The problem with British brewed real lagers and a possible solution
Pete Brown’s Sunday Times beer column on 23rd March focused on British brewed real lagers. Not the UK brewed lagers with Spanish or German names that global big beer ensures are on the bar at all pub chains.
Rather properly brewed lagers by independent brewers such as Donzoko, Utopian and Lost and Grounded.
There is however a problem. You can sometimes find some of those lagers in this or that supermarket chain. You are very unlikely to find them on sale in a pub unless it’s an independent one that sells craft beers. You can of course find them in craft bottle shops.
Hopefully the problem can be seen. Lost and Grounded’s Keller Pils is probably the lager you are most likely to come across if you are a lager drinker (& as Pete Brown points out this is by far the biggest slice of the UK market) and not someone who likes or wants to drink craft beer or even real ale or frequent places that sell them. Beyond that you won’t find them or know they exist.
The Beer Orders which allowed for pubs owned by breweries or indeed pubcos to sell a cask beer were repealed in 2003 and there are efforts to get a new version. However pubs owned by say Coors or Heineken (or at least beholden to them financially) may be tied on keg but less so on cask.
So even if a lager drinker wanted to try a good British brewed lager the chances of them finding one in their local are poor.
The solution? Include a right for pubs to sell a local keg beer free of tie as well as a cask one
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