Looking forward to baron rating Stringers gluten-free Outlook ales

Stringers Brewery from Ulverston, Cumbria. One of my favourite breweries who brew one of my top ten beers and possibly my 'desert island discs, take only one beer' beer - Stringers IPA.

Jon and Becky are great people working very hard to brew great beer which is now not only available in small independent places but also in the North West's Booths supermarket chain. They have a solid range of bottled ales and have now come out with two new ones both of which are gluten free:

Lovely looking bottles but why the same name?
Stringers Brewery
  • Outlook - 4.9% Gluten-free amber ale, brewed with pale & crystal malts, Northern Brewer & Cascade hops with flavours of caramel, herbal & spicy
  • Outlook - 3.7% Gluten-free golden ale, brewed with pale & wheat malts, Northern Brewer, Challenger & Mittelfruh hops with flavours of light lemon, herbal & honey
These beers are "Crafted to remove Gluten":

Our brewing process removes Gluten. Proper beer, made with barley malt, but less than 20ppm Gluten.

I really like the look of these new Stringers beers, they have taken a step away from the round style (see brewery logo above) which I still love, but these labels appear fresh and clean with a classy look. What I'm not happy with is the choice of the same name for both beers, is Outlook trying to be a gluten-free brand within the Stringers brand? I can see conversations like this:

"Get me some Stringers Outlook please as it's really nice"
"Yeap, they had some, here you go..."
"Oh no I didn't mean the X ale I meant the Y one!"

Jon, if you've got any comments or reasons for the labeling then please get in touch and I'll update this post with your input, would be useful to see the reasoning from the brewery's eyes.

Thank you to Jon (@StringersBeer) from Stringers for handing this over for a baron rating!

Buy Stringers ales from Source Deli, Booths & Holborn Ales

2 comments:

StringersBeer said...

Yes, it's a sort of GF sub-brand thing. Call 'em "Outlook Gold" and "Outlook Amber" if you like, that's what we do. We thought it would be a way of positioning these beers as distinctly separate for our other stuff - hence the distinct artwork. Also, "Outlook" is the only thing we've ever trademarked, so we thought we'd better get our money's worth, We're also planning a porter in the range, "Outlook Dark"? Ha.

StringersBeer said...

P.S. These are available online, from gluten-freeshop.co.uk as well as our other valued retail channel partners. [Gags]

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