Wetherspoon unveils 'crafty' new drinks list
Craft beers and spirits form a large part of the new offer, which includes an expanded canned beer range.
Several new US craft brews have made the cut, including an American amber ale from the Oregon-based Rogue Ales brewery and the Californian Lagunitas IPA, as well as Devils Backbone, a collaboration between the Devils Backbone brewery in Virginia and Marston’s Banks’s brewery in Wolverhampton.
The US Sixpoint Brewery beers, which were the first canned beers to join the JDW drinks offer back in February, will remain and will be joined by three world lagers in cans: Budweiser Budvar from the Czech Republic, Sagres from Portugal and the Belgian, Vedett.
A further lager joins the list in the form of new BrewDog beer, This.Is.Lager, which was launched last month. Some 200 JDW sites will be the exclusive draught stockists of the 4.7% ABV pilsner, which is made with “ten times the hops of most industrial lagers.”
On the spirits side, the pub company is capitalising on the growth in small-batch British gins by listing the Warwickshire distilled Brokers Gin (the fasted growing gin in the US for the last two years) and Portobello Road, which was created by bartender Jake Burger in 2011.
Posh mixer Fever Tree is also coming on board, offering drinkers a premium tonic to mix with the gins.
The boom in premium tequila also gets a nod with the addition of El Jimador, which is distributed by Mangrove UK.
JDW has also announced details of its annual International Beer Festival (17 October to 2 November), which this year includes beers from New Zealand, Italy and the Netherlands as well as UK brews from Evan Evans, Harviestoun and Batemans.
