Aldi I.P.A.

Brewed by Batemans
Style: Premium Bitter/ESB
Skegness, England

Bottle at home ... WIth home made Steamed Buns ... mmmm... which is more than id really say about the beer... It was decent pairing as it was quite clean with the spiced pork filling ... copper light bubbly white head ... sweet toffee malt ... light sweet slight metalic fruity hop ... clean and simple with a little bitterness.

From Aldi (obviously!) Galashiels, looks ok, head lasts fairly well, average aroma, hops to the fore. Quite sweet palate with a hint of fruit creeping in on the finish. Not the best IPA I’ve tasted but worth a bash.

Bottle. Amber brown with a small head. Aromas are tea and light malts with some raisins. Flavours are caramel malts with spices and dry tea. Woody with thin pine notes. Fairly medicinal. Not a true IPA at all but still reasonable.

Bottle from Aldi, Aylesbury, Bucks, consumed 13-01-09 Pours mid amber with a white head and some busy carbonation. There is some initial sweetness which is balanced reasonably well with an underlying bitterness. I also get a slight creamy vanilla thing going on and there is definately some banana and toffee which I only notice three quarters of the way through this. Its quite fruity in general and a bit tangy there could even be a hint of orange. In fact as this Aldi/Batemans range goes this isn’t to bad and has a wider range of flavours than the other two I’ve tried. A6 A4 F6 P3 OV12

Bottled, pasteurised, 500ml, from Aldi, Banbury. Amber with white head. Perfectly acceptable beer if done on the cheap, grainy, slightly caramelised malt, but gives up a reasonable bitterness with a little background hop with an orange sweetish note. The body is light with touches of cardboard. Not an unattractive beer.

500ml bottle from Aldi. A clean malt with a dry base, some orange, some barley sugar, some peanut skin, some tin - reasonable, but lacking in interest or character. There’s a soft carbonation - a little insistent as forced carbonation tends to be. Hops are soft and restrained - possibly used more for fragrance than bittering, but the filtering process seems to have dulled them down. The finish is dry with a lingering soft bitterness. The body is a little thin for a 5% ale and this presents as being closer to a lager except for a little fat on the lips. The label looks good and gives the impression this is going to be a better quality ale than it is. It’s not bad beer - the flaws are not huge, but the quality is not great, and the processing reveals itself too much. It’s a cheap beer and it tastes like it.

50 cl bottle. Amber with a thick and firm head; musty hop aroma; soapy and chewy in the mouth, this beer seems that it is about to deliver lots of flavour, and then doesn’t, just more musty cardboard; there’s a good shot of btterness towards the finish, but it’s also stickly sweet. Certainly not an IPA, but it’s hard to say what it’s actually trying to be.

Right, onto the ’IPA’. At least this one pours with a fine white head that persists well. Slick and lacy. Aromas of slight wooodiness, beeswax, politely musty hop (Goldings?). Buttery malt...hardly any hops in the mouth. Some slightly Germanic spruce and herb, but it’s barely there. Soapy alkalinity. LOADS of almond and cardboard again. Like licking an empty cereal box. The marzipan and thinness reminds me of a Maibock/Heller bock-type beer at 7% where the alcohol starts to swamp everything else. It is drinkable, but not especially pleasant, and massively wide of the mark as an IPA, or even an IPA-like beer. Drinking and adding these beers to the website has been a chore.