Battle of the Brewers

Edinburgh has been buzzing of late with Tap takeover events and new beer launches, and amongst these Stewart's have hit upon a great promotional tool. The Battle of the Brewers Evenings.

The formula for each event is the same, a beer style is chosen (not quite sure how), and then Stewart's and an invited Brewery both brew their take on that style. The beer is then sold in a chosen Pub(s) as "Beer X" and "Beer Y" with a vote being taken before the winner is announced and each beer attributed to the respective brewery. Each event is tickets £5 but this includes a half pint of each beer with the proceeds of the event going to various Charities.

So far Stewart's are 2-0 up. With the previous events being

Battle 1 : A Summer Ale : Stewart Brewing vs Williams Brothers

Battle 2 : A Black IPA : Stewart Brewing vs Harviestoun

　

I like the idea of these as it promotes both cooperation as well as competition between Scottish brewers. I think its driven Stewart's to new heights as their Black IPA is probably their best beer and one of the best Black IPA's i have had.

Tomorrow (30 May 2012) brings the 3rd of these.

Battle 3 : Red IPA : Stewart Brewing vs Cairngorm

The Venue this time has been split between my 3 Favourite Edinburgh Pubs, Cloisters, The Bow Bar and The Stockbridge Tap.

From the past events Stewart's have in my mind not only been the clear winners, but the ones to have capitalised best on the events. Though i didnt make the first event from all reports, it looks like Williams Bros just tweaked and existing recipe, Harvistoun put more effort in and produced a very tasty new beer, but it failed to live up to the Black IPA style. But neither Harvistoun or Williams Beers were seen after the event and both breweries seem to have failed to capitalised on the promotion this event gave them.

While Cairngorm are not a brewery that generally excite me, they also produce the best cask (sub 6%) stout in the UK. So there is no doubt that they can take the ball and run with it if they choose, which I hope they do.

As to who will win this one, well we will know tomorrow night. Best of luck to both brewers.

More information can be found here