The thought that pubs can run out of beer in Britain is nothing less than quite shocking. Britain – that Mecca for fine ales – as well as importing some rather dicey ones.

Beer has been a major issue during the pandemic. At the beginning we just could not drink it because the pubs were shut down and millions of gallons were thrown down the sink. It was a heart breaking and terrible waste.

You have to be quite careful if you want to get rid of beer – it is taxed and if you want to save the tax then you have to go about it the right way. That means in essence returning it to your supplier so that he can dispose of it in a controlled manner and make the necessary declaration on his duty returns. Remember, beer carries not only VAT but excise duty as well.

So now here we are hopefully heading out of the pandemic at reasonable speed and unfortunately the breweries are finding difficulty in keeping up with the demand for beer. Well, the British people are nothing less than fickle but they have missed it for so long that they can be as fickle as they like over this one. The answer may be to try and push bottled beers a bit more for the moment, that is assuming that stocks of those have been kept up during the pandemic. Otherwise it’s off to the appropriate store to buy a home beer brewing kit – actually I don’t mind if I do!

Adrian Leopard 10-05-21

Photo Louis Hansel