Aldi: Badger Beer offer and Batemans XB

Sitting in the middle isle of my local Aldi is a Badger Beer 'Spring/Summer' box of 12 bottles. Costing 15.99 it has three bottles each of Tanglefoot, Long Days, Englands Gold and Fursty Ferret.
That works out at £1.33 a bottle which normally would be a reasonable bargin for lovers of Badger but in view of the current 4 for £5 Tesco offer, the Aldi offer is beatable.
Granted though the Long Days bottles are not currently in my local Tesco branch, perhaps they are in yours and included in the offer, but i was not keen on it when i reviewed it , so three bottles sitting around waiting to offload on a visitor is an option but one i'm not taking here.

I did however pick up a new bottle from Aldi, the Bateman's XB, little brother of the perennial shelf stocker XXXB.  Its the first time i've seen it in the Bateman's own form, they previously both appeared on their shelves in the 'specially selected' range.

Aldi used to have quite a good selection of beers, they often had new and interesting british and european bottles like 'Franziskaner Weissbier' and 'Schofferhofer hefeweizen', but over the last year they seem to have fallen into a rut of just supplying the same old things, never a new line, the same old honey bottle from Skinner's, Banks Bitter, quite disappointing really.

Badger - Long Days

Badger - Long Days

I like Badger beers generally, the light floral touches and fruity tones, the spices they use too. The 'Cricket' beer was a lovely summer drink this year, 'Blandford Fly' and 'Pickled Partridge' are favorites of mine also.

I'm also lucky in that one of my relatives used to work for Hall & Woodhouse so there is always a lovely well stocked fridge in that house!
This evening i tried their 'Long Days' 4.5% beer, specifically brewed with summer in mind apparently. It might remind me of summer but when i was a kid perhaps, the raspberry flavour is for me too sickly, its like sherbert sweets or fizzy lace strings, just a touch to much.
I think i'll go back to Lemony Cricket, a far far better summer drink.