UPDATED: JAN 8, 2022 500ml bottle. Clear amber with a foamy off-white head. Flavors are bread, toffee, apricot and orange with spicy notes. Light to medium body, moderate carbonation, slick texture.

UPDATED: NOV 28, 2021 Very nice drinkable ale. Understated as it should be. I can see why it is so popular, and happy we got something fresh on this side of the ocean.

UPDATED: NOV 18, 2021 copper with a good sized offwhite head. piney, citrusy, honey aroma with complexity. bready, exaggerated malty taste. bitterness is evident but not in your face. good levels of depth. great beer. pretty highly carbonated. would get again on occasion.

UPDATED: OCT 24, 2021 One of the great classics of traditional English pale ales or bitters, originally aimed at local miners but apparently Madonna's favourite beer as well, at least according to what she claimed in an interview with talk show host Jonathan Ross in 2003... I never had this one cask-conditioned, alas, but luckily I did manage to get my hands on a bottle of the filtered version - which I suppose qualifies as an EPA just for being bottled. Quite regular, egg-white, moussy, slightly and irregularly lacing, stable head on a crystal clear, deep 'old golden' beer with 'rusty' amberish tinge. Aroma of warm margarine, dried mugwort leaves, unsalted peanuts, butter on hot toast, dry hay, field flowers, dandelion, a whiff of dry Earl Grey tea, moist white pepper, vague whiff of unsmoked cigarette shag. Cleanish onset, restrainedly fruity with notes of unripe apricot and dried peach, finely tingling but very active carbonation adding a lot of refreshing, almost 'metallic' minerality as in fresh spring water, smooth body - a little bit buttery even. A margarine-like aspect, possibly a diacetyl remnant, floats over a toasty-bitterish, peanutty and bread-crusty maltiness, which remains slender but adds a late bitterness which is eventually taken over by noble hops, in a somewhat earthy and leafy, but also wormwoody, spicy way, lingering for quite a while and doing a perfect job in drying the finish; the very pronounced minerality I already mentioned, lingers on with it after swallowing. This Yorkshire classic is about as English as it gets for a bottled beer (keeping in mind that tapped beer, whether cask-conditioned or not, is still the dominant factor in English beer culture), with a crisp, light-footed, elegant and still powerful character. This kind of 19th- and 20th-century style ales may not be as hip and trendy anymore - at least not as trendy as all those American-inspired craft beers now flooding the United Kingdom, but I think we still need to honour them and respect them for their huge historical influence, and it is good to know that many (even self-proclaimed beer geek Madonna) still do. I love drinking a classic like this every now and then and I am glad that I can finally tick this famous beer off my list - it seems the guy depicted on the front label used to smile more explicitly on the former version of the label, but I see no reason why he should restrain his smile, this is as solid as it gets in this particular class of beer. Cheers to sir Timothy Taylor!

UPDATED: OCT 8, 2021 Pours a quite clear light copper/amber, with a couple of fingers of a quite dense, slightest off-white head. Decent retention and lacing. Aroma notes: delicate malty base of caramel and nuttiness, a nice underlying 'wet earth' feel, soft fruity notes of citrus and perhaps berries. The aroma is overall not especially strong, but nicely soft, clean and well defined. Taste notes follow the aroma closely, perhaps with a bit less precision/definition, but with excellent bittersweet balance. Medium sweet and medium bitter, with none standing out in the mouth and the slightest bitter edge in a semi-dry, semi-earthy finish. Light bodied with average carbonation, resulting in a quite easy, semi-smooth mouthfeel. I guess the mouthfeel is probably where the bottled version misses the most if compared to the cask version. Overall, this is still a pretty good drink.

UPDATED: SEP 29, 2021 Bottle from Tesco. Pours a clear amber colour with a medium sized throthy white head. Aromas of caramel, bread, biscuits with a hint of citrus and floral. Taste has caramel, citrus, biscuits, a touch of floral and some peppery spice. Earthy hop bitterness on the finish. Medium body with fair carbonation. More fizzy and bitter than i remember. Not bad

UPDATED: AUG 4, 2021 Bottle from Tesco. Surprised I hadn't rated this to date... It pours clear dark amber - brown with a decent frothy white cap. The aroma is earthy, nutty, dried leaves, grass, brown bread, rivita, wood shavings and leather. The taste is dry, dull bitterness, earthy, woody, nutty, digestive biscuits, dried leaves, smack of spice, leather, grass with a drying, nutty earth finish. Average body and moderate, fizzy carbonation. Pretty alright, doubt it deserves its 99 percentile though.

UPDATED: JUL 22, 2021 Butelka 500ml. Kolor bursztynowy. Piana niewysoka. Aromat chmielowo-słodowy z nutą cytrusową. W smaku całkiem przyjemny bitter. Od razy wyczuwalna wyraźna goryczka, nie dominująca ale zaznaczająca swoją obecność przy każdym łyku. Mamy tu nuty orzechowe z akcentem skórki cytrusowej oraz słód. Finisz ziołowy. Świetne na letni dzień: orzeźwiające i smaczne.

UPDATED: JUL 21, 2021 Hot weather in the UK for a few days...tired of Czech, German supermarket lager. Thought I'd give this is a try. Doesn't compare to the cask version.....but not bad. Taylor flavour but lacking the mouthfeel of the cask version. 4 bottles for £6 ...a fair drop.

UPDATED: JUL 18, 2021 Bottle 0,5 ltr: Clear amber coloured brew with an excellent dry bitter taste with great hints of citrus and caramel. I get an suspicious feeling that Ratebeer remove reviews, I certainly know I reviewed this classic.