Saturday, October 01, 2005

CAMRA - Real Ale in a Bottle Retailer Awards Announced

CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, today announced the winners of its inaugural Real Ale in a Bottle Retailer Awards.

CAMRA’s Best Independent Retailer 2005 has been named as:
The Real Ale Shop, Brantfill Farm, Wells-next-the-Sea (www.realaleshop.com)


Owner Teddy Maufe said
The Real Ale Shop is delighted to win this award and we hope it will go on to further public awareness that Norfolk produces some of the world’s best malted barley for brewing many superb real ales.


CAMRA’s Best Retail Chain 2005 has been named as:
Booths Supermarkets, the Supermarket chain represented in the North West of England.

Beer Buyer David Smith said
We are delighted to have won the award. We work closely with our suppliers in order to offer the range, diversity and quality of the real ales we stock.


Retailers were judged, by representatives from CAMRA’s Awards Committee, on the following criteria:

The range of bottle-conditioned products available
The way in which they sell the beer
Innovations in promoting Real Ale in a Bottle
Helpfulness of staff
Value for money

The awards form part of CAMRA’s ‘Real Ale in a Bottle’ Scheme, whereby Breweries can opt to use the “CAMRA says this is real ale” logo on their bottle labels of bottle-conditioned products to help differentiate it from pasteurised bottled ale substitutes.

The consumer group hopes that within time the logo will become easily recognisable and consumers will be able to understand and identify the style of beer which they are drinking. The scheme was launched in August 2004, and during the first year 105 breweries (over two thirds of those eligible) have joined the scheme.

Real ale drinkers toast the first year of success with a glass of tea!

To celebrate the scheme’s success, retailers and breweries recently raised a glass at its first birthday party, with TEA and cake during the Great British Beer Festival.

The TEA was most definitely the alcoholic variety as it was supplied by Hogs Back Brewery!
Said CAMRA’s Marketing Manager Georgie Rudman.
This particular beer was one of the first to opt for the accreditation a year ago.


Tony Stanton from Hogs Back Brewery adds "With more customer awareness for label information to be found on products these days, we at Hogs Back are delighted to be one of the first to trial the " CAMRA says this is real ale" campaign logo on our bottle-conditioned range of beers....customers are far more informed about product information then ever and actively look for an industry mark of quality from respected organisations like CAMRA. Sales have increased significantly from using the logo our labels”

Real Ale in a Bottle launches New Quality Initiative
This month will see CAMRA launch its quality initiative for ‘Real Ale in A Bottle’ which is being trialled amongst its membership. The card has been designed to find out about the quality of the large numbers of real ale in a bottle available.

We have made the card as self-explanatory as possible, as we would like it to be used by anyone who enjoys real ale,
said Georgie Rudman CAMRA’s Marketing Manager.
The idea is to feed back information to retailers and brewers about the views of the participants. We hope that by monitoring any data collected we will be able to help raise the standards of real ale in a bottle across the board.


Monday, September 26, 2005

New Manager At The Cheshire Cheese, Buxton

Pub News: There is a new manager at the Cheshire Cheese, Buxton a Hardy & Hansons owned pub. I had a quick chat to him on Sunday and hopefully the quality and choice of the real ale available should improve. We may aslo get some answers from the Brewery as to the current pricing policy, more later in the week.