Four days. Forty Pubs. 53 Pints. And an epiphany

I am back from the North where we well and truly launched our delicious India Pale Ale.

After a comprehensive and thorough tasting across many of the country’s greatest cask ale pubs I can confirm that Allsopp’s India Pale Ale is a beer of deep historic and intrinsic clarity and quality.

I am not completely sure that the Path of Excess led to the Tower of Wisdom (as promised in last week’s missive) but, and it might have been the beer, the whole thing took on something of an epic hue by Day 4.

Importantly, new friends were made, a love of Northern pubs entrenched and a thorough road test completed.  Enormous thanks to the brilliant brewers at Kirkstall for their tireless effort in brewing the best beer and delivering it to wonderful pubs in perfect condition. Thank you to my wingman Rob Warriner who managed to count the beers, long after I couldn’t count the fingers on my hand and thank you to Steve Holt whose dedication to upholding the noble traditions of cask ale allowed this launch to happen.

And along the pilgrim’s path, I had a striking realisation, possibly an epiphany:

Great pubs make great (and happy) communities. And there is no such thing as a great pub without properly kept, cask ale. It is a source of quiet pride that since 1730 we Allsopps have brewed and supplied this wonderful liquid to hostelries at home and abroad.

What a thought!

Should you wish to know more about the beer that my 7-times-great-grandfather first brewed in a teapot way back when, just email me via this website…