By 1986, the brand boasted 580 tied pubs and an annual production of over 500,000 barrels, despite operating at only 50% capacity. a b Benady, David (24 May 1996). "Boddington's Export to be axed after poor sales". Marketing Week. Boddington family; Person record". Boddington-family.org.uk. Archived from the original on 24 March 2012 . Retrieved 22 October 2011. By the mid-1700s, Manchester Grammar School had a huge monopoly on the grinding of grain in the city – mostly owing to the fact that they had the biggest facilities and a large number of ‘free’ workers who would make the beer under the guise of education. Boddies toast success of the Games". Middleton Guardian. M.E.N. Media. 16 May 2002. Archived from the original on 5 May 2013.

John Hegarty, who had worked on the 1990s Boddingtons advertising campaigns, argued that Interbrew, "just didn't care [about the brand], they underinvested and let it rot". [28]Boddington family; Person record". Boddington-family.org.uk. Archived from the original on 10 September 2011 . Retrieved 22 October 2011. We’re sure we read something somewhere at some point about the Boddington’s yeast strain being ‘cleaned up’ in the 1980s — if you can think where, let us know in the comments below.

It was very fortuitous that the brewery was in Manchester. To outsiders, Manchester is a very attractive place– known the world over for soccer, art, music and broadcasting. It would be difficult to have a Cream of Wolverhampton even though Banks's beer is very good. People do not aspire to visit Wolverhampton. On the whole they try to by-pass it. [17] During her Celebrity Masterchef stint and after Gregg’s comment, she realised that she was ‘done’ for good. We’ve just written a piece for All About Beer consideringGuinness from this angle but also had the chance to return to an old obsession: Boddington’s Bitter. This is a guest post by John Robinson who joined CAMRA c.1973 and was inspired by our writing about the decline of Boddington’s Bitter to undertake some research of his own. He asked us to share this post on his behalf. We’ve undertaken some light editing for readability and house style but otherwise this is John’s own work. Once the place to go if you liked R’n’B, this venue was huge. So popular, it would have queues along the front, around the corner and all the way up the side street – in any weather.InBev to close Boddington's". Modern Brewery Age. 20 September 2004. Archived from the original on 10 January 2007 . Retrieved 22 October 2011. Boddingtons suffers technical hitch". Marketing. Haymarket Business Publications. 18 April 1991 . Retrieved 6 June 2012.

In 1969, an attempted hostile takeover of the company took place, with Allied Breweries trying to force out the family and strip away its independence. I’ve just been watching an episode of Friends – The One With All The Kissing– and in between Chandler secretly getting off with Monica and Ross moaning about saying Rachel’s name at his wedding, Joey randomly mentions his love of Boddingtons. But it isn’t just a matter of nostalgia. Contemporary sources note, albeit without waxing lyrical, that Boddington’s was ‘well hopped’ (Frank Baillie’s Beer Drinker’s Companion, 1973), ‘One of the best’ (the first edition of the CAMRA Good Beer Guide, 1974) and ‘exceptionally bitter’ (GBG 1977).

Manchester Cathedral

We wrote a#BeeryLongreads piece on it which is worth a look but, in brief, 1970s real ale campaigners and aficionados loved Boddington’s Bitter because it was pale, dry and very bitter. Somewhere along the line, it lost its spark.