500ml bottle from Aldi. Batemans cask beers are OK, but the bottled beers suffer due to the processing - the filtering and pasteurising. It does not make them ugly, but it does reduce their pleasurability, and introduces unwanted flavours and characteristics. The beers do not become distinctively Batemans due to the processing, but they do become distinctively processed and produce flavours all too familiar with drinkers of pasteurised bottled British ales. I do not know why Batemans call this a golden ale as it is a run of the mill and very dull bitter with a colour only just emerging from amber into yellow. Bog standard pasteurised bitter.

Bottled, pasteurised, 500ml from Aldi, Banbury. Burnished gold with white head. Over pasteurised tinny notes to the fore, a little on the boiled grainy side.Some saving hop around, but fairly bland and a touch dusty, past it. Not great.

That signature Bateman’s pasteurised-to-death butterscotchy clear bottled boredom. Except this one is in a fancy brown bottle. Bronze with a dying slick of white. Toffee, marzipan, faintly musty boiled hop aroma. Plenty of stale almondy alcohol notes as it warms, buttery malt and tired, sickly, long-dead hops. Didn’t finish the bottle.