Camden Town Brewery & what Big Beer can mean

Camden Town Brewery & what Big Beer can mean

There is an interesting interview with the man who sold Camden Town Brewery to ABInBev (Jasper Cuppidge) here:

http://beerinsider.com/camden-town-sitting-comfortably-with-brewery-takeovers/

I expect numbers reading this will be able to recall the days when Camden did interesting beers on cask. They then stopped cask production and focused on keg and while occasional small batch beers still appear what you will tend to see now is Helles and Pale on draught, bottles or cans.

Helles is not my favourite beer style but I tried a glass at the recent London Brewers Alliance festival and it was fine. Those who are more into that particular beer suggest that it has never tasted better coming out of the new-ish Ponders End brewery.

So in a sense the link between Camden and ABInBev has increased the availability of decent beer quite significantly. Good.

Cuppidge notes that Camden plans to focus on two or three beers (brands in fact) and that what other ‘craft’ brewers do wont therefore be impacted by Camden’s activities.

Up to a point Lord Copper. In fact of course Camden are taking space on bars and shelves that might otherwise be filled by a diversity of beers and breweries. They themselves were once in that game.

So Camden and Big Beer? Good and not so good. Capitalism is full of contradiction