Adnams Southwold Bitter a truly classic pint

Southwold Bitter 3.7% abv (cask)

Adnams Southwold BitterTasting notes

Southwold Bitter is a beautiful copper-coloured beer, late and dry-hopped with Fuggles for a distinctive, lingering hoppiness.

Brewed with the finest East Anglian malted barley, sourced locally to the brewery. We use a blend of hop varieties, including Fuggles, which we add late in the boil to preserve the herbal flavours of this traditional English hop. We add more Fuggles to each cask so that the flavour of the hops infuses into the beer.

What’s the story?

Southwold Bitter is as distinctive as ‘Southwold Jack’ (the knight with the sword) who appears on the pump clip and has done so through many incarnations. Many Adnams beer fans would agree with our Head Brewer that Adnams Bitter is a truly distinctive pint. We wouldn’t be overselling it to describe it as a classic.
(1 unit/half pint)

Want to know more?

IBC Award Bronze 2010International Beer Challenge Bronze Award winner 2010

CAMRA Champion Beer of East Anglia 2007

First brewed in 1967, the packaged version was until recently years called ‘Suffolk Strong Bitter’ and depicted a scene of the brewery on the packaging.

Adnams Southwold Bitter in bottlesBottled Adnams Southwold Bitter 4.1% abv

At 4.1% abv, bottled Bitter is refreshing, distinctively hoppy and dry with wonderful malt aromas. Delicious served cool.
(2.1 units per bottle)

Weighing less than 300g, our new, award-winning 500ml bottles are one of the lightest in the bottled beer category. Better still, they’re 100% recyclable.

Adnams Southwold Bitter is available in bottles to buy online.

A video review by The Real Ale Guide:

Watch Adnams Brewer Fergus Fitzgerald review Adnams Southwold Bitter:

  • Sarah Howe

    Thanks for your kind words about our beer and we do endeavour to keep up the good work! Sadly we do not export our beers to the US at this time.

  • Richard Seager

    I grew up in Norwich but moved to New York in 1983.  Adnams Bitter is one of the things I miss the most.  While some UK beers appear in  New York, Adnams does not.  Once I found a load of bottles of Tolly Cobbold in the fridge of a vegetarian Indian restaurant in Rochester, NY – what the hell was that doing there?  - I bought the lot.  Anyway I am always delighted to find Adnams beer the same as always one my trips back to England and this makes me thirsty for my next visit (in June).  Hopefully Adnams will keep up the good work forever!

  • Matthew Merrett

    Oh and a note on the claims of it being ‘hazy’. It really shouldn’t be! In my local, the engineers arms, Leiston, it’s clear and light glows through it like a good ale should.

  • Matthew Merrett

    A very tasty, special, and unique ale. On a (perhaps pedantically) critical note, i wish this beer was universally named and recognised as Southwold Bitter. I’m not entirely sure about the history here but I think at about the same time the recipe was revamped, the name ‘The Bitter’ was conjured up, and that’s what you see often on pump clips (i’m not sure what is written on bottle labels). Maybe it’s just me, but I really don’t like that name.

    However the beer is absolutely brilliant, and like i said, unique. A gluggable session beer but with an onslaught of remarkable flavours to boot. Like all real ales, it needs love and care to ensure what drops into your glass does the brew justice. Long story short, Adnams are passionate about their produce and it shows, the from the big details to the small details.

  • William Rosser

    Adnams Bottle Bitter And Broadside
    Adnams bitter bottled and draught variants were for a long time among my favourites for very different reasons. Adnams bitter was always a pleasant well balanced pint I have not been able to obtain it recently having moved from Essex to the midlands. Suffolk strong bitter (bottled) was brilliant it had a thirst quenching sappy aggressively hoppy blood orange bitterness with no compromising sweetness. I have tried bottles of of bitter and broadside recently and found both over sweetened through addition of too much malt and the good fruit characters they had lost
    CF sweetening of cough medicine which the beers now remind me of.

  • Sean

    Kevin,

    Glad you enjoyed the beer.

    You might try Shelton Brothers they import a few beers from the UK including Adnams and I am not sure how up to date this site is but it may help http://www.cask-ale.co.uk/us/.

    Regards
    Sean

  • Kevin Henningson

    Just got back from the UK had some of this and loved it. I was lucky to bring some back home to the USA. Gave what I had left to my friends and they loved it as well. This beer is a very well balanced beer. Wish we had it here in the states. Do you all ship to the states?

  • Sean

    Ray,

    It is already available in mini-casks, either in your local store or online here.

    Thanks
    Sean

  • Ray Gibney

    When will Southwold Bitter, my favourite from your splendid range, be available in Mini Casks please ?

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  • Fergus

    Hi Shaun

    Thanks for taking the time to e-mail us. Sorry that you didn’t have a very good pint. All our regular cask beers should be served bright.
    There are many reasons why a beer might be cloudy, many of which will only affect the appearance and not the taste however the fact that it was tart suggests an infection. We’ll contact the pub to get a bit more detail.

    Thanks again for letting us know

  • Shaun

    Coincidentally, I was googling ‘cloudy Adnams’ after a dispute with the staff at the Bristol Bar, Brighton on Wednesday. Your Broadside is easily my favourite beer (not counting the ‘seasonal’ Young’s Winter Warmer).

    The Bristol were serving Harvey’s (our local, and always a safe bet) which I know *shouldn’t* be cloudy, so when served a tart, opaque glass of that, I chose Adnams Southwold for my next drink. The same taste and appearance convinced me it wasn’t right, so I returned it to the bar – only to be told “it’s just gone on” and “no-one else has complained”. Your posting here makes me think I was right. Poor beer and poor service: they’re doing you a disservice. Luckily our local Morrison’s has Broadside in bottles – to paraphrase George Thorogood, “I drink at home” :-)

  • Fergus

    Hi J.Wallas
    Thanks for contacting us. I don’t think our beer is always cloudy. Cask beer can have a haze for a number of reasons but we check every batch of beer before we put it into cask and also again when it is in cask to make sure it will drop bright before it goes out. Obviously we can’t test every cask from a batch but the beer we do test is bright. It is quite possible that a small number of casks from a batch can have an issue however if your experience is that it is always cloudy then something else is wrong.
    Do you drink it in one pub or a number of pubs in the same area? Could you let me know which pubs or ask the landlords to contact us so we can find out what the problem is? You can e-mail me at fergus@adnams.co.uk

  • http://adnams.co.uk Sean

    Caroline,

    I have just double checked and when you search for Bell or Bell Inn the Bell Inn at Middleton comes up top result.

    Regards
    Sean

  • j.wallas

    why is your beer always hazy, as I have had tonight and my pub says it is always
    like that.

  • Caroline Howlett

    Why can your pubfinder facillity on this website not locate my local, the Middleton Bell, which I can see through my window, right now????

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