We have an ‘Eat as Much as You Can’ Chinese Buffet restaurant near our work that we tend to visit every week. Aside from all their Chinese/Thai bottled beers, ‘Batemans Bitter’ lurked at the bottom of the drinks menu. We ordered it and haven’t stopped ordering it since – because it turned out to be Batemans Combined Harvest.
It’s called Combined Harvest because it is a Multigrain Ale that combines 4 harvestable incredients: Barley, Oats, Wheat and Rye.
Most premium ales are brewed only using malted barley, but this multigrained beer has a blend of malted oats, malted rye, and malted wheat.
This bottle is 4.7%.
There really aren’t any bottle notes to speak of – other than saying it has a ‘… subtle bitterness that will appeal to male, female and young drinkers.’ An odd thing to say on a bottle – but hey!
It did win Best Harvest Ale at the 2007 World Beer Awards and has won other awards previously.
This is another of my top ten bottles of ale. I could drink it all day every day. It isn’t gassy and has lots of flavour. It does have a subtle bitterness, but it’s also spicy, fruity and malty and it just goes down really well.
On the Ouse scale this scores 4.5 out of 5.
I thoroughly recommend this bottle. I’ve only ever seen this at Ocado, so get it there (or the ChinaEast Buffet in Hatfield) – and let me know if you find it anywhere else.
