Beer In The News thread....

'This is a really exciting move for Bath Ales. With the investment and broader support from St Austell Brewery we are better placed to capture the opportunity that exists for Bath Ales.'

I thought Bath Ales had already captured that opportunity. Their beers are in coffee shops and garden centres everywhere, and distributed internationally.

 

The former Celt Experience, now owned by Evan Evans, is changing it's name to Celt Craft Beer and will be brewing some of the old stuff under the apparent supervision of the original owner.

 

subscription only for that article @Aye

 

That's weird.

 

If we can form an orderly queue...

http://imbibe.com/news-articles/beers/carling-re-launches-carling-premier-lager/

 

http://www.insider.co.uk/news/hippo-beers-goes-into-liquidation-10888863

Noticed this today, as I was going to browse the online shop.

I've never physically been, but have used them online a couple of times, and were always spot on.

Sad to see, and, I think the first time I've seen / heard of a specialist bottle shop shutting down?

More competition? Badly run business? Bit of both?

I hope it's an anomaly. There's something quite special about visiting an indy bottle shop.

 

Good post. I think one push factor might be the ramping up of the range of supermarket ales, particularly hopped fronted IPA's. Whilst there is still clearly space for indy bottle shops at the niche levels such as RIS, DIPA's, sours etc. some consumers, like myself, might not be buying or finding certain brands now. One of my local indy shops use to be one of the only to stock Stone, speaking to them now, they won't be due to the supermarkets.

 

There's also a lot of hype in the industry at the moment and with crowdfunding it's easy to translate that into investment, regardless of what the actual business plans are or their realistic hopes for success.

 

GBBF winners announced

overall 2017 Champion Beer of Britain is churchend beer Goats Milk!


Also interesting that three of the top four golden ale beers were single hop citra ones, no sign of that trend letting up by the looks of things

 

It's odd because Citra beers have been mostly dreadful recently, all cat pee and no citrus.

 

I've been to the shop and thought it was a pretty good place. Not sure if I'm right or wrong, but I think the problem with bottle shops in the UK (vs. the US) is the cost difference between the pub and the shop. In the UK, you are maybe paying ~4GPB for a pint in the pub. The bottles in the shop are usually over 2.50GBP. Compare that to the US where the pint in the pub is about the same as in the UK, but the bottle in the shop is around $1.50GBP. I the US, I drink almost exclusively from home and buy from bottle shops. In the UK, I drink UK beer from the pub and Belgian beer at home.