Classic ale relaunched – but newer brewer closes
IN MY early days of beer appreciation, Draught Bass was regarded as the Rolls-Royce of beers which we would go out of our way to find, says Neville Grundy.
The bottled version, Bass Pale, was similarly well regarded.
It was slightly stronger than the draught and was known all over the world, being shipped to many countries, especially India, and was the first foreign beer to be sold in Japan.
Edouard Manet depicted bottles of Bass in his painting Le Bar Aux Folies Bergere in 1882, and 30 years later 12,000 bottles went down with the Titanic.
Bass Pale was a worldwide phenomenon with a history that, it has been claimed, goes back to 1777.
The brand is now owned by global brewer AB InBev which will relaunch it next month.
In 2013, the firm decided to rename this iconic beer as “Bass Trademark Number One” to acknowledge the fact that the famous Bass red triangle was the first registered trade mark in the UK.
This move was described by beer blogger Zythophile as “a classic example of How To Royally Screw Up Your Brand”.
AB InBev now says that it is bringing this beer back with its original name to “invigorate the premium ale category”.
The beer scene has changed a lot in recent decades, with a younger generation of drinkers who have a far wider choice of real ales, craft beers and bottled ales than ever before.
Classic brand or not, it will be competing in a very crowded market place and the beer will have to be very good to make any serious inroads.
Still, I look forward to giving it a try.
Closer to home, I was sorry to hear that Liverpool’s Mad Hatter Brewery has ceased trading.
Launched in 2013, it was one of the few breweries to be run by a woman, Sue Starling, and produced a number of interesting and sometimes quirky beers, some of them named after local places such as Penny Lane Pale and Toxteth IPA.
Sue has said the pleasure of brewing has gone after the departure of her co-founder, Gareth Matthews, whose creativity she has sorely missed.
That loss, coupled with a change of premises, means that she no longer wants to run the business herself, but she is open to offers to buy the business “so it could live on”.
Vist our local Camra website at: www.southport. camra.org.uk.