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Fuller’s Golden Pride on tap

gp.jpgWe noticed with some excitement that the Jugged Hare on Vauxhall Bridge Road in London will be serving Fuller’s Golden Pride, a strong barley wine, on tap for one week only from the 3rd March.

We’ve had Golden Pride in bottles and not been terribly excited — it’s like Fuller’s other strong beers, but a bit chemical. But it’s raved about by more esteemed critics than us, and on tap..? Well, who knows. We’re definitely going to give it a go.

The Jugged Hare itself is an acquired taste — there are lots of tourists and it feels a bit like a souvenir shop at times — but the beer is always in superb condition and the staff always impress us with their continental-style professionalism.

4 replies on “Fuller’s Golden Pride on tap”

Golden Pride is the pasteurised version of Vintage Ale (or should that be Vintage Ale is the bottle-conditioned version of Golden Pride), so I can’t imagine why they’re not calling this Vintage Ale on draught, unless they think from a marketing viewpoint Golden Pride sounds better …

Funny, coz I’ve always thought “Golden Pride” is a rubbish name. Always reminds me of Special Brew, for some reason. (Gold tins? 8.5%?)

If the recipe for Vintage Ale changes, does Golden Pride vary from year to year? I must say, I’ve not experimented much with GP.

Unless I’m very much mistaken, Golden Pride and Vintage Ale are two completely separate beers. I used to help run a bar in Ealing and, through a very good relationship with the boys and girls at Fullers, we were fortunate enough to get the occasional cask of Golden Pride and Vintage Ale and they were certainly different beers.

Fullers often send casks of Golden Pride out to selected establishments as a reward for taking all the beers in their Spring and Autumn beer festivals. Vintage Ale is very very rarely seen on draught, and is always labelled as such.

Unless I’m very much mistaken, Golden Pride and Vintage Ale are two completely separate beers.

You’re pretty much mistaken. Jeff Evans did a side-by-side tasting of GP and VA in What’s Brewing a year or so ago precisely because the two offered one of the few examples of a beer available in both bottle-conditioned and non-bottle conditioned versions.

GP and VA are made to the same recipe, using the same amount of grain and hops, the same mashing, boiling and fermentation regimes and finished to the same OG. GP is filtered and, I believe, pasteurised before bottling, VA ain’t. THat’s the only real difference The types of hops and malt in VA tend to change every year, and this is always noted on the boxes VA is sold in: whether they ever change the malt and hops that go into GP I dunno – you’d have to ask John Keeling, the head brewer.

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