Local Beer

Cumbria has a number of breweries. Many of them bottle their beers. I have been challenged to send some local beers to another blogger as part of a blogging project called Beer Swap. I set off on Wednesday to find local beers. The rules stated 4 beers from at least two breweries , so I couldn't just send mine.

I first visited the off licence that also happens to be the depot I had planned to be sending the parcel from. All involved in the project had agreed to use this new economy service. It turned out the shop had a poor selection of beer. Oh well, no money out of me on this occasion, but at least I'll be returning later with my carefully packaged beer.

Next I tried Morrisons and then Tesco and several off licences in Whitehaven. All providing completely nothing by way of local beer. I was starting to feel severely underwhelmed. Is West Cumbria so damn devoid of beer brewed on it's doorstep? It does seem to be the case. The only shop in the locality is in Keswick. One that I know about but never had reason to visit - I don't buy bottled Cumbrian beer normally. I can get any amount on draft in the pubs around and about.

Finally I returned to our quiet, remote valley where there is a small and delightful little shop. Once a post office but alas scumming to the inevitability of the service failing to be economic. The shop is now a great purveyor of quality produce and outdoor clothing. Best of all they sell local beer. Mission accomplished.

My beer packaged up I returned to aforementioned crappy beer emporium. It also seems it's something of a master of messing up on the parcel-receiving-and-sending-on line of business. Initially the shop assistant tried to send it back to some catalogue company by putting an orange sticker on it. Eventually she found the menu option for scanning a customer sent parcel. But she refused to take my parcel because the bar code machine threw an error. I left and took it to another shop, a little further away where the parcel was accepted. Later I got an email to tell me the parcel was accepted by the first place. According to the tracking system my parcel is still in the shop I didn't leave it in. Some telephone calls may ensue tomorrow.

But it leaves me asking why, in the towns in my locale, there is no beer to be bought that is brewed in the county. Is it because there is no demand due to people like me preferring to drink local beer in local pubs? Is it because the people who live here don't care about the beers brewed on their doorstep? Perhaps the entrenched support of Jennings is deeper than I thought. Mind you, if the level of skills around here prevent successful use of a relatively simple bar code machine then what hope is there for appreciation of craft beer?

Well, whatever the reason it makes me think that perhaps there is a real gap in the market. I'm not sure I can make and bottle beer at a price that makes it economic for the cut throat pricing in off-sales retail, but it's worth a further look I feel.

Cumbria is the best

OK, many will dispute the title, it's true we haven't got the most progressive breweries. There aren't even many dry hopped beers for a start. But when the Good Beer Guide was launched CAMRA also published the county rankings for the number of breweries and Cumbria is 6th overall. I decided to do a little bit of research. I wondered who had the most number of breweries per head of population. After querying Wikipedia and getting Excel to do some sums, it turns out Cumbria ranks the top in England.

Sorry, I didn't include Scotland and Wales, Wikipedia seemed to disagree on the counties and I got confused, easy I know. Anyway, you guys like to think of yourselves as separate countries and quite right too. I'm sure there are bloggers in these countries that would happily do their own research on such a subject.

Dare I also point out that London ranks at the bottom? An interesting north south divide.

Bottled in Cumbria

It really pleases me the amount of good beer news that there is in Cumbria. Despite the economic doom and gloom there seems to be no end to the up-beat mood of all involved with the Cumbrian Craft Brewery industry that is alive and very well.

I needed bottles to continue with my experimental bottling runs. I can't justify buying a whole palate of the things just yet so I thought I'd go and see the nice guys at Cumbria Contract Bottling today. They were very obliging and sold me 196 bottles at a very reasonable price.

My first bottling run was put through their plant about 2 years ago and was only the 4th run they had done at the time. I remember the day well and I mention in this post, how emotional I was about getting my beer bottled. It was only 600 bottles, but they meant a lot to me. The thing was, the plant was, at that time, quiet, clearly they needed more work. Mine was the only run that day and I suspect they were only doing maybe a couple of runs a week.

Today could not have been more different. It was a hive of activity and as I arrived the team was busy cleaning down after one run so they could quickly get set to do the next. It was barely coffee time and they had bottled more beer already than they did the first day I was there two years ago.

The demand for their service is so great that they have had to stop taking new customers. The existing ones are more than filling the capacity of the plant. From the two founders working part time two years ago they had 5 people working today.

So you see, contrary to what some people think, it's not all doom and gloom, and certainly not in Cumbria.