Or simply Draught Bass, as it was often called. Given the beer's return to popularity, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at how it changed over the years.
It's a beer than I've drunk every now and again. Sometimes more than others.
When I lived in the East End in 1979, the only nearby pub in the Good Beer Guide was a Bass house. I spent many a happy evening there drinking Draught Bass and White Shield mixed. Both a tasty and powerful combination. Which was exactly what I was looking for at the time. A short road to oblivion
When the Grove in balderton became a Bass pub in the early 1980s, Draught Bass was one of the beers it served. Replacing keg beers from Courage's Newark brewery. When back home, I used to drink quite often in the Grove. Partly because a couple of mates lived just over the road. Rather nice, it was, the Bass.
A couple of years back, when I was in the Black Country and Burton with the Goose Island people, we deliberately drank lots of Bass. Which had retained its popularity in that part of the country. And I was surprised at just how good it was. A wonderful example of a Burton Best Bitter. Why weren't the owners of the brand - AB Inbev - pushing it more? Well, pushing it at all?
Now they've woken up and put a little effort into the beer it's really taken off. What does that tell us? That AB Inbev were dozy bastards who had no idea of the treasure that they owned.
More to come about Draught Bass.
For about a decade, I regularly drank Draught Bass at the Unicorn in Manchester city centre, a wonderful Grade II listed pub built in the twenties which had it as their flagship cask beer (the Honourable Order of Bass Drinkers was founded there in the late sixties), as Manchester Jazz Society met every Thursday night in the upstairs function room there. Sadly MJS stopped meeting at the start of the COVID lockdown in 2020 and never restarted after it, although Bass has since become a very popular beer at the reopened Crown Inn in Stockport where I go occasionally.
ReplyDeleteBass and White Shield mixed, that sounds interesting!
ReplyDelete