Edinburgh to gain 15-tap cask ale growler station

As worthy as our pubs are, the British are inevitably a nation of home-drinkers. Feet on the coffee table, top-two buttons undone, Sky Living HD on the telly – a perfect boozing occasion. Thankfully, habits such as this have long been known and there is a huge amount of opportunity to pick up your favourite beer on the way home, for those days when you just can’t face your landlord of choice, or don’t have any 10p’s for the jukebox. Take Edinburgh; here, we have at least ten seriously good off-licences, even if you discount the margin-grabbing supermarkets – so there’s no shortage of options for take-home tipples (the advantage of living in a major city). However, almost all of these takeaway beer merchants supply products in the standard form – bottles and cans; only Great Grog and the Beer Hive have done something a little different, each supplying a single, oft-changing draught beer from a kegerator.

As an idea, the growler is intrinsically American – as I’ve written about before, it can keep kegged beer fresh in the fridge for a few days, and helps cut down on the dreadful ‘one for the road’ mentality that can lead to car accidents. The thing is, over there it is almost universally applied to that method of beer dispense – whereas here on these green and rainswept islands we tend to favour our soft, foamy cask ales (although young upstarts are changing this on a daily basis). How does this translate to take-away beer? And are we ready for someone to truly try and grasp this new market? Step forward Stuart Dinning, and Growler Beers UK. With police licence granted, Stuart is going before the alcohol board soon with plans to open the first designated, takeaway, cask ale service in the country – with no less than fifteen ales on tap, and five ciders.

Chatting to Stuart, this project has become a labour of love – first formulated as an idea when visiting the States, he began to wonder why there were no options here for Growler stations; why sofa-based drinking had to involve only bottles or cans. The idea of doing all this with cask ales is fascinating, but Stuart’s well aware of the issue of keeping the cask fresh once tapped, and is confident that he can get through enough to not have substantial amounts of wastage. Having said this, on opening his station in Morningside he’s trying to be as realistic as possible – he’ll be opening with a more manageable number of casks on offer and will monitor how they go before moving up to the full fifteen. Some degree of caution is probably wise – as a new concept, with nothing to really compare it to, only time will tell as to how it takes off.

Nobody can pretend that the American and British drinking cultures are similar – but there are several cross-over comparisons that can be made. The popularity of growler fills and drinking draught beer from your fridge is one that could still make it. Once the supply arrives, demand could well follow. I think the issue is familiarity – if you become used to taking the container out to be filled, if there’s that regular space for the growler in the fridge door, then it becomes second nature to keep it full and interesting. The fact that only two, isolated, kegerators (and some bars such as BrewDog Edinburgh) offer that service in the city isn’t reason for someone not to take a punt and go for it. Stuart’s taking that chance, and all the best to him. He’ll also be offering deliveries, so (other than answering the door) you might not even have to leave your sofa to get a pint of cask ale soon…

Growler Beers UK
229 Morningside Road
Website/ Twitter Feed

UPDATE 22/05/2013
Stuart posted on his Facebook page today that due to smaller than expected cellar space at the site, only ten taps will be on offer, with at least five cask ale and the other five split between ale and cider…