Hog's Back 'Traditional English Ale'

I have had this one before, and though I wasn't too impressed with it I gave it another go on account of it being delivered by mistake. Free beer always tastes better after all. Or not. It's a brown beer. Now of course there's nothing wrong with a beer being brown, but there is when it seems more to be a flavour profile than a colour, when it becomes a way of describing an unchallenging, middle of the road beer, then that's when I object.

As a parent of a six-month old daughter I find I also end up with objections to pink. Again, pink's just a colour, there's nothing to worry about surely? But when you are buying a pack of baby spoons and the nice lady needs to ask 'boy or girl?' with regard to cutlery for an infant, then something doesn't sit right. If you've no idea what I'm on about then check out this article about marketing science (c/o Pinkstinks). Or, if you can bear it, check this out - it's kind of a 'Guess the number of damning social constraints we can enforce on you from a young age' puzzle.

Oh yeah, beer...

Well it's about choice. Going into 'Toys'R'Us' and absolutely everything in the girls' toys aisle is pink is equivalent to walking into a supermarket's 'speciality beer' section and being faced with an awful lot of beer that is essentially just a minor variation on a theme. I used to work for someone who complained that Fosters we sold wasn't as good as the Carling they used to sell. But really, are the two that different? And are they that different to their competitors - and by the same token can't a similar thing be said about those speciality beers? I'm picking on this one in particular but the whole idea of traditional=good really doesn't excite me.

For me it's just lacking something, kind of hanging around in no-man's-land without knowing what it wants to be. Maybe with a further kick of spice or fruit or something it would be better, but as it is, not too impressed.