Vale of the White Horse

These three beers all arrived for my birthday and excellent choices they were too. White Horse Brewery and West Berks Brewery are long established and robust micro brewers. Bellingers on the other hand are more recent and brew in the back of the family garage business of the same name.

West Berks Brewery are famous for Maggs Magnificent Mild, but this bottle of Goldstar was a super beer with old fashioned roast malt & burnt toffee with hints of honey and good bitterness, a fine beer indeed. Shame about the branding on the bottle, I certainly needed my glasses to appreciate that!

The White Horse Bitter at 5.1% had all the hall marks of a fine beer, with the branding on the bottle very striking and implied a confident and robust beer. It delivered in this respect being roast and malty with a hint of toffee, but perhaps the flavours were not as big as the Goldstar. None-the-less a good beer.

Goldstar left, White Horse centre, Bellingers right

The Bellingers Moonlight had more chocolate and nuttiness about it, as well as some roast malt offset by a little acidity. Of the three beers my favourite would be the Goldstar, but all were good examples of fine English Pale Ales.

My reason for featuring these is that some beers are instantly recognised as good and interesting because of the geographical area of origination. For example beers from Yorkshire and Cornwall are instantly thought of as good beers because of their county of origin. However the area of the country that cuts across Berkshire and Oxfordshire, which is known as the Vale of the White Horse, also has some fine brewers and their beers compare well with any from the fore-mentioned counties. Do try them if you get a chance.