Just when I thought I’d managed to make a few in-roads into the beer cupboard, I nipped into my local Sainsbury’s for the weekly shop to find that, whilst they’ve called time on their summer real ale promotion (incidentally, they were selling off remaining overstocks for £1 a bottle – although they still didn’t have any Copper Dragon 1816…), they’ve also gone and re-vamped their regular range, adding at least ten new beers to the shelves.

I grabbed nine of them (my missus, Jo, was heard to mutter “kid in a sweet shop”, but I mollified her by chucking a few bottles of Guinness original into the trolley as well), leaving a couple of them behind on the grounds that I suspected I’d already tried them.

The new (to me) discoveries were (in no particular order):

• Meantime London Stout
• Wood’s Shropshire Lad Spring Bitter
• Abbot Reserve
• Morland Old Crafty Hen
• Thwaite’s Liberation
• Worthington’s White Shield
• Purity Pure Ubu
• Butcombe Gold
• Shepherd Neame Late Red

And the beer cupboard now (once again) looks a something like this:

The worrying thing is, a new branch of Morrison’s opened up in the area last week, which means there’s going to be a whole new selection for me to browse. I think I’m going to need a bigger cupboard. Or I should just start drinking (and typing) faster…