In the Hop Garden

[aleandhearty]

I guess there's an element of familiarity breeds contempt, MD. They do actually brew some good beers - Silver King, Excelsior and Treacle Stout are great, if in good nick. However, they are also guilty of churning out endless indifferent pale seasonals around 4%, that just merge into each other, character wise.

This is'nt a dig at you aleandhearty but why do people think that if a beer is readily available then it is not a decent drink,if that is the case then new brewerys would have to keep opening all the time to keep certain people happy about not drinking the same drinks all the time.

Just to re-iterate, the main thrust of my whine against Ossett is the fact that they churn out too many insipid occasional brews. This is a view held by quite a few people in the pubs I frequent. Unfortunately, it does tend to impart a slightly jaundiced view of the brewery as a whole, despite the strength of their core brews.

Al,regarding your point about new breweries opening all the time, I don't really follow your logic. If multi pumped venues have a constantly rotating stock of guest beers, surely they provide enough choice for the drinker?

I guess it's horses for courses, but my drinking patterns have changed considerably over the last twenty years. At one time Landlord, or Ind Coope Burton Ale were my beers and I'd drink virtually nothing else. However,we live in a golden age for beer lovers. My usual mini-crawl of four pubs has thirty two pumps between them. Even if they all sold a couple of the same regular beers, I wouldn't want to drink them. I love variety and searching for the next WOW! find. (However, that's not to say I must drink totally new beers every session). Otherwise, how do you come across beers such as High Wire, The Accomplice etc?
Other factors are that I like to support small breweries and a nagging fear that this golden age isn't going to last forever.