Between now and early November, Waitrose are promoting traditional, bottled British beer. It’s a bit difficult to tell whether it’s a blanket 2 for £3 over the entire range — only certain beers had shelf labels indicating they were in the offer but I managed to get it on two beers that weren’t explicitly advertised as being included.
I got 6 for £9 from their Thame branch — which is a good discount on their normal prices. While these normal prices are quite a bit higher than other supermarkets, very few will have a range as good as my examples show below. The Bengal Lancer is a superb IPA from Fullers, which I sampled on draught at the Victoria in Strathearn Place, near Paddington station in the spring.
Lurking on the right there is one of the most extraordinary labels I’ve ever seen on any product sold in a supermarket. It’s on a bottle of Skinners’ ‘Cornish Knocker’ — a bad enough name in itself. There’s some spiel on the label about knockers being friends of tin miners and so on but this detracts from the impact of the label itself. What is it suggesting? The mind boggles on all sorts of levels.
The beer itself was very nice — a bit lagery in body and colour. Is that the point or are they going somewhere else entirely?
Certainly I just availed myself of 2 bottles of Bengal Lancer which if it’s half as good in bottle is twice as good as any other Fuller’s beer served in a typical establishment.
I was looking at the range of bottled beer that we sell in my Sainsbury’s the other day. I was amazed by how many different types there are and all the incredible names… seems like the world of bottled beer is quite a creative place.
Kathy, the range of bottled beers can vary a lot by supermarket and sometimes expands and contracts unexpectedly within the same store (for example when they give more shelf space to seasonal promotions).
It’s one of the most interesting things about real ale that there’s so much variety and so many different producers all over the country. However, the smaller Tesco’s — like Princes Risborough — often have a diabolically narrow selection — often sourcing their beers from two or three breweries — just taking lots of brands from the same place.
I sometimes wonder if they’ll ever run out of names for the beers but they seem to keep on coming up with good ones. The Indian themes ones for IPAs (India Pale Ales) like Jaipur and Bengal Lancer are quite imaginative.