Is it a Sharp's decline?

Interesting to see that Molson Coors, based in the US and one of the world’s main brewing groups, has just paid £20 million to take over Sharp's, the Cornish brewer which was our Brewery of the Year in 2008. We first heard of them in 1994, when Fiona and I came across their beer for the first time. I remember it was in the Crown at Lanlivery, about 18 miles from the brewery itself, which had only just started brewing. Their Doom Bar has been a favourite with us ever since. In under 20 years Sharp's have expanded quite widely, taking good care of their beers in transit to the handful of cellar-temperature depots they use for national distribution.

How will being part of such a powerful group affect Sharps? We’d certainly expect to see their expansion plans develop very significantly. After all, that £20 million is very small beer for Molson Coors, which is itself currently worth over £5,000 million. It would hardly be worth Molson Coors bothering with Sharp's unless they saw scope for greatly increasing Sharps’ sales.

What do you think of the Sharps beers?

What pub is your favourite pub for drinking them in?

And which rival British brewery do you guess might be an attractive take-over target for one of the other even bigger brewing giants, perhaps Heineken (worth £17 billion), Diageo (nearly £30 billion), SAB Miller (over £30 billion) or Anheuser-Busch InBev (over £50 billion)?

Do let us know what you think!