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Beer & Pub News Round-Up
Fuller's has scooped the Pub Company of the Year accolade at this year's Publican Awards, for the commitment of its managed pub operations. The company was also a finalist in the Tenanted/Leased Pub Company and Regional Brewer categories. The company continues to demonstrate its commitment to brewing by spending some £1.4m on additional maturation and fermentation vessels, which has raised brewing capacity to 260k barrels. In addition they have acquired land adjacent to the brewery that will enable them to continue to expand their operations. London Porter was voted Beer of the Festival at the Croydon and Sutton CAMRA Festival and the good news for drinkers is that it will reappear on pub bars in November.
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British beer exports are going from strength to strength – in 2003 some 2.1 million barrels of beer were exported, with the US remaining the largest market, taking one third of the total amount exported. In revenge, of course, they use one of London's rarely heard of breweries at Mortlake to impose their king of beers (!) Budweiser, upon us. On a more serious note, it was good to see the British Embassy in France hosting a lunch featuring British Beer, rather than French wine. The lunch was addressed by a number of brewery representatives, including Georgina Young of Fuller's, who introduced Organic Honey Dew to the diners.
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Talking of unsung London breweries, global drinks giant Diageo has announced the closure of its UK Guinness producing brewery at Park Royal in NW London, with the loss of 90 jobs. Output of (yes) 1.2m barrels of year will be transferred to the Dublin brewery at St James's Gate. It will need some growth in exports to claw these new imports back!
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Sebastopol Social Club, Sebastopol, Cwmbran, has been named Britain's Best Real Ale Club in the prestigious CAMRA 'Club of the Year' competition. Great Britain has approximately 30,000 licensed and registered clubs that are all eligible to enter this competition and the clubs were judged on a wide range of aspects including, of course, the choice, variety and quality of real ale available to the members.
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Beer consumers across Europe have united to call on prospective MEPs to support Europe's beer culture, consumer choice and consumer protection. Labour Euro candidate for Yorkshire and the Humber, David Bowe officially launched the European Beer Consumer's Union manifesto in May. Consumers are calling on the EU to oppose brewery mergers that undermine competition and consumer choice, push for excise duty on beer to be reduced in high beer tax member states, such as Britain, strengthen consumer protection by promoting ingredients listing on beer and by outlawing the practice of serving short beer measures.
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Scottish and Newcastle are doing their best both to attract CAMRA's opprobrium and to rename themselves. Having first announced the closure of their historic Fountainbridge brewery in Edinburgh, they then went on to announce the closure of their Tyneside brewery as well. To keep a toehold in Scotland, they have acquired the brewing interests of Edinburgh's Caledonian Brewery. Similarly, in the North East, they seem set to acquire the Federation Clubs Brewery, a unique institution that produced beer mostly for its working-men's clubs members. Will this make them "Not Scottish & Near Newcastle" – or maybe just "&".
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The average person in China drinks just 19 litres of beer a year compared to 50 litres in Japan. Currently there are 400 brewers but it is clear that foreign giants are viewing the market with interest. Already Anheuser Bush are planning to increase its stake in the market leader, Tsingtao whilst SABMiller has invested in Harbin and Heineken in Guangdon Brewery. Not to be outdone, Interbrew has a distribution deal with Zhujiang Brewery. Mergers and closures are likely to be on the bill over the next decade. Sounds like the Chinese may need an equivalent of CAMRA, if they are to keep their brewing heritage.
John Cryne
Reproduced from the Full Pint, Issue 26.
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