"Heineken N.V. today announced that it is to close its Beamish & Crawford brewery in Cork in March 2009."Dammit. Beamish & Crawford was the first foreign brewery I got excited about, way back in the 1980s, and we dropped by on our honeymoon in 1989. The brewery had a history, and a place, and a well. And Heineken got hold of it, and closed it, and 120 Irish jobs are lost. There are other breweries closing, of course, and pubs continue to close in the UK at a stunning rate (with surprisingly little blogger reaction that I've seen, which is puzzling...maybe), but this one hit home.
I say many bad words.
Photo of the Beamish & Crawford Brewery by kman999 on flickr.
8 comments:
That also bodes ill for O'Hara's, which has a sizable chunk of its production contract-brewed at Beamish.
Oh, great, Steve. You just made me say more bad words.
So... closing the brewery to brew Beamish somewhere else, or closing the brewery to kill the brand?
Hard to say, Brad. They're going to be brewing Beamish at the Murphy's brewery, also in Cork, which they also own...which doesn't sound promising. On the other hand, there are markets where Beamish does well, or so I'm told, and it seems odd that they'd buy it just to kill it.
Bah -- brewing Beamish at Murphy's? Next you'll tell me that they're brewing Beck's at the Spaten brewery.
Nothing really is sacred anymore, is it?
Heineken acquired the Beamish brewery and brand when they and Carlsberg bought and divided up Scottish & Newcastle, IIRC. Probably would have been better for the Irish brewing industry if Carlsberg got B&C- wonder why the Irish regulators didn't try for that.
Keep wondering what Heineken has in mind for the US market, considering they now own 3 different US importers- Heineken USA, Star Brand Imports and S&N USA- right? Consolidation? Or maybe a return of some of the S&N beers previously dropped from the US market?
Hard to get excited about the multinationals moving their brews around. Luckily there are new micr breweries popping up around the British Islands.
I'd have a pint of Galway Hooker instead of a Beamish any day!
That is probably why the bloggers don't really care.
Knut,
I was actually puzzled about the bloggers not caring about the pub closures. I'm not surprised at all that the bloggers don't care about Beamish closing.
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