White Lighting's been discontinued since 2009, Scottish courage killed it after first reducing its ABV quite a lot from 9 to 7% ish and still not liking the PR from its association. The UK big brewers have actually seen a push from market research to produce lower alcohol beers, hence the push of Carlsberg zest and Fosters Radler, also helped by duty being halved for products under 2.8%. You'll also see that due to supermarkets wanting to lower its offers each year, especially at christmas, that can sizes in offers have gone from 500ml to 440ml, 12 packs are now 10 or even 8 packs, bottle have gone from 330ml to 275ml now, and these reductions are pushes from supermarkets not the brewers, it costs the brewers money to retool to produce 10packs from the standard 24 can/ bottle configurations.
Of course its being done by agreements, the brewers stand to rake in a ton of extra money. Not sure agreement is the right word though TBH, If you dangle a £8.6m carrot in front of a brewer is that an agreement or a bribe?
My local has it on tap at the moment. The Adnams brewery is only 30 miles from here so loads of the real ale pubs around have their stuff Adnams Explorer and Ghost Ship are also worth trying.
This ^^^ except you're one of us now, don't try to deny it - I don't care what it says on your passport If you don't drink to get pissed the reduced levels don't matter, if you do then frankly they are a good thing.
That's why they have it clipped to their uniforms... i know of a few hospitals where they had to remove the wall-mounted dispensers because drunks/junkies were consuming the contents...
We have IR sensor battery-operated wall dispensers. You just cup your hand under it and it dispenses a shot. I have this fantasy that they would dispense espresso coffee. I'd walk around with an espresso cup on a chain around my neck and get a shot as I walk onto the ward.
Aye, head on up to the Globe at Wells-next-to-sea and they've got the widest spread of Adnams I've seen that far from Southwold. Explorer is still my all time favourite over ghostship. but Sole star is a summer beer
I recently realised that I'm probably over the limit some mornings when driving to work, because I have a nasty habit of swallowing mouthwash rather than spitting it out. Now I discover it's actually got a very high alcohol content On-topic: I'd rather beverages stayed the same and changed slightly in price, personally, just because a change in ABV will mean a slight change in taste and texture, and if you're really into a particular drink that could be annoying. But <=0.5% probably isn't going to be noticeable.
That's probably why it's so expensive over there On a similar note. I traveled to Australia and made an absolute fool of myself asking for Fosters Turn's out, Aussies won't touch the stuff (well it's not really available anyway) Haven't seen it once in four weeks.
Some of it is pure brand positioning. Tuborg especially was never that popular in the UK. They initially tried to market it as a premium brand a-la stella but it's now used as their 'music' brand at pretty much every (medium to large) venue and festival now. Hence the shift from 'premium' strength to normal at 4%. Personally I don't mind any change in ABV - if i'm drinking for pleasure the ales / lagers will be anywhere from 3.5% to 7% and be chosen on taste alone. The other changes are a mix of cost management (have to seen the size of wagon wheels now? They're the size of jammie dodgers) and pressure from the government.
You won't notice a taste difference, any change to brew strength/ ingredient/ brewing location has to meet a taste check from several swathes of tasters and blind testings, and the amount of beer these places brew it gets blended to match the required specs across several batches.
It's weird because I went to Leuven earlier in the year and everybody drinks Stella Artois. There was a huge town square, filled wall to wall with students drinking Stella. Bloody awful drink, if you ask me.
