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Sainsbury's beer competition - the final

Sample the 15 shortlisted beers from today and vote by raising your wrist. What are your favourite microbrewery beers? What else can supermarkets do to support them?
Sainsbury's beer competition 2009
Some of the entrants in the Sainsbury's Beer Competition 2009. Photograph: PR

It's not often here on Word of Mouth that we have reason to praise a British supermarket, but we felt we had to raise a glass to Sainsbury's Beer Competition.

Now in its second year, the contest is open to brewers large and small. From the initial entries - some 115 beers, this year - an expert panel whittles the list down to 15 finalist beers (you can read an account of last year's judging here), the brewers of which are then asked to supply Sainsbury's with 40,000 bottles each. From 26 August, those 15 beers go on sale for three weeks in over 400 Sainsbury's stores, with the two best selling beers winning a further six month contract with the supermarket.

For microbreweries like Wigan's Allgates - whose Porteresque, all full-on roasted malt with coffee and liquorish flavours, is one of this year's finalists - the competition has been an invaluable leg-up. A small five-barrel plant, which only started brewing in 2006, it entered the competition on a whim, after test-bottling a mere 70 bottles of its porter. Now it's competing with established names like Greene King.

Normally, for any microbrewery, approaching the supermarkets presents a real catch-22. The supermarket buyers will only deal with breweries that can supply a standardised product in large volumes, on time. However, without a concrete order, few small breweries can afford to invest in the necessary bottling capacity, distribution systems, labelling, barcode technology and so on that would prove their professionalism to the supermarkets.

The Sainsbury's competition route, says Allgate director, Brian Muir, is a little less daunting:

"A lot of the supermarkets stock locally produced goods, Asda in particular, but it's not easy to get in, mainly because they deal in such huge quantities. [The Sainsbury's order] isn't a huge cash injection, and the margins are very tight, but we knew that. The main thing is it's given us a lot of knowledge and confidence. If we're in the final two, that gives us a very nice headache, but if we're not, it's been tremendous promotion. We'll be approaching other supermarkets to try and get our product on their shelves."

So, just how good are Sainsbury's 15 finalists?

Well, none had that sparkle of true greatness that you get from a well-kept, cask-conditioned real ale, in a pub. But that's (most) bottled ales for you. Enjoyable as some of these beers are, at WoM's informal taste-test none scored higher than 15.5/20.

At first glance, it also seems curious that nine breweries produced the 15 finalist beers. If a major selling point of the competition is that it promotes craft brewing, surely it would be better to have 15 individual breweries represented? Perhaps, but when you start tasting them, it's difficult to labour that point. William Bros Brewing Co. has four beers in the final 15, but all four also scored highly with the WoM hop heads. Quality, it seems, will out.

As for real stinkers, there was only one: Brewdog's Dogma (7/20). The subject of much controversy in its original Speedball incarnation, it's a bizarre concoction of heather honey, guarana and kola nut, that tastes like a rather challenging alco-pop. At 7.8% it is also very strong, as are Brewdog's other two finalist beers, Chaos Theory at 7.1%, and Hardcore IPA at 9%. Both have interesting, attacking flavours, but as they warmed up tasted like someone had dropped a double of cheap vodka in there. I've got a lot of time for Brewdog, but these smacked of beers brewed to create headlines, rather than great drinks.

Anyway, here's the Word of Mouth Top 3:

1. Breaker, Bays Brewery (Torbay, Devon) - 15.5/20
Undersells itself as another English, chestnut coloured ale (yawn), but it's the most sophisticated beer on this list. It has a complex flavour profile, with properly delineated rich, roasted, fruity, coffeeish malt notes, but also a clean, palate-cleansing sourness. Very good.

2. Ceilidh, William Bros Brewing Co., (Alloa, Scotland) - 14.5/20
A lager (gasp!), but a serious grown-up lager that with its tart / lemony flavours and lack of pilsner bite is more akin to a Munich helles (or even some lambic Belgian beers) than Carling or Fosters.

3. Eighty Shilling and IPA, both William Bros. Brewing Co. - 14/20
The former is a great take on the traditional Scottish beer (all treacle toffee, bitter coffee and smokiness; drink whilst eating hog roast). The latter is a real heady, herby, hoppy IPA, with a nice, slightly acrid wheat graininess to it. The citrus / grapefruit flavours fluoresce in the mouth.

Those were the top three, but the tasting team also singled out three more for special mention. They are William Bros' summer ale, Birds & Bees (spiked with elderflower and lemon zest; almost like a paler, milder Leffe); Hambleton Ales' solid, interestingly malty Taylor's Tipple; and Bath Ales' dry, zesty but honeyed Golden Hare.

Have you tried any of these beers? What beers would you have liked to have seen on Sainsbury's list? Moreover, how do you view the competition? Do you agree that it's a good thing? Or could the supermarkets be doing a lot more to support Britain's craft brewers, and if so, what?

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