Bass (Ireland)

[marksalehouse]

Bass (Ireland) has a brewery on the Glen Road, North Belfast, but does not brew a cask ale. Bass (Ireland) always considered real ale as a non starter. However, during my time as CAMRA branch Chairman, I always had a good liaison with the brewery and they supplied Worthington White Shield (WWS) - a 5.6% bottle conditioned beer (BCB) - and cask Bass from the Burton Brewery.

In fact, because of the in-roads made by the branch at that time (mid 90's) in getting WWS into two dozen pubs here, a campaign started with CAMRA to highlight BCB's, in particular WWS. Notably the CAMRA newsletter (What's Brewing) ran WWS adverts for several months and there is now a regular feature about UK BCB's.

Bass (Ireland) are famous for setting up a new brewplant for "Caffrey's Ale", a distincive nitrogen based beer (smooth-flow style). Rumour is that the plant cost several million to set up but was very heavily subsidised by EU funding.

Caffrey's is now brewed elsewhere and the local market does not sell it. In fact, this billion pound market is unknown here now.

I am not Chairman of the CAMRA branch.
Bass (Ireland) do not now support cask ale or bottle conditioned beers in the province.

Mark

[MeridianFC]

I do remember the last time I was in Belfast that cask was pretty much unheard of, at least in the pubs I frequented. I did a lot more whiskey drinking than normal. Not that it's cask, but I thought there were a couple of brewpubs that popped up just outside the city (Lurgan?), or am I mistaken?

[marksalehouse]

Not too far off the mark there. Hilden brewery is situated to the north end of Lisburn town. To the south (as you go towards Moira) was the Down Royal. This pub is still going but stopped the brewing. Hilden bought there equipment. Just outside Kilkeel is the Whitewater Brewery.

You can get more info from my site.

mark