Many years ago I lived in Nottingham and pulled pints in many places, including about a year spent in the Talbot aka Yates Wine Lodge. In those days, there were two significant breweries in Nottingham - Home Ales and Shipstones. Home Ales preferred hygenic beer, and most of their pubs operated tanks for the bulk vending of paralysed ale. Yates sold Worthington E on the same system. Shipstones (the brewery) sold real ale, but most of the pubs in town mucked about with it (recycling slops and so on using vile apparati like spile tubes and big filter funnels) which is why it got the reputation of being a fickle brew. I can assure you that Shipstones ales travelled well before the take-over - as long as they were not accompanied by a Nottingham landlord! Anyway, since most of Shipstones operations were at Basford, and Home Ales at Daybrook, I doubt that you could call them true Nottingham ales.

To go back to the subject, the interesting Nottingham ale of legend was a red ale, as was the porter sold in olden times for the slaking of thirst, rather than as falling down water. This character has to do with the malting process, so red ales can be stronger than porter. Nottingham ale was distinguished about a hundred and fifty years ago by this characteristic, and because it was less hoppy than in other regions. The only product comparable in modern times is brewed and sold in northern France. You order une biere Killian and you get something that purports to be brewed according to the recipe of George Killian Lett, an ancient Irish brewer who is long gone, along with his brewery, which gave up producing in Ireland in the 1950s. It is very pleasant, and as far as I know the last commercially and widely available red ale.