The King Beggars Belief

Perusing this months copy of that most worthy of CAMRA branch publications the Nottingham Drinker, I came across this little gem in the letters section...

Sir,

In response to your article ‘Conned Rudolph’ in the April / May issue of Nottingham Drinker. I’d like to give you a bit of background as to why we reduced the ABV of Rocking Rudolph from 5% to 4.5%.We completely agree with you – Rocking Rudolph is a great beer – and we wanted more people to enjoy it during the festive season. Part of our commitment when we acquired Hardys and Hanson’s was to get their superb collection of beers to more drinkers. The proof is, since we’ve lowered the ABV, we’ve managed to distribute Rocking Rudolph to 23% more pubs in 2007 than the previous year.

We continue to brew all of Hardys and Hansons beers, with the exception of H&H Mild, which is still available in keg format. The reason for this is that when we became responsible for the Hardys and Hansons business, only three per cent of H&H Mild was sold in cask (26 pubs in total) so it was economically unviable for us to brew as a cask beer.

Greene King is committed to cask ale quality and the Hardys and Hanson’s quality manager, Roger Walters, has remained with us to ensure we have the best quality processes in place and continue maintain consistency of H&H beers.

Fiona Hope, Marketing director, Greene King Brewing Company

The editor replies:

Your letter certainly confirms that our heading “Conned Rudolph” was right then!

The beer was sold with a pump clip that declared “Hardy’s and Hanson’s - Rocking Rudolph”. Well common sense suggests that if you reduce the strength of a beer from 5% to 4.5% then it is not going to be remotely anything like the original. Add the fact that you have closed down the Hardys and Hansons brewery with this beer being brewed at the Greene King Brewery in Bury St Edmunds so why try to hoodwink the public into believing it was the same beer that was produced in Kimberley in 2006?

How about treating your customers with a bit of respect for a change, instead of trying to mislead them into believing that long closed breweries are still brewing? In our opinion, Hardy’s and Hanson’s Bitter and Olde Trip taste nothing like they did when they were brewed in Kimberley so why not let these once excellent beers pass into history with their proud reputation still intact?

Instead how about selling your beers in an open and honest way as Greene King beers, not Morland, Ruddles, Ridleys, Rayments or Hardy’s & Hanson’s, or are you ashamed of your own name?

Oh and by the way, correct us if we are wrong, but is a quality manager not responsible for the condition in which beer is sold in the pubs? In which case he has nothing to do with brewing or marketing the beers and so your final sentence appears to be irrelevant to the issue!

You have to wonder how on earth GK have managed to become such a powerful force when they're employing people capable of such ineptitude and who clearly have such little understanding of the market they claim to serve...

Pan-C