If any of you beer drinkers out there fancy getting behind my friends' craft beer startup then donations of £1+ are very welcome!

Failing that, a free tweet of the link for others to decide would be greatly appreciated!!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1376155414/anspach-and-hobdays-pilot-brewery

I applaud this venture but is this not a slight twist on the Firkin micro brewery chain that started with 1 brew pub in Lambeth in the 80,s
I still have the "passport" when we crawled round the 12 or so London pubs in one day
My head still hurts

Thanks!

No it isn't really, its more about a gap in the market, that being good tasting beer.

They've had some decent feedback so far but its one of those things that is hard to get over to people who can't taste their stuff.

It's a shame the test date was the 2nd of March- would have been great to go and try it. I love a good porter and am just doing my first "proper" all-grain with hops not pellets, hop strainer not a hop bag etc etc. Tempting to put in some dosh all the same! Just hope they've got a good accountant and precise invoices for their ingredients, the HMRC will quickly show a very close interest.
If they do set up the "Cathedral of Brewing" they should stick a retail section on it selling brewing equipment and ingredients (something like Northern Brewer do across the pond)- there's a gap in the market. My nearest home brew shop is about 60 miles away and doesn't stock much! Which is a bit of a problem if I find on brew day my yeast has died..... You would have thought the entire population of London would support a homebrew shop.

There's definitely a market though for micro-breweries / pubs. There's one in Blackheath called Zero Degrees. I don't actually like their beer much but they are usually pretty busy even though their food is a bit under-par. So clearly people like it because it's different.

Well I think they have a cask left that is going to be bottled, there might even still be a cask on at brew warf in London Bridge

That was a collaboration, which is weaker than their usual stuff but still good

Even if it's just a pound, it'll be good to have lots of names on the first batch of bottles

I think you've hit the nail on the head there; there are lots of individual outlets that just aren't that great. A good example is camden town brewing. It's just pretty bland and very forgettable

I've tried all the stuff they've done, the dark stuff is really very good (ask oz clarke!). The pale ales are harder to nail but they're getting much better. But if you have any of their stuff against what you find in the supermarket, or places like camden town brewery, it's definintely better.

Their pales and some of their dark stuff have often been confused with The Kernel too, which is no bad thing!