Are there any Welsh Beers Sold In The USA?

[dave ziegler]

Having Welsh in my Family I relised the other Day I have had many great English and Irish Beers But I have Never Had any Welsh beers and I am hoping there are some you can get in the USA and in Pa? If Anyone knows please let me Know and If were in Pa also! I have heard of A Brewery in Wales called FelinFoel and would love to give one of their Milder Beers a try!

Dave Z

Beer Its Not Just A Beverage Beer Is Food

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[Gillman]

Dave, a well-known Welsh brewer is called Brains. Brains beers have been available (sometimes under particular brand names, like Dragon I think) in the U.S., any large beverage store might carry them.

Interestingly, the founder of Jones Brewing in PA was a Welshman as I recall from the brewing literature. Here is some info: http://www.beercollections.com/Breweries/Pennsylvania/Jones_Brewing.htm

Gary

[jesskidden]

Both Brains and Felinfoel have, at times, exported beer to the US, and, coincidentally, labeled the beers "Welsh Ale". Don't know if those beers were "export only" or just renaming one of their regular beers for the US market (the term "Bitter", of course, is a negative for most casual US beer drinkers).

Felinfoel was imported by Thames America Trading (according to http://www.bergsman.org/jeremy/beerstuff/importers.html ) but their website isn't working for me this morning.

Beer Advocate has a lot of current, US ratings for a Felinfoel product called "Welsh ESB", so I guess that's still available in the US (with a similar label to the one I remember).

The Brains beers were exported to the US- one labeled "Traditional Welsh Ale" and a "Celtic Dark Ale" - but I don't think they've been available for several years. The last company listed as importing it was Manneken-Brussels Imports. Not much on their current website - http://www.mbibeer.com/

The website above with all the importers listed had Brains under "Boston Beer Brands", but that company seems to also be dead. (If anyone thinks breweries and brands are hard to keep up with, importers are even more confusing. They go out of business, change names, get sold and/or lose their contracts for certain beer with incredible frequency.)

I'd guess both beers have been in the US within the last 10-15 years, but I haven't seen them lately in NJ (and if I did, I'd be real suspicious of the age of the beers- except in the case of the Welsh ESB). But beer markets are funny, and you never know what's being distributed where.

[jesskidden]

Felinfoel was imported by Thames America Trading (according to http://www.bergsman.org/jeremy/beerstuff/importers.html ) but their website isn't working for me this morning.

Did some more pokin' 'round the 'net, and "Thames America" seems to be a "sister company" to the California Cider Company, according to this article on cider. Maybe an email to them will get you the local distributor of "Welsh ESB".

Thames America was still active this summer, as noted by this Google cached version of their website from last July:

http://74.125.113.104/search?q=cache:OCNmnyVkotIJ:www.thamesamerica.com/index.html+Thames+America&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us