Cargills’ Beer Oppression
Lion Lager is a great beer, which is getting harder and harder to find. Most notably, Cargills supermarkets don’t seem to stock it anymore. Instead they sell plenty of their own brands (strong, not very good) and Three Coins (mediocre at best). How crassly competitive and uncool.
For a while Lion was the only beer. Lion and Cargills. Then Three Coins, which is a bit too much marmite for me. Now, however, there are all this rather heinous ‘strong’ beers which are not good. In Montreal it was mostly homeless people buying strong beers, to stay warm. Here I suppose it’s people intent on getting drunk. But what of the regular people who just want a normal, decent beer, to drink at leisure. I guess that was cutting into Cargills’ profits too much.
I don’t know about Keells, but Lion has been getting harder to find. The local wine shop often runs out and has the horrid strong beers instead. You can still get it at the O Bar in Dutch Hospital, where they make some actually interesting arrack/beer cocktails, but that’s far. My goodness, is the Sri Lankan Lion becoming an endangered species? Must competition really be so brutal?
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Someone should really start producing wine in Sri Lanka. Fine Ceylonese Wine has a nice ring to it.
A temperate climate is necessary for wine.I have heard of people trying in North India, don’t know what luck they had.
Yes, you need dry air and dry soil, which is why the Mediterranean, parts of France, California, Chile, and Australia are so good at it. If the soil isn’t that dry, you need steep hills so that the water will drain away, which is how Rhine Valley wines are made, with vineyards on the steep banks of the river. The tropics are way too humid for grape growing. It can work upcountry, and places like Adisham do a small trade in it, as do a few people in the north. But it’s a tricky art.
Arpico, dude. They stock it in crate loads.
Cargills has always tried to monopolize and sell only their own brands. Arpico and Keells has plenty of Lion and Carlsberg. And there’s no shortage of Lion in the average “wine store” or bar. BTW, you forgot to mention the legendary Royal Pilsner from the ’90s, which was sadly dropped by Ceylon Breweries in favour of making Carlesberg their premium beer. Three Coins used to have a couple of sub-brands which were pretty good — Irish Dark and a Belgian wheat beer, but you can’t find ‘em anymore.
Irish Dark is still available, but it has been emasculated to a 4.5% abv beer .. and keells – bless their mercenary hearts – still carries lion..
and if the author likes the O Bar, he should step into the machan pubs .. 11 of them now, all around the country .. and all of them run by Ceylon Breweries
When ever I come to SL, first drink I look for is the Lion Lager. Our people in NuwaraEliya stock them for us and lately I have been looking around for similar taste but it is very hard to come by.
On the other hand, I don’t like Arrak much, being industrious, I built a filtration system (again in N’Eliya) involving lot of equipment from the tea factory laboratory :) Active carbon from coconut shells does wonders to arrack, tastes like a good scotch.
You’ve been drinking bad Scotch.
[...] cheapest (and probably best) option would be to head over to Keells (not Cargills, which stocks only their horrendous brews, not Lion), buy some bottles and have friends over. Going [...]
I have also noticed Cargills bringing in their own brands in many areas,… this is directly leading to customer dissatisfaction. I hope they see that in their sales and work towards reversing the current trend.
Nothing like the good ol’ Lion Larger.