Black Pitts Porter & ‘Craft Beer’ & EBBC

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Black Pitts Porter is a porter made to taste like the Black Stuff used to taste. It accomplishes that quite well. Or at least it does in my imagination, I don’t have a time machine to go back and actually check for myself. It’s not bad at all and has a pleasant roasted toasted malt quality.
Some of you may be itching to point out that this isn’t craft beer as The Five Lamps Brewery is owned mostly or wholly by C & C, the same large company that produces Bulmers/Magners cider. As you may be aware I am a big fan of independent Irish Craft Beer and so that raises some questions. I don’t agree with some of the business practices employed by the macro brewers in Ireland. For example the pressure put on publicans to stock their products to the detriment of smaller companies. But not everything is as cut and dried as we’d like it to be. Franciscan Well are owned by Molson Coors but the main man there, Shane Long continues to support and encourage independent brewers and start ups, which is admirable. One of the other facets is choice for the Irish consumer. This one has been trotted out before by others but if someone starts out with a Blue Moon and moves on to other ‘real’ craft beers then isn’t it a good thing? These questions have been on my mind with the European Beer Bloggers Conference kicking off tomorrow week in Dublin. The main sponsors are Molson Coors and Diageo but there will also be a contingent from Beer Ireland including N17, Blacks of Kinsale and Independent and O’Hara’s are hosting part of the event. I know that this will provide valuable exposure to these ‘true independents’, I know I will be bigging them up anyway! I don’t have all of the answers, I suppose we all have to make our own beer drinking decisions…

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4 Responses to Black Pitts Porter & ‘Craft Beer’ & EBBC

  1. The Beer Nut says:

    Yep, whatever your opinion on the background corporate goings-on, it’s hard to argue with the taste of Black Pitts — lovely beer.

    I agree that anything which breaks the stranglehold of the Irish megabrands, and makes the drinker consciously choose what to drink, is a good thing. The downside is that the likes of Molson Coors Ireland have muscle: they are more likely to push independent Irish beers off the bar than Heineken and Diageo ones.

    • Yeah, I understand that in most of the country publicans need the big beers to survive but am dreaming of a utopia where every pub has a long bar with space for everyone. I may be deluding myself.

  2. phirx says:

    Similar quandaries here in the US, with corporate giants buying smaller craft breweries to get some edge into the market. I’ve avoided Goose Island beers since learning they had been bought by Anheuser-Busch, but this week I tried their Matilda Belgian Pale and Sofie Saison: both were excellent. Should I deprive myself of trying good beers if the profit from their sale is going to Big Beer? Hmmmm…

    • I was in Goose Island’s brew pub before they were bought and I was disappointed to learn about it. Still though, they are making some good beers, an informed decision has to be made. I reckon you and I do our part to support independent craft beers anyway so we’re allowed to ‘cheat’ every once in a while! 😉

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