Wells&Youngs take Courage.

On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 12:10:32 +0000, MikeMcG wrote (in message ):

"The deal sees the formation of a venture called Courage Brands which will be 83 per cent owned by W&YBC, with S&N owning the remaining 17 per cent."

Could it be that W&YBC thereby gain access to the ScotCo estate?

could be, though in one news piece it does say that ScotCo will still sell & distribute their own brands to their own estate. I know that's not the same thing as saying that W&Y won't have access to the ScotCo estate though - ScotCo seem to be removing themselves entirely from cask brewing, so maybe W&Y's beers will appear in the ScotCo estate.

Does anyone know if Theakston's beers still show up in S&N pubs as often since the brewery (if not all of the brewing!) went back in family hands? The ScotCo-Theakstons deal was described in one of the news pieces as a similar case to the new ScotCo-W&Y deal, tho to me it's very different as here ScotCo are passing on the brewing of their own brands to a separate company. MikeMcG

Yes they do, very noticably.

TB

It makes you wonder if & intend to pull out of brewing altogether.

Well, they possibly intend to pull out of brewing cask beer. They're still busy "brewing" Fosters, Kronenbourg, John Smith's Smooth etc.

And john smiths cask, although I would not call it a beer, not even a v.g mouthwash..

In article , martyn dawe writes

It is less worse than John Smith's Smooth, although not by much!

And it baffles me how it is that so many pubs choose to sell it (and frequently now't else) in York. "We don't sell much cask beer", they say. When that's all you're offering, it's hardly a surprise, is it now?

In message , Simon Cooper writes

I used to drink in the Bluebell in York, some regulars moved from the keg JS to Cask JS but would not drink anything else

You have to recognise that a lot of pub regulars drink the same beer all the time, and don't want anything too challenging. Surely it's better for them to be drinking a rather lacklustre real ale than keg. And if well kept, cask John Smith's is pleasant enough in my view.