John Courage

Brewed by John Smiths (Heineken UK)
Style: Premium Bitter/ESB
Tadcaster, England

Serve in English pint

Bottle. Amber, little head, thin, lightly hopped, no real evident characteristic other than bland and disappointing. This is sent to America only. Little mystery as to why. They think this is appealing to us. I usually find UK beers pretty appealing. Not this time. Smells cheap like Beck’s Oktoberfest. I expected more.

Very thin beer with made with not a lot of flavor. Not a big fan on this beer.

a pretty bland beer, no wonder its only expoted to america. thin, watery with hardly any aroma and taste. very lightly hopped with almost no aftertaste. a beer made to satisfy the US palate.

Pours a clear amber with an off white head. Aroma has some maltiness and little hop. Flavor was somewhat bland with a mild finish.

Bottle: Not too crazy about this beer. Pours a nice dark orange color with a white head that dissapates quickly. I just couldn’t smell anything in this beer. And the tase to me was very bland, no real detection of anything, maybe a little hops.

on tap at a hotel bar in baltimore. mild malty aroma. clear amber. would have trouble telling this apart from yeungling without tasting it. flavor is classicly english: malty, with a decent balanced noble hop finish, on the malty side.

350 ml loose bottle from Sam’s Wines, Downers Grove. This may be an old bottle (I can only find a code on the neck: 3108N L220 07). But I don’t mean that in a bad way: When I popped the cap, I immediately got a nice whiff of mellowed, raisin and prune-y malts. I’m thinking that’s outside the range for either a bitter or an amber. Poured in a glass tumbler, it’s a fiery reddish golden, a little lighter in the narrower part of the glass, with a thin head atop. Taste does not quite match that buildup: At first, I find a nice sharp English bitterness, but malts are kind of grainy, with some fruity esters. A bit of Burton water hardness kind of keeps the interest down. Could all of the goodness have crowded into the head space, waiting to escape first? Well, it’s pretty standard f’r’all that. They need to prepare something else to import to the states.

Pours into a pint glass. Clear dark orange/brown color. No head. Aroma is metallic, very metallic. Strange. Maybe its those crazy English hops? Flavor is watery kind of boring with a little bit of malt as the main and boring charachter. Blah blah blah.