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Why Meantime sold up to SAB Miller – the inside story
Meantime Brewing’s surprise sale to SAB Miller, the second largest brewing company in the world, was prompted by a growing realisation at the Greenwich-based craft brewer that it did not have the...
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The three-threads mystery and the birth of porter: the answer is …
One of the biggest mysteries in the history of beer concerns a drink called three-threads, and its exact place in the early history of porter. Three-threads was evidently a mixed beer sold in the...
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Hopping down in Surrey
Fuggles hops, Hamptons estate, near Farnham, Surrey Two years ago I helped plant what was Surrey’s first new hop garden for more than half a century, and this week I went down and helped harvest hops...
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Stock (ale) answers from Goose Island and Ron Pattinson
Brewery Yard Stock Pale Ale Let’s get one potentially controversial point out of the way first: this is a £20 bottle of beer. If that shocks you, you’ve not been paying attention to what’s happening in...
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When one family ran the world’s two biggest breweries
In a shiny 12-storey building in Bishopsgate, on the edge of the Square Mile, is a company that represents the last faint echo of a time when one family ran the two biggest breweries in the world. The...
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Snug beers and snug bars
Young’s Winter Warmer as sold in the White Cross, Richmond early this am Autumn, season of mists and mellow, fruity ales, as John Keats might have written, if he hadn’t been more of a blushful...
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Is it morally wrong to drink an 89p bottle of good beer?
My local little Tesco supermarket – and probably your local Tesco as well – is currently selling for 89p a 50cl bottle of 3.8 per cent abv amber ale made with Fuggles and Goldings hops at a...
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How I helped brew a black gose in the backstreets of Shenzhen
It’s a grand and globe-trotting life being a beer blogger. On Sunday I was in the sweaty backstreets of Baishizou, a faintly dodgy suburb in Shenzhen, southern China, visiting a cramped and not...
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How a 12-year-old brewery is having to show it’s not too old to be down with...
Quick: what’s the oldest microbrewery in London? The answer, to stop you looking it up, is Twickenham, which despite not even being a teenager yet, today, after the sale of Meantime, bears the mantle...
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Cloudwater, quality and Camra dinosaurs
If you think the major problem facing the Campaign for Real Ale today is whether or not to embrace “craft keg”, or how to prevent more pub closures, then like the campaign itself you’re failing to...
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Your handy cut-out-and-keep instant rebuttal guide to countering...
In the 40-plus years I have worked as a journalist, I never wrote anything I knew to be an actual lie. I’ll admit, though, that, very rarely, I span a story to leave the reader with an impression that,...
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The formative beers of my teenage years
My teenage beer drinking involved plenty of quantity – I was a regular pub customer from 16 onwards, pubs being the place to meet my mates, and girls – but no appreciation at all of quality. This was...
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Goose Island hopes it’s laid a golden egg in Balham
The Goose Island Vintage Ale House in Balham, South London BAL-HAM, gateway, if the guys from Chicago’s Goose Island Beer Co are correct, to a new form of gastropub/craft beer bar: yummy grub combined...
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The mystery of the vanishing 2016 Vintage Ale
Vertical tasting: 20 years of Fuller’s Vintage Ale, in the Hock Cellar If you haven’t bought your 2016 Fuller’s Vintage Ale yet, either to drink now, or to lay down for later, or to preserve as an...
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Albert Le Coq is NOT a famous Belgian
It’s a small error, as they go, but it has been around for at least 40 years, and it appears everywhere from Michael Jackson’s World Guide to Beer to the labels on bottles of Harvey’s Imperial Extra...
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Hungover in Hanover
Der Craft Bier Bar craft beer bar, Hannover, mit dozy Englander This is the Craft Bier Bar. It’s a craft beer bar. The Craft Bier Bar is the first ever craft beer bar in Hanover, apparently. It claims...
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No, Heineken, the alcohol-free beer market is NOT going to double in the next...
St Peter’s Without Any Redeeming Features It’s deja bu time again in the world of Big Beer, with the return of excited prognostications for the no alcohol/low alcohol sector. All the marketing...
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The REAL story behind BrewDog’s ‘sellout’ is that crowdfunding will only get...
The real story behind the news that BrewDog is copping more than £200 million from the private equity firm that also part-owns Pabst Blue Ribbon, is not, despite the howls of “hypocrisy!”, that nobody...
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Why the clear glass bottle question means I’m not bothered Marston’s is...
Estrella believes in the power of the brown bottle: it’s a pity a few more British breweries don’t Yesterday’s announcement that Marston’s is acquiring the Charles Wells Brewing and Beer Business for...
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Laissez les bonnes bières rouler
New Orleans is one of the few places in the world where walking the streets at all hours consuming alcohol from an open container is not just allowed, but actively encouraged. This is party city USA....
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