Titanic brewery was one of the few BBPA members I had not previously visited, although I meet with Keith Bott in London on a regular basis, not least because of his huge support for the All Party Parliamentary Beer Group, SIBA and BBPA. It was a real pleasure, therefore, that Keith and the Titanic team agreed to host the annual BBPA team outing at the brewery in Stoke-on-Trent.

Titanic sounds as if it should be near the sea and not exactly in the middle of the country, but it’s about as far from the sea as you can be in the British Isles! We learned that the original founder of the brewery looked round at famous names (Royal Doulton, Wedgwood) or characters who came from the local area, and found that most were either existing businesses, or not very relevant, and in the end chose ‘Titanic’ because Edward John Smith, the Captain of the Titanic, came from Stoke! Sounds great, tastes great and has endless possibilities for branding.

Dave and Keith Bott bought the brewery from administrators, and have won numerous CAMRA national awards and now operate eight pubs, as well as supplying beer to the free-trade. They were pioneers in working with Stephen Gould at Everards on what is called ‘Project William’, a project that saw Titanic partner with Everards to expand their pub estate. It is a great partnership which works for both companies, and Titanic have now entered into a similar arrangement with Marstons on one site.

Andy Slee (recently with Punch) has joined as a non-Executive Director and, like Keith and Dave, also comes from Stoke – he has helped with some national accounts and greater expansion. Whilst bottling is undertaken at Marstons, they fill casks on site and fill to order so that the beer arrives as fresh as possible with a good shelf life. As Keith put it so succinctly, they have an aspirational offer of staying ahead of the competition.

Thank you Keith, Andy and Anneli for a memorable visit and a great outing for us all!