News

With Kent's Green Hop Festival in full swing, five breweries will run special bus trips on Saturday 10 October that will allow beer lovers to sample a special beer range brewed with hops fresh from the harvest. The festival is the brainchild of Eddie Gadd of Gadds' Brewery who is keen to promote English hops that are under threat from imported varieties

Added: Sunday, October 4th 2015

Cask Ale Week, the annual celebration of Britain's iconic beer style, runs until 4 October and this year features scores of beers brewed with Maris Otter, craft brewers' favourite malting barley that has won 16 awards in the annual Champion Beer of Britain competition. The celebrations -- backed by beer talks, tastings and Meet the Brewer events -- will be staged in pubs throughout the country

Added: Monday, September 28th 2015

Cask beer -- real ale -- is on a roll and is offering a lifeline to the pub trade, says Pete Brown in the 2015 edition of the Cask Report. Real ale accounts for 17% of all beer sales and its share of the pub trade is expected to rise to 20% by 2020. The report says cask beer drinkers visit pubs twice as often as other consumers and encourage other people to join them when they go out for a beer

Added: Thursday, September 24th 2015

Maris Otter barley, rescued from oblivion 50 years ago, was celebrated at a special beer festival in Norwich on 17 September. The variety was popular with craft brewers but was dropped by big farmers and maltsters in favour of higher yielding new varieties. But Banhams in Norfolk and Robin Appel in Wiltshire rescued Maris Otter and now it's in great demand with the growing legion of new brewers. Chris Hill of the Eastern Daily Press reports

Added: Friday, September 18th 2015

British breweries have grown by 10% over the past year, the 2016 edition of the CAMRA Good Beer Guide reports. There are now 1,424 breweries in the country and they can draw on 11,000 cask beers to serve to their customers. One of the new entrants to the brewing arena is the Brewhouse & Kitchen chain,offering good food alongside beers made on the premises. In Bristol, Mark Wainwright is seen in his brewhouse

Added: Thursday, September 10th 2015

A growing number of British brewers are "going green" by recycling used ingredients, using solar panels for heat and capturing rain water for cleaning. Several, including Purity in Warwickshire, have developed a series of reed beds where water is purified and returned to the breweries: the reed beds encourage wild life to find habitats. Pictured: brewer Florent Vialan at Purity

Added: Thursday, September 10th 2015

Britain's top 16 regional pubs are named today by CAMRA to coincide with the launch of the 2016 Good Beer Guide. The pubs -- including the Old Poets Corner in Ashover, Derbyshire (pictured) -- have come through a long trail of judging by local CAMRA branches, who choose local and regional pubs. The lucky 16 will now go forward to be judged in the national competition with the National Pub of the Year announced next February

Added: Thursday, September 10th 2015

The new Good Beer Guide reports a growing number of micro or pop-up pubs that offer cask beer at sharp prices and offer drinkers new outlets, using buildings that have often lain empty for years. Martyn Hillier, pictured, started the micro revolution with the Butchers Arms in Herne, Kent, and he expects there will be 200 by the end of the year

Added: Thursday, September 10th 2015

Historic England -- formerly English Heritage -- has listed 21 pubs built between the two world wars of the 20th century making they are safe from redevelopment or demolitiion. Several of the pubs are built in the distinctive "Brewers' Tudor" style of the period and include six Truman's pubs in London and surrounding areas. The Black Horse in Birmingham is pictured

Added: Friday, August 28th 2015

Punch Taverns, with a debt mountain £1.5 billion, has eased its problems by selling 158 "non-core" pubs for £53.5 million to New River Retail, a group that specialises in turning pubs into convenience stores. The pubs include the award-winning Roscoe Head in Liverpool, which New River says will remain a pub. NRR bought 202 pubs from Marston's in 2013 for £900 million and "is making good progress in converting a number to convenience stores"

Added: Monday, August 24th 2015