Sometimes, but often they are “cask ales” from some microbrewery and will be really strong or something. English bitter tends to be fairly low in alcohol. I’ve been generally disappointed with US cask ales.
I just looked up the place in lower Manhattan that had the Fullers’ beers (The Pound and Pence) and it’s permanently closed. Sigh.
Might as well ask the house a second time 
Young’s Old Nick is no longer being brewed.
Watney’s as a brewery died out years ago, but was relaunched in 2019. Looking on Untappd it looks like the new beer lineup is jumping on the current craft bandwagon. Cream Stout is shown as no longer in production.
People probably heard of Watney’s from the Monty Python sketch about a Travel Agent.
When I arrived in South of England in 1987 there was no sign of it. Other famous beer brands from the 70s such as Double Diamond, existed in niche places such as Indian Restaurants which, due to licensing laws, often were a place people ended up in after the pub because you could be more beer, as well as some food.
I think I mentioned it to a friend, and he said it had long gone, but might still exist in Spain (along with Double Diamond).
Some brands of beer just fade away, and are found in weird places, such as Bass, last seen here in the 90s, but I saw some on draught in the US a couple of years ago.
I’ve had Bass in the UK within the past couple years, it would have been somewhere up north. It seems I failed to check it in on Untappd so can’t say exactly when and where. A friend of mine checked it in in October 2019.
They’ve probably done a new, better one, nowadays. The one I remember was like Double Diamond, flat and tasteless.
Yeah, this is true. Sorry to hear about Old Nick and Watney’s Cream Stout, but I suspected as much.
Mackeson’s is a suitable stand-in for Watney’s Cream Stout. It’s a lot harder (at least around here) to find an actual barley wine like Old Nick. Thomas Hardy Ale is fantastic, but tends to come and go – I’ll see it one place at random, they try again a few months later and see that it’s gone.
I think This stuff is the normal UK Barley wine nowadays, but with looks like 3 quid a can even over amazon. I don’t think it sells much.
Being in a humble late December mood, I will revive this old thread and apologize for my dismissive attitude, especially for quoting an old John Cleese line about English beer that was funny but unfair; anyway he got paid to say that. And that, upon the OP’s recommendation, I tried Fuller’s London Pride and now it’s all I drink, at least in the cold months; summer being Cheap Beer season at my house. Yes, Fuller’s costs you more but it really tempers the bitter part in a way I like. Think I’ll uncap another - Toods!
Quoted for truth. Cellar Temperature is not ‘warm’, but it may be perceived as such by someone with a lifetime experience of drinking ice cold lager. There’s no real way to say that without sounding snobby about it, but actually, I’m OK with that, given that it’s a reaction to silly complaints about ‘warm beer’ from lagerboys.
Maybe I’m an outlier, but I tend to nurse a pint of stout longer than I would for, say, bitter or red ale or pale. As a result, the temperature of the second half of the pint is maybe quite close to cellar, even if it started out extra cold.
I don’t even dislike ice cold lager. If, on a scorching hot day, I want to just neck something that’s very refreshing and thirst quenching, I am not averse to choosing a pint of lager.
Dark beers on cask will come out at the right cellar temperature, but those served from keg will have been run through the same chiller as the lagers and be too cold. My GF prefers dark beers and when she gets one on keg she’ll sit with her hands wrapped around the glass for a few minutes to warm it up.
I too like a lager when it’s hot but always look out for those from British craft breweries. The ‘premium’ brands like Moretti and Peroni are all brewed under license in the UK by the huge mega brewers. Utopian Brewing is a good example of a good British lager producer.
I’ve never tasted the London Pride but Fullers London Porter is one of my favorites. Its just very hard to find where I live - coastal southern New Jersey.
Fullers London Porter is maybe my favorite. It is rare to find and very pricey when I do. I’m up on the Bayshore now.
It looks like I mentioned it 2 years ago:
I’m a little bit surprised that I missed this thread the first time around. English ales are one of my very favorite styles of beer in the whole world, and it’s an absolute crime that they’re not in vogue at the moment in the US and are hard to get hold of.
If I had to describe English ales in a word, it would be balanced. The English brewers don’t go in for the extremes that American brewers do. No absurd 60 IBU “Double IPA” that’s also only 1.042 OG or anything like that. The English brewers do a great job of balancing hops and malt appropriately.
The biggest problem is that here in the US as of late, we have a very limited selection. I can get (this is from memory, not a comprehensive search):
Some of the Samuel Smith beers- typically the winter ale, the organic lager, and a couple of others.
Old Speckled Hen by Morland
Boddington’s Pub Ale
Fuller’s London Pride
Trooper by Robinsons - it’s inspired by/under the supervision of Iron Maiden, the metal band.
I assume Bass and Newcastle are around here somewhere, although honestly I haven’t seen either for a good while.
And that’s about it. Used to be we could get more Fuller’s products, more Porters and Stouts, Wychwood Hobgoblin (one of my favorites), Old Peculier, Worthington’s White Shield, Timothy Taylor’s Landlord, and a few others I’m drawing a blank on right now.
Anyway, I tried a whole bunch when I was over there for my drinking holiday… er… study abroad, and one of my very favorites was Ruddles County Ale, and generally anything from Greene King. I’m not a fan of British lagers; why bother with those if you can get German or Czech lagers?
I suspect purists may look askance, but I like Sharp’s Doom Bar - slightly less bitter and more malty than London Pride (which is my other usual go-to).
(Shame about the gush on Sharp’s website, though)
I liked Sharp’s Doom Bar before it went mass-market, and since it did, I think they’ve done a pretty good job of maintaining the same taste and quality. Probably my favourite ‘session ale’, and I like the fact it’s available in many, many pubs. London Pride is indeed a fairly similar taste and an acceptable substitute. Also a big of cask Bass, but that seems to have got rarer recently - no idea why.
Hmm - Two years ago I wrote:
A word of caution: I don’t know what US microbreweries are doing at the moment, but in London it has recently become painfully fashionable to do your beer “unfiltered”. Now I say “unfiltered” in quotes because I just don’t see how not filtering a beer can make it that damn cloudy - I’m guessing that at least some breweries are deliberately suspending solids in the beer.
Back in the summer I was reduced to asking bar staff if they had anything that wasn’t cloudy. I was told that yes, they keep one clear beer just in case. He didn’t say “Grandad”, but we both knew what he meant.
So, as I said - a word of caution.
j
That actually an interesting point. When I homebrewed, you just had to let the beer sit for a few weeks to settle and all. You didn’t have to do any sort of special filtering step unless you wanted to get it pristine, but it would pour clear enough if you didn’t disturb the lees on the bottom of your fermenting vessel.
Yep, that’s exactly my experience as well. Something doesn’t add up.
j