“We are delighted that this has been CAMRA’s most successful beer festival ever. We had over 47,000 visitors through the door and sold a record amount of British beer with 240,000 pints pulled over the five-day period. The most popular beer on sale at the festival was Crouch Vale Brewers Gold which was also the winner of this year’s Champion Beer of Britain competition. Despite placing an reorder for this beer, we still had to ration it and at one point it was selling at a rate of 144 pints every twenty minutes with queues of visitors waiting to try it out.”
Hi,
Many of you must now be aware that Hydes brewery has recently been experiencing problems with their production of cask Boddingtons bitter. Reports that the beer has been acidic and undrinkable are widespread. Many Boddingtons pubs and free trade outlets have now withdrawn the beer from sale until the brewery can investigate the cause of the problem and put it right.
I have contacted Hydes for an explanation but to date they have not been able to get back to me. Talking to licensees it would appear that some 4,000 barrels of Boddingtons have been recalled to the brewery because the beer is not in a saleable condition. What this means locally is that cask Boddingtons bitter is likely to be
unavailable throughout the area and will continue to be unavailable until the problem is sorted. The implications of this for a small family brewery like Hydes are likely to be serious.
As soon as I have more information then I will let you know. Until then please continue to support Hydes brewery and all the other cask beers it brews. At the moment I have no idea what the production problem is but it is at times like this that our local family breweries need all the help that we can give them. Please continue to support Hydes brewery.
Thanks for your patience.
Stuart Ballantyne
Hydes CAMRA brewery liaison officer
Hi everyone,
As you are well aware, Hydes brewery has been experiencing production
problems with cask Boddingtons bitter recently. I have been in touch
with Paul Jefferies, production and distribution director at the
brewery, and he has issued the following comment.
"I have been away on holiday this last week so forgive me for not
replying sooner. I am pleased to let you know that the fermentation
issues with the Boddingtons cask beer have now been fully resolved and
the improved beer should now be starting to filter through into trade".
As before, please let me know if this is not the case and if you are
still experiencing brewery quality problems with the beer at the pubs in
which you drink it.
Thanks.
Stuart
Hydes BLO
as, “Striking grapefruit nose leads to a beer of generally citrus hoppy character, underpinned by a perfumed sweetness and an aftertaste of orange wine gums.”
“Congratulations to Crouch Vale. It is great to see a golden ale win this award. Golden ale is a rapidly growing style of beer and one that will appeal to younger drinkers and women as well as real ale aficionados. It’s a wonderfully refreshing beer – the ideal antidote to lager!”
“We have been in the final of the this competition for a few year’s now but to have gone one step further this year and be voted the best beer in Britain makes me very proud. I would like to thank everybody at the brewery for all of their hard work. They have all played their part in making Brewer’s Gold the best beer in the land.”
When you have lost your inns drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England!
from The British Pub at greatblighty.com
Well worth a look on a Friday afternoon, thanks to http://www.spittoon.biz/
“You can't beat the conviviality of a good pub serving good beer. But the Great British Beer Festival is the biggest pub in the world!” said Mr Protz. “It's a brilliant showcase and snapshot of the modern British brewing industry. There's never been a greater choice for beer drinkers in Britain, with milds, bitters, porters, stouts, golden ales, old ales and barley wines. Come and revel in the remarkable choice and diversity of Britain's best beers, and why not try out some of my own personal favourites all gathered together under one roof for the first time?”
Getting what you pay for is a basic consumer right. When ordering a pint of beer you should receive exactly that – a full pint. The reality is very different, and because of loopholes in the law over 8 out of 10 pints are short measure.
Despite repeated promises, the Government have failed to act on short beer measures.
Under pressure from the pubs industry, the Government are now proposing to define a pint as “not less than 95% liquid”. CAMRA believes that this proposal will lead to the worsening of the current situation as it gives a green light to companies to short change consumers.
Please write or email your MP calling on them to support the campaign for an Honest Pint Law and to sign EDM 404. *
Click HERE to take action NOW! to demand Your Full Pint!
*EDM stands for Early Day Motion. These can be signed by backbench MPs to show their support for a campaign. Frontbench MPs do not usually sign EDMs. EDM 404 reads:
"That this House expresses concern at current proposals to define a pint of beer as "not less than 95% liquid"; notes that the Campaign for Real Ale, the Trading Standards Institute and LACORS believe that this proposal will result in the proposed 5% "tolerance" being added to the existing deficiency threshold normally applied by enforcement agencies before considering prosecution action, and which will result in licensees being able to serve "pints" of substantially less than 95% liquid; further notes that short measure costs consumers over £400 million annually, HM Treasury over £54 million annually in lost excise revenues, and Brewers £133 million in lost beer sales; that this House therefore calls on the Government to bring forward legislation to protect consumers from short beer measures by defining a pint of beer as 100% liquid."
