Moorhouse’s over the broom with Halloween sales
BLOND Witch has been hailed Moorhouse’s top selling cask ale for Halloween as the season brought magical sales of more than half-a-million pints for the famous ‘Pendle Witches’ brewer.
Despite very tough industry challenges, the Burnley brewery enjoyed record sales with a 7% increase over last October – to once again make the season ‘as busy as Christmas’.
The fledgling White Witch (3.8%abv), the newest and fastest growing core brand, was hard on the heels of the premium Blond Witch (4.5%abv).
The news follows growth at 6% for the last financial year with sales close to £6m for the former ‘backstreet’ Burnley brewery, which in 2011 boldly launched a multi-million pound complex to treble production.
It is now Lancashire’s leading independent brewery and celebrated its 150th anniversary with a two day Halloween beer festival and party.
Managing director David Grant said: “Our team has worked tremendously hard to achieve record growth again this year against all the challenges and problems of the current market.
“Despite many pubs closing and the number of micro-brewers growing relentlessly our quality beers have won through.
“It seems that the trend to the lighter coloured beers is still growing with Blond Witch and White Witch performing so well out of our six core beers.
“We have only recently put White Witch on as permanent since it was launched as seasonal ale just two years ago, but it is terrifically popular as a tasty, easy drinking brew everywhere it appears.
“Increasingly publicans recognise Moorhouse’s as the brewer of choice for the witching season and this year we have made further progress nationally with leading pub companies while seeing our beer go well in our Lancashire northern heartland, where Halloween is always much celebrated.”
Moorhouse’s brands are themed around the story of the ill-fated ‘witches’ who roamed Pendle Hill near Burnley in the early 17th century.
The sales boost was welcomed soon after Grant spoke of the challenges for further growth as more than 20 pubs closing each week while micro–brewers mushroom at a rate of some 12 a month.
Currently the brewery owns three community pubs and has recently looked at acquiring small pub groups in the North. But with many traditional pubs struggling for survival, he believes one route to a healthy future for the modern 1,000 barrel-a-week capacity brewery could lie with the newly emerging ‘micro-pubs’ concept – small outlets often set up in former shops to primarily sell cask ales – and has mooted opening a chain across the North from Chester to York.
