Sharp’s Brewery has certainly come a long way in 16+ years. Started up as a hobby by local businessman Bill Sharp; the Rock, Cornwall – based brewery has moved from micro to regional brewer in less than a decade. 

It now brews 75,000 barrels of cask beer a year. It is one of the fastest-growing breweries in Britain and has long left behind the status of a micro. It is, indisputably, a regional company, until recently vying with St Austell Brewery, as the biggest producer of cask ale in Cornwall. Sharp’s is still on the same industrial estate it started on, but now occupies most of it, not just one small building.

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Following my recent post;  Robert Cain Brewery – Material uncertainty and poison pills, earlier today I was Googling some other topic and in the process came across a website for Licenced Solutions Limited who describe themselves as “Specialist consultants to the leisure and licensed  trades sectors”. In essence, ambulance chasers to the pub, hotel, night club and restaurant sectors.

I wasn’t bothered about that, but what was of interest was one of the old case studies featured on their website.

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I read this week in the Morning Advertiser with heavy heart that Greene King has sold the former Hardy’s and Hansons Kimberley Brewery in Nottinghamshire for an undisclosed sum. Greene King acquired Hardy’s and Hansons in 2006 and shut the brewery at the end of that year.

There was never a chance that brewing would ever take place on the site again but having now been bought by the Leicester-based Alif Group ahead of an auction due to take place; my guess is that it will simply become a vast store for this bathroom wholesaler.

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I wrote a post the other week entitled - If you want to predict the future, simply look at the past, about Belhaven and Greene King. I believe that same maxim may apply here but for different reasons.

In recent days Robert Cain’s Auditors have warned that this famous Liverpool brewery again faces material uncertainty over its finances which may threaten its survival, but its owners remain “optimistic” they can again turn things around. I think we have heard that before.

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I have a cold and sore throat. It hit late Friday and has made me feel a bit off, by no means ill; just lethargic. Also like the rest of the country; the ground here on the Fylde Coast is frozen, including rugby pitches, which means no match for ‘The Fylde Express’, that’s Alex my 11 year old son, at his school, Kirkham Grammar   

What all the above means is that I had a free Saturday at home; the first for ages, as not feeling well enough to venture out properly or work and with no Dad’s taxi service required I have been able to catch up with the papers and news.

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It was earlier this year, March to be exact, that Marston’s announced the launch of FastCask, which they said would ‘revolutionise the availability and quality of cask ale’. And then in May nine-pint take-home FastCasks of Marston’s Pedigree, Wychwood’s Hobgoblin and Marston’s EPA were announced.

Without going into too much detail, at the heart of FastCask are yeast-infused beads with an external permeable coating. The beads are tiny with approximately 100-150 added per firkin. They are said to act like sponges, drawing beer through to create the secondary cask fermentation but do not dissolve into the beer.  The cask’s hop filter prevents the beads from subsequently being dispensed.

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