I REMINDED myself this week just how good a beer Banks's Bitter is and it set me thinking about the welcome resurgence of beers like it – malty, darker bitters which are not too strong.

Younger beer drinkers may not even have come across the beer in this neck of the woods, as it's predominantly a West Midlands beer.

But just before Marston's and Banks's merged a few years ago, Wolverhampton-based Banks's took a few tentative steps into the East Midlands, establishing a few pubs. It also had the Grandstand, adjacent to the Derbyshire cricket ground, but that was bulldozed for the dubious architecture of the Gateway Centre.

Banks's built The Needles, in Bembridge Drive, in Alvaston, a large modern estate pub which looks very much inside as the Grandstand did in its latter days, essentially one-roomed but split-level and with divisions between the drinking areas.

It is a busy pub at night, full of conversation when there isn't a singer or karaoke on. The Banks's branding remains in place and so, happily, does a splendid pint of Banks's Bitter, alongside Pedigree and a guest from the Marston's estate.

The bitter is a beer so full of fruity, hoppy flavour as to defy its modest 3.8% strength and it was in satisfyingly good condition when I visited this week. The pub was for a time a few years ago my local and I would be happy to find more Banks's around.

Happily, many of the smaller brewers are now producing beers along similar lines, as the rush to produce very hoppy, very pale "golden" bitters seems to have slowed. Ilkeston Blue Monkey, much-praised in these columns, could perhaps claim to have set the trend, with its Original, a copper-coloured 3.6%.

But Tollgate, the splendid Woodville-based brewery, has entered the fray also and last week I enjoyed another if its fine beers, High Street Bitter, at the Harrington Arms, in Thulston, where it also brews the house ale.

Like Banks's Bitter and Blue Monkey Original, it is darker than most bitters, maltier and more full-bodied.

Perhaps the downside is that it is therefore more of an acquired taste but I hope to see it around more often – and many more like it.