Posts by Glynn Davis
Around Town with Amateur Drinker
June’s highlight was Beavertown’s Sour Solstice festival. Whether it was because of the style, or the fact that it was a Sunday, the place was relatively empty, chilled and relaxed. The beers were fantastic and included very limited quantities of the exceptionally rare Tommie Sjef Druif, a sour wild ale fermented with Kekfrankos (the Hungarian…
Read MoreAround Town with Amateur Drinker
Apologies for a late report this month, but no prizes for guessing that May’s highlight was the Mikkeller Beer Celebration Copenhagen, MBCC. After landing, it was straight to WarPigs for a Tired Hands TTO. Notable beers included Royal Double, a sushi rice DIPA, Individuation Sanguine sour red and Alien Church IPA. However, the real highlight…
Read MoreAROUND TOWN WITH AMATEUR DRINKER
Such is the pace of change in the beer industry at present that my first draft of this diary piece felt like I was writing for The Economist so I have written about that elsewhere (Let’s Rake over the Take-overs…) and concentrated on the drinking in this entry! Although Craft Beer 100 was cancelled this…
Read MoreLet’s rake over the take-overs…
Whilst writing my normal monthly diary, (March’s ventures are here) there was so much corporate finance news that we felt it appropriate to put into this separate piece. The most stunning announcement was that Wicked Weed had agreed to be taken over by Anheuser-Busch InBev. This is a mere 15 months after the latter’s Super Bowl…
Read MoreM&S developing unique craft beer list
Marks & Spencer has always been uniquely positioned as a seller of mainly own label products as opposed to its rivals that predominantly flog the goods of the big brand owners. This approach has been carried through to its beer range that includes an array of approaching 90 own label craft beers, which are produced…
Read MoreLatest Venture for Hall & Woodhouse
When bottles of ‘An American Venture’ roll into the major supermarkets next month it will mark a potentially significant move for the traditional Dorset-based brewer Hall & Woodhouse as it arguably nudges it for the first time into craft beer territory. Although it is not making such an extravagant move as Fuller’s, with its recent…
Read MoreAround Town with Amateur Drinker
I could have made this point at almost any time but after collating my notes for this month the growth in the beer scene appears to have moved up to whatever level is above staggering, Brewers are increasing their on-site sales, so March saw Hammerton announce that they had taken over the Wig & Gown…
Read MoreNever Gonna Give you Hop
Pop legend from the 1980s Rick Astley (of ‘Never Gonna Give you Up’ fame) and beer legend of today Mikkel Borg Bjergso (of Mikkeller brewery fame) came together in West London last week to launch a collaborative beer. Or they would have done if one of them had not been the regular rock star and…
Read MoreBeauty of brewing with independence at Box Steam
The brewery was born out of a passion for making beer, not money. My family was in the pub business, so we were close to our customers and we knew what they liked in a pint glass. We were buying casks of great local beer from down the road and when the opportunity came up…
Read MoreLack of equity at Brewdog?
” Equity For Punks : Whether they are punks or not, this certainly isn’t equity.” Beer Insider has previously raised concerns about crowd-funding and the activities of Brewdog. In particular, it related to some of the brewers’ actions that could potentially reduce the value of the equity (shares) held by thousands of small shareholders who…
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