Adnams Selling Lagunitas IPA

Lagunitas is now brewing in Chicago where im located. We get a lot of their beers and are for the most part very good. the IPA is solid, keep an eye out for Sumpin Sumpin, and Sux. both excellent. hopefully they make it that way.

 

Lagunitas have a rep in UK working hard at extending distribution

 

Sumpin Sumpin made it over in limited amounts last year. It was excellent.
The IPA seems to be in almost every London beer bar, I think they said they wanted it to be the 'go to' American IPA in the UK and it's certainly getting there. For a U.S. import it's pretty good value, somewhere between £5 and £5.50 a pint. In comparison Stone IPA comes in at around £8 to £8.50 a pint.
What's impressive is Lagunitas have made the effort to get it in as fresh as possible and with the new Chicago plant now operational they're hoping to increase distro to the rest of the UK.

 

If you ever make it to The Euston Tap they have it on permanently and they seem to be the first to get any of the other beers too.
I think the last one to come over was Dogtown Pale Ale.

 

Seems to me that the best thing to do really is just to explore our home-grown brewers a bit more, the decent US inspired IPAs I've had from the likes of the Kernel, Summer Wine, Tiny Rebel and others have kicked the "ass" of any imports, mostly due to freshness and short travel time (presumably).

Better for the environment too

 

I pulled the trigger and placed an order the other day. Should arrive tomorrow (probably while I'm at work)....

 

^ Co-signed.

Last night I drank fresh Brave New World and fresh'ish (2 months) Wyoming Sheep Ranch. Light years ahead of stuff like Lagunitas.

 

I reckon you could get about four pints in a Sam Smith's pub up north for that!

I've seen Lagunitas IPA in Harvey Nicks, but I assumed it had probably been there for months (and in a pretty hot shop to boot) so I didn't bother.

 

I'm sure it's just like here. All the best stuff stays local and is brewed by small breweries. It's not the lack of freshness. I'm sure your local brewers are actually making much better beer than any american beer getting distributed in the UK

 

I haven't had any of the famous US offerings but I imagine a lot of them are very good, based on the more widely distributed stuff which can be pretty good in itself, though inconsistent, probably due to the shipping.

 

There's a Lagunitas Meet The Brewer neet up in The Toon, back end of August.