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News, Nuggets and Long Reads 01/02/2014

Marston's revisionist keg range.

It’s Saturday! But wait — before you rush off to bomb around the town centre on your BMX and buy Pick’n’Mix at Woolworths, here are a few things we’ve spotted during the week.

→ The picture above shows Marston’s new range of keg beers branded and sold under the ‘Revisionist‘ label. Though some will inevitably groan at a big player with a poor reputation among beer geeks ‘jumping on the bandwagon’, we can’t deny that we’re intrigued.

→ Meanwhile, we also hear that the same brewery is putting some beers that have been packaged, to their detriment, in clear glass, back into amber (brown) bottles. They are also planning to do more bottle-conditioning. Good news, we think.

American brewery North Coast is to begin distribution in the UK via Left Coast. We’ve never tried their beer so have no idea if this is good news, but Old Rasputin is in The Sacred Book, so we’ll be keeping an eye out for it.

A nugget of trivia from Brewdog

Long reads

→ This week’s tips for saving to Pocket: a piece from Punch on ‘the art of drinking alone’ by Brad Thomas Parsons (via @allesioleone) and another excellent piece from Good Beer Hunting with some timely commentary on contract brewing.

→ BBC News Online seems to be running a story about beer once a week at the moment. Last week, it was women in beer; this week, some pondering on the Rheinheitsgebot. Next week: what does ‘craft beer’ really mean?

Around the Blogoshire

Stephen Beaumont has named the well established Allagash his American brewery of the year. He makes the case well and we have added their beers to our hit list.

→ David ‘Broadford Brewer’ Bishop has this week’s most inspiring home brew recipe. Well, not a recipe — just a germ of an idea, but a good one: the dankest beer ever. (Would 1001 Inspiring Ideas for Home Brewers be a good book?)

7 replies on “News, Nuggets and Long Reads 01/02/2014”

Allagash is great but remember the surcharge for having an Alagash. I kick myself for not keeping the owners quote that he needed to train people to pay more. Comparable beers for less but well worth exploring. My favorite North Coast is their annualized stock ale.

Interesting…to a degree. Yes, Marstons have done the obligatory Saison and a dark IPA which just might get them into a bar using ‘craft’ as a cover. But a wheat and a lager wouldn’t get them far in my area. They might have been better producing one of their single hop IPAs or a Pale Ale which always sells well.

Wouldn’t be surprised to see them in branches of Wetherspoon’s in the coming months, though.

Hmmm. Maybe in London but as the vast majority don’t sell any craft bottles yet, I’m betting it will still be awhile before this or any craft keg appears in the sticks.

The Waterhouse (JDW) in Manchester town centre has Punk and Brooklyn Lager, both for £3.55 a pint – insanely dear (or reassuringly expensive!) next to the cask beer, insanely cheap by craft beer standards.

Yes, but I really did mean locally. As in my town which, like most Spoons, doesn’t even have any craft bottles yet. As I said when reporting on Manchester first getting craft bottles, they’re responding to specific local competition. That was last year and there’s still no sign of craft landing in the sticks any time soon. Although, we live in hope!

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