Lothian Breweries Secure Place at Aldi’s Winter Beer Festival

Two local breweries have been chosen to showcase their beer at Aldi’s Winter Beer Festival. The festival, taking place at stores across Scotland, will have some of the country’s finest dark ales on show and will feature Barney’s Volcano IPA from Barney’s Brewery in Edinburgh and Musselburgh Broke from Knops Brewery in East Lothian.

Barney’s Beer started brewing in 2011 and is returning to the Winter Beer Festival after working with Aldi at the inaugural event last year, with 96 cases of Barney’s Volcano IPA set to hit stores for this year’s festival. The beer has a light malt flavour and bags of hops.

Andrew Barnett, owner of Barney’s Beer, said:- “It’s great to work with Aldi on their winter beer festival. To be associated with an international retail brand and have national distribution across Scotland provides us with great credibility.”

Knops Brewery also has experience of working with Aldi after taking part in the Summer Beer Festival earlier this year and will provide the retailer with around 200 cases of its Musselburgh Broke ale in a deal which is worth around £3,000 to the brewery. Musselburgh Broke is a chestnut coloured ale which has a taste of caramel, toffee and coca from the malts with a smooth and dry finish.

Robert Knops, owner of Knops Brewery, said:- “We really enjoyed working with Aldi on their last festival and saw this as another great opportunity to gain wider distribution and exposure for our products.”

This year’s Winter Beer Festival is worth an estimated £96,000 to Scottish breweries and builds on the success of Aldi’s previous festivals which were worth a combined  £190,000 to the breweries involved and saw over 105,000 bottles of ale sold.

Richard Holloway, Scottish managing director at Aldi, commented:- “We are proud to be celebrating the third Aldi Scottish Beer Festival this winter. The success of the first two festivals is very much down to the relationships we have established with the best breweries across Scotland and the quality of the ales they have provided us with.

“Our Winter Beer Festival is focused on providing our customers with the best seasonal ales on the market, all perfect for the dark and cold winter weather. These unique beers and ales are on offer at the lowest possible prices, and we hope that as many shoppers as possible try them out when next in store.”

Aldi’s Scottish Beer Festival is currently taking place across all of Aldi’s 49 Scottish stores for five weeks (or until stocks last).