Popping in my local Sainsbury’s last night, I noticed that a number of the bottled ales in their range have been included in a ’3 for £4′ offer, including… Meantime London Stout! Which was handy, because I was actually shopping for a few bottles of that one to take with us when we go visiting friends this weekend. The others in the offer were pretty much the usual suspects: a few from Fullers, a couple of Shepherd Neame beers (iirc). (Oh, and this post from The Beer Nut reminded me that Meantime London Pale Ale was in the offer as well.)

I also spotted a couple of hoodie-clad, baseball-cap wearing, generally uncouth-looking types, who slouched into the beer section and, astoundingly, completely ignored the selection of real ales – even with the special offers available – and instead grabbed a 12-pack of Carling cooking lager each (also on offer, at a mere £9 for the full six litres!) and legged it in the direction of the tills.

Frankly, I was amazed: they didn’t stop to read a single real ale bottle label along the way. But hey, no chance of those lads spending the weekend feeling at all aggressive, eh? Not with that much cheap lager to pacify them. Well done, you proud and noble Portman Group member, Coors UK…