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10th December 2019

‘Support Your Local, Go TEA Total’ this January, says Hogs Back Brewery

Hogs Back Brewery is reprising its successful ‘Support Your Local, Go TEA Total’ campaign in January, with the aim of encouraging more consumers to support their local at the pub trade’s quietest time of year.

‘Go TEA Total’ ran for the first time in January this year, when more than 150 pubs displayed the campaign pumpclip wobblers or posters. For 2020, Hogs Back is building on the campaign with more impactful assets to create standout in participating pubs, a competition to find the TEA Drinkers’ Pub of the Year, a ‘TEA Total Thursday’ initiative, advertising in Hogs Back’s Surrey heartlands and a social media drive.

The campaign will also remind consumers of the many good reasons to visit the pub in January, from roaring fires to pub quizzes, live music or a dog-friendly welcome. In this, Go TEA Total will amplify the messages of the industry’s Long Live the Local initiative, which shows that socialising with friends is the main reason people enjoy visiting their local pub. The ‘TEA Total Thursday’ social media campaign encourages people to ‘tag’ the mates they’re taking to the pub, with the chance to win a tour of the brewery.

Hogs Back managing director Rupert Thompson said: “We came up with ‘Go TEA Total’ last year to give pubs a boost in January. It’s always been a quiet month for the trade and even more so since the growth of Dry January.

“The campaign has a light-hearted feel, but the underlying messages are important.  January can be a challenging time for many people, but we strongly believe that getting out for a walk to the pub and enjoying a sociable pint or two of TEA can help to counter social isolation and contribute to our overall wellbeing.

“It’s also vital that we all support the pubs at the heart of our communities: if too many people stay away from their local in January, it may not be there in February.”

Pubs wanting to be part of the campaign in January can sign up with their Hogs Back sales manager, or by emailing sales@hogsback.co.uk  to receive a pack of TEA Total assets including pumpclip wobblers, dripmats and posters .

The TEA Drinkers’ Pub of the Year competition is open to all pubs taking part in TEA Total. Customers nominate their favourite pub via the website or the QR code on dripmats, with those with the highest number of nominations included in a shortlist and profiled on the website, before the winning pub is chosen at the end of January.  There will also be weekly competitions on social media for customers to nominate pubs that are best for dogs, or best open fire.

Long Live the Local’s research shows that:

  • Six in 10 Brits (59%) say the main reason to visit their local is because it’s a great place to socialise with friends;
  • Almost half of pubgoers (48%) go to the pub because they enjoy feeling like a local and bumping into people they know;
  • 47% feel the pub brings people and the local community together;
  • 40% believe the pub acts as a social centre for the community.

www.longlivethelocal.pub

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Notes to editor

Hogs Back Brewery

  • Hogs Back Brewery was founded in 1992 in Tongham, in the heart of the traditional Surrey hop growing area.
  • Its flagship brand TEA, or Traditional English Ale, is one of the leading regional ales in the South East. The first beer brewed by Hogs Back in 1992, TEA has won multiple awards including runner-up in CAMRA’s Champion Beer of Britain in 2000. Distribution of TEA is currently at an all-time high.
  • The Hogs Back Brewery range includes a number of award-winning draught, bottled and canned beers, demonstrating its ability to combine brewing expertise and tradition with product innovation to create distinctive, memorable beers.
  • At the start of 2019, Hogs Back launched three new keg ales: Little Swine, a 2.8% ABV pale ale that is also now available in 200 Tesco stores in bottles; Unfiltered TEA and Hog IPA. They also launched a new brand design for Hogstar lager, available in keg, bottles and cans.
  • Hogs Back’s traditional cloudy cider, Hazy Hog, launched in 2013, won a Bronze medal in the International Cider Challenge in 2019.
  • Hogs Back planted a hop garden adjacent to its brewery in 2014, growing three hop varieties: Fuggles – used in its flagship TEA ale; Cascade – used in Hogstar lager; and Farnham White Bine.
  • Hogs Back relocated its hop garden in 2019 and is planning to build a hop kiln and warehouse, as part of a £700,000 investment also covering hop picking and packing machinery and further brewery developments.
  • At 8.5 acres, the new hop garden is nearly three times the size of the previous one and when fully mature will provide 50% of Hogs Back’s hops.
  • The new kiln will be used to dry Hogs Back’s hops for around one month a year. For the rest of the year, it will serve as an event space and visitor centre, educating people about the local hop farming industry which Hogs Back is helping to revive.
  • Siting the kiln and warehouse close to the hop garden means hops can be dried immediately after picking and will be packed within 24 hours using state-of-the-art vacuum packing technology to capture the hops’ freshness.
  • The hop garden is an essential part of Hogs Back’s commitment to brewing sustainably. With the hops grown just yards from the brewhouse, they are brewing beers with the freshest ingredients – ‘from field to firkin in a furlong’.
  • www.hogsback.co.uk

 

Issued on behalf of: Hogs Back Brewery

Further information:

Ros Shiel: ros@shielporter.com / 07841 694137

John Porter: john@shielporter.com  / 07734 054389