draft beer, when bottled it is often called a pale ale. Some bitters are relatively dark and more malty, plus there are a number of (usually) stronger beers such as Theakston’s Old Peculier that do not fit exactly into any one category. “Northern bitters” such as Theakston’s and Boddington’s tend be be pale-colored and heavily hopped. Brown ales are more malty and less hopped. Most British beers are around 4% alcohol and are best served at cellar temperature. They lose their flavor if served too cold, but they should not be drunk warm!
For Belgian beers; have you already found Chimay?
Yeah but it’s a conundrum. Microbreweries are intrinsically more interesting than mega corps; but on the whole it won’t be microbreweries exporting to the US. And as I said;
Then again, interesting to hear from @kferr that Brewdog now have a brewery in the US - they obviously see a market.
It’s London. Everything is expensive. And it turns out I like hipster US ale.
j
Real English bitter isn’t carbonated. You have to pull it up from the keg with a pump, and the fitting at the end of the pump pulls in regular air to make it bubbly. It’s hard to find that kind of beer on draft in the US because it only lasts a couple of weeks once you tap it.
The closest you’ll get to that would be a can with a widget, so Old Speckled Hen or Boddington’s. You open the top and immediately pour the whole can out into a glass. The widget in the can contains pressurized nitrogen, and when the can it opened, it lets the nitrogen out. Guinness cans have that also. In my opinion, Old Speckled Hen and Boddington’s will be as close as you’ll get to beer from a pub in England if you’re in the US. There is one pub I know of in NYC that would bring in Fullers ale (ESB, London Pride), but I haven’t been there in a while. I’m not sure they’re still there.
I’ll second that Brewdog, while a fine brewer, is just making American-style beers. I like Punk and Elvis Juice, but it’s not like you can’t get very similar beers here.
I’ve seen both in Chicago too. But, they’re served from taps similar to any other beer. They’re not the heavy taps where the bartender has to pull hard.
My partner is a huge fan of real ales, in particular what would be referred to as “golden” ales. Among his particular favourites, Loweswater Gold from the Cumbrian Legendary Ales brewery, Oakham Citra from Oakham Ales, and Hobgoblin from the Wychwood brewery. I guess if you are in the US you would be talking about bottled ales, and these are all available bottled, but still a very poor second to the cask variety you would get in a pub here.
I don’t see them that much on draft (well, I don’t see anything on draft these days), but my local place had Elvis Juice as a guest tap for a while. In NJ, they’re sold in some liquor stores, right next to regular American microbreweries. Two of my kids went to school in Scotland, in St. Andrews where BrewDog has a bar, so I buy it. People I share it with seem to like in here. Elvis Juice is not as grapefruity as something like Ballast Point Grapefruit IPA, which tastes like it has grapefruit juice in it. It’s really no different than other American micros.
I remember drinking English beer in New York, in the quirky bar Burp Castle in the Lower East side. It’s quirky because the barperson dresses as a monk, and sssh’s people when it gets too loud. We drank Wells Banana Bread beer in there. It’s more of a novelty beer, flavoured stuff like chocolate and banana don’t feature heavily in most normal English pubs, but they had other stuff, and also a lot of Belgian beer too.
While not everywhere, hand pulls are not as difficult to find as they were back in the day. In my experience, the older, more established, more serious brewpubs in the US (the original Goose Island brewpub, Russian River, etc.) will often have a few of their brews tapped this way. I seem to remember a few “English Pubs” in Chicago that would have a beer engine or two (The Red Lion, maybe?).
If you’ve got a brewpub near you that hand pulls some of their beer, that would probably be as close an approximation to what you’d find in an English pub as you’re likely to get in the US.