Thursday 15 September 2011

The Great British Beer Hunt Part 1

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Sainsburys have just launched their annual Great British Beer Hunt in which 16 beers compete for the much coveted honour of winning some Sainsbury shelf space and becoming a regular fixture in the beer aisles of Sainsbury's 500 plus supermarkets.

For the winners, it's a pretty substantial prize that could take their beer and their business to a whole new level and market. The competition is open until the 27th of September.

The 16 finalists were selected by Sainsbury customers and there are some pretty nifty beers from some pretty nifty breweries in the final sixteen. As well as the Caledonian Brewery Co. Can't have everything, I suppose.

The 16 beers in the running to win the competition are:

Wild Hop IPA, Harviestoun Brewery
Caesar Augustus, Williams Brothers
Profanity Stout,  Williams Brothers
Flying Dutchman Wit Bier, Caledonian Brewing Co
Ivanhoe, Ridgeway Brewing,
Bad King John, Ridgeway Brewing,
Stronghart, McMullen's
Bishop’s Farewell, Oakham Ales
Wye Not, Wye Valley Brewery
Churchill Ale, Oxfordshire Ales
Golden Seahawk, Cotleigh Brewery
Full Bore, Hunter's Brewery,
Two Hoots Golden Ale, Holt's
Golden Summe, Wold Top Brewery,
Frederic’s Great British Ginger Beer, Frederic Robinson,
Worcester Sorcerer, Sadler's Ales.

The top four in terms of sales at the end of September will go forward to the final and the winner chosen shortly afterwards.

It's a good bit of fun and a great excuse and opportunity to pick up some rather nice beers youy wouldn't normally see in the supermarket shelves. At three bottles for a fiver, you can't really go wrong.

I popped in to my local Sainsburys today and picked up a dozen of the sixteen on the shortlist and over the next week or so i'll be blogging my opinions on each of the beers.

I'll be tasting, reviewing and hopefully enjoying them until you get bored, I get bored or my liver phones for a taxi.

First up, tomorrow, will be a couple of IPA's - Harviestoun's Wild Hop IPA and Oxfordshire Ales' Churchill IPA.

You can read more about Sainsburys Great British Beer Hunt here, here and here.

5 comments:

  1. at least you can get them there were NONE in Edinburgh when i checked, and i emailed Sainsburys, with little luck, they told me 3 would appear in my local this week.

    THREE, thats not a competition.

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  2. Had the Hunter's Brewery Full Bore last night and to be honest it wasn't that great. Very strong in alcohol, drinkable but just nothing to write home about. Got the Wild Hop IPA and Stronghart to look forward to this weekend and hoping they're going to be alot better.

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  3. Our local Sainsburys have all the promotional stuff but none of the beers! The promo stuff is beside all the imported fizzy-pop beers.

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  4. @cgarvie

    I had to hit a couple of sainsburys to pick them up. It seems that some sainsburys are taking the competition and promotion more seriously than others.

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  5. Our local shop has finally got most of the beers in but the Williams and Oakham ones have still to appear. If the competition is based on sales then that means these two breweries are at a disadvantage. Tallulah was looking forward to trying Profanity Stout and I was hoping to get Bishop's Farewell. Still, we brought home 6 bottles today :-)

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