CHEERS TO THE VINEYARDS, BREWERIES AND DISTILLERIES IN YORKSHIRE
CHEERS TO THE VINEYARDS, BREWERIES AND DISTILLERIES IN YORKSHIRE
Will you be having a tipple this weekend?
We have small producers of gin, wine and beer at the Yorkshire Coast and as beer is the most popular alcoholic drink in the world I thought I would look into it in a bit more detail.
Do you ever spare much though as to where your favourite tipple comes from? The largest beer company in the world is Anheuser-Busch Inbev in Belgium with revenue, in 2022, of nearly $58 billion. Other big producers are based in Amsterdam, Japan, china, America and France.
Beers sales in the UK declined from 1980 when pub owning brewers realised that there were more returns from retailing and property than producing beer. By 2019 80% of Britain’s beer came from foreign owned brewers.
In the article, who owns what in the brewing scene Carling have published a list of regional companies that are still brewing in the UK and in addition to this they estimated that there are around 2500 micro breweries in the UK.
The following micro breweries are doing well; Acorn, Abbeydale, Big Lamp, Copper Dragon, Dartmoor, Evan Evans, Fyne, Harviestoun, Hogs Back, Ilkley, Joules, Kirkstall, Lancaster, Moorhouses, Moor Beer, Oakham, Ossett, Purity, Rhymney, Roosters, St Peters, Stewart, Thornbridge, Titanic, Triple fff, West, Wickwar, Williams Bros, Windsor and Eton and Woodfordes. One huge success story is BrewDog, which was only founded in Aberdeen in 2007 and has big plans to build itself into one of the world’s leading brands over the next 10 years. They are currently 14th on the global list!
My favourite beer is a fruit beer produced in Belgium, but in the spirit of supporting all things local I plan to give ‘Abbey Blonde’ a try when I am next Whitby Brewery at the Yorkshire coast. It’s described as ‘light blonde ale with a zesty, crisp finish and a deliciously refreshing summer’s beer’. In fact I might just join them for a 45 minute tour of the Brewery. Visitors get to find out about the brewing process, the ingredients, tools and technology used as well as the history of Whitby Brewery and their plans for the future.
Tickets cost £15 and include 3 x 1/3 pint tasters. Book your tour at Whitby Brewery Tours
