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A ‘ewe-nique’ experience

By: Roger Putman

01/01/2017

In the 1980s, after well publicised spats between members of the Theakston family over the sale of the brewery first to Matthew Brown and then the subsequent takeover by Scottish & Newcastle, MD Paul Theakston voted with his feet. Paul is a member of the fifth generation of the family which started brewing in North Yorkshire’s Masham (pronounced mas - ham) back in 1827. Paul set up the Black Sheep Brewery in the same village in 1992 with second hand kit, just enough money but a lot of good will.

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Do brewers know their own histories?

By: Brett Stubbs

01/01/2007

It is not uncommon for brewing companies to appeal to the sense of history amongst the beer-drinking public when trying to sell their products. The greater the antiquity of a brewery, the greater its ability to produce good beer, it is often implied. Unfortunately, liberties are sometimes taken with historical truth in the pursuit of an effective marketing message. As an historian of the Australian brewing industry, it is frustrating for me to see history abused in this way.

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Brewery outsourcing – a viable alternative?

By: Ian Stevens

01/01/2007

Profits could be better? Coming under pressure to increase shareholder returns? Part of your business consuming disproportionate amounts of management time or investment? Adversely affected by regulatory changes or rising employment, premises or utilities costs? Or perhaps your new corporate strategy only focuses on the more profitable areas of your business?

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Malting at Cascade

By: Roger Putman

01/01/2007

The Australian malt trade is largely tied up between two large brewery groups, Foster’s Australia and Lion Nathan and two large malting groups Barrett Burston which supplies Foster’s only and Joe White which malts for L-N. This arrangement is largely a legacy of the Alan Bond and John Elliott carve-up of the Aussie industry back in the mid 1980s. Foster’s Australia’s Tasmanian arm at Cascade, some 4km out of Hobart, is a good deal more remote and has a heritage stretching back to 1824 so inevitably, perhaps, is able to do something a little different.

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The Brandmaster is still committed to beer

By: Roger Putman

01/01/2007

Carlos Alvarez must be very disappointed man. He has presided over the ascendancy of Corona Extra in the United States where it is by far the largest imported brand, having surpassed Heineken back in 1997. He joked in front of last May’s Canadean conference in Brussels that he might even make it into the Guinness Book of Records as recording the highest negative growth of any beverage company. For on New Years Eve last, he lost seven million hectolitres of annual business as Mexico-based Grupo Modelo has given the import contract to somebody else.

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Holt heats up

By: Keith Sheard

01/01/2007

A lot has happened since the old Brewer International featured our brewery back in 2001. We remain a regional brewer based in Manchester with 125 managed houses within a 25 mile radius of the city centre but the company is most unusual in the industry since it has maintained the philosophy of own brand lagers in Crystal (3.8% ABV) and Diamond (5%ABV). In common with almost all national lagers the company has recently installed Extra Cold dispense on all Crystal fonts and is extending the offer to include Diamond as well.

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Alive and well

By: Jeremy Browne

01/01/2007

The author last wrote an article on cask and keg packaging which was published in the February 2002 issue of The Brewer. Almost five years have passed and draught is still a diminishing business. When writing the previous article, draught beer had a 61.7% share of the UK beer market, today it is 53.7% and that is in a market that has reduced by 1% over the same period. Another remarkable point is that lager is becoming ever more dominant moving from a 62.0% to a 72.3% share of the market at the expense of ale.

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Lord Sydney has a cunning plan

By: Roger Putman

01/01/2007

In 1786 Lord Sydney, addressing the Lords Commission of the Treasury in London, proposed a solution to the burgeoning prison population. The convicts would be transported to work in the embryo colony at Botany Bay where James Cook and botanist Joseph Banks had landed in 1770* There they built the basic infrastructure of roads, bridges and official buildings or else worked the land. Once their sentence was up, opportunities for the hard working made it an easy choice to stay on. The stigma of the first Australians being criminals persisted probably for two centuries but today many are proud to trace their forebears back to those felons of the First Fleet.