Heineken is to shut the Caledonian Brewery in Edinburgh, leaving the Scottish capital without a large brewery for the first time since the eighteenth century (a host of English cities are in the same position, including Birmingham, Leeds, Newcastle and Nottingham, and London might ultimately join them following the Asahi takeover of Fuller's).
Founded in 1869 by George Lorimer and Robert Clark, Caledonian has passed through a number of hands since, being acquired by Sunderland's now defunct Vaux Brewery in 1939 and Scottish and Newcastle in 2004, not long before S&N were themselves taken over by the Dutch megabrewer Heineken in 2008.
As part of the S&N/Heineken portfolio, Caledonian's Deuchars IPA became a nationally distributed brand - at one point, it seemed to be on the bar of every Wetherspoons pub you went in - and still ranks in the top ten cask beers by sales.
Caledonian beers will now be contract brewed at the Greene King-owned Belhaven Brewery in Dunbar, although I wouldn't be surprised if, like Manchester's Boddingtons Bitter, they eventually embark on an odyssey of multinational breweries where once famous regional beers eke out a strange half life in keg or cask form.
When you read CAMRA Discourse with its mantra "support the small independent. Boo to the big boys" you realise many cask fans will prefer an Edinburgh or Newcastle or Leeds full of tiny brewers without a big one.
ReplyDeleteThe death of Deuchars (ubiquitous in Edinburgh in 2000, hard to find last year) says much about the desertion from cask to Mediterranean in Scotland
Mediterranean lager that should have said ! Madri is the new McEwans.
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