In North America, craft beer is becoming a widely popular trend, but writing about it can still feel like trying to push a frontier foreword. By contrast, in England where the Campaign for Real Ale (or CAMRA) has been advocating for traditional British beer since 1971, craft beer is the over-eager, new kid who laughs at his own jokes and talks too much about “attenuation” and “IBUs”.

One of CAMRA’s founding concerns was protecting cask ale — beer carbonated naturally by fermenting yeast and served without the forced carbonation of keg beer. The White Shield IPA from Worthington's is a true-to-type example of the bottle-conditioned cousins of cask ale.

Poured into a nonic pint glass (a dimpled pint mug will also do) this English IPA is the dark, clear copper of a five-year-old penny. It supports a moderate cap of open, coarse foam.

The aroma has the iconic English ale notes of toasted malt, caramel and dessert apple. The flavour builds on the theme of dark bread and toffee set against pleasing bitter, earthy hops. This IPA is clearly a drink brewed from barley, seasoned with hops rather than a delivery vehicle for novel innovations in hop breeding.

It is surprisingly bitter for its modest 40 IBUS, but that is probably because of where it is brewed. The gypsum-laden water of Burton upon Trent is particularly well-suited to magnifying the clean, starkly bitter flavour of pale ales. This natural advantage was important in helping establish Burton beers and the pale ale style as a competitor to darker, sweeter London brews in the early 19th century.

Despite CAMRA’s hard work, the British brewing industry followed roughly the same global course of consolidation and after several rounds of acquisitions Worthington's is now owned by MolsonCoors. They may not make interesting beer themselves, but the behemoth macro-brewers can sometimes be counted on to bail out iconic breweries and then get out of their way.

Worthington’s White Shield, $3.95 for a 500 mL bottle, LCBO #315754