Whitbread Pale Ale

At number 6 on the "Clean Out the Fridge Countdown" is another beer from the Beers of the World multipack I grabbed from a BevMo! store: Whitbread Pale Ale. Its country of origin is England, so naturally it is an English Pale Ale style. What surprised me about this beer is the lack of information on it. I tried finding a product page about the beer, no luck. I tried searching on InBev's website (InBev brews this beer), no dice. I tried the US importer's website, and it doesn't exist. I couldn't find anything on Sam Adams' website either (they brew the US batch in their Cincinnati brewery). It's as if this beer doesn't really exist.

I do know, however, that Whitbread & Co. Ltd. was established in 1742 by Samuel Whitbread (his signature adorns the label) in swinging London, where and when this beer was first brewed. I also know that Whitbread has since expanded into many different other businesses, including hotels, coffee shops, conferencing centers, and the British TGI Friday's chain. They also brewed such beers as Boddington's and Mackeson Stout. I say "brewed" because Whitbread doesn't do it anymore; they sold their brewing operation to Belgian-owned Interbrew in 2000 for between £400-450 million. That's really all I could find out; if you know more, drop me a line by e-mail. (The bottle, Whitbread's website, BBC page on the Interbrew deal)


Here are the stats:

Whitbread (English) Pale Ale
BREWERY: InBev, Luton, Bedfordshire, England (a UK subsidiary of InBev, Leuven, Belgium)
FIRST BREWED: 1742
CALORIES/SERVING: per 12 oz. bottle
BITTERNESS:
ABV: 5.7%
ORIGINAL GRAVITY:
MALTS:
HOPS: Styrian Golding
SERVING TEMPERATURE:
FOODS TO PAIR WITH:
AWARDS:

The ABV came from the RateBeer website, and the hops and first-brewed date came from the bottle. I may be able to find info from the importers in Cincinnati, as well as ask them why they don't have a website in this day and age.

At first, I thought that the overly-bubbly head was going to dissipate before I could get a good picture, but I was wrong; it stayed there for around a minute and a half, going from carbonated and bubbly to light and foamy, staying its clean-looking off-white color. The beer itself poured a dirty reddish-amber, which was beautiful to look at in the light. The beer's aroma was that of equal parts grain and hop, which lent itself well to the taste, also a grainy-hoppy mixture. It wasn't overly powerful on either end, but still had enough of each to register on the taste buds. The finish was just a little hoppy, but it eventually faded away. Beer shouldn't linger any longer than it has to.

I don't know where you can find it on its own, but if you can, check it out. Honestly, I haven't had a lot of EPAs, so I don't know if there are better or worse ones. But, its taste isn't that bad, so give it a try.

Cheers!