Love it or hate it, craft beer has re-energised the British beer scene, and given a serious boost to that once seemingly doomed entity, the specialist off-licence. If you prefer to swerve the supermarkets and buy more interesting and original beers from fellow hop-heads, then there has never been a better time to be alive. Today, what Brewdog are promising will be the ultimate offy, Bottledog, will open in London, at the King's Cross end of Gray's Inn Road. The first of a planned national chain, it will sell not just UK and international beers, including draught refills for your growler (no, that isn't a euphemism), but also homebrew equipment, glassware, books and more. Like Manchester's Beermoth, whose basement space hosts meetings of local homebrewing enthusiasts, tasting sessions and meet-the-brewer events, Bottledog will be both a shop and, in order to lock-in its hardcore regulars, a community hub for likeminded craft beer geeks.If such diversification and engagement (mimicking what indie record shops such as Rough Trade East have done) is the headline news here, more modest craft beer outlets are opening on an almost weekly basis. Many of these are opening in less fashionable, suburban locations too, emphasising that if there is one thing that people will travel for, it is good beer. Near me, in Manchester, Horwich's Blackedge Brewery has just opened its Tottering Temple, and the Liquor Shop is now bringing much bottled goodness to Prestwich. These join, to name but a few: Altrincham's Bier Cell; the locally-focused Great Ale Year Round on Bolton Market; Micro Bar's small shop in the Arndale; and Stockport's Beer Shop and cask ale bar. You will have your own local favourites, but from Edinburgh's unassuming Cornelius, with its lovingly compiled stock (which goes deep on Scottish/ Scandinavian breweries: Fyne, Tempest, Luckie Ales, Mikkeller, Nøgne Ø), to York's almost overwhelming House of Trembling Madness, you are never far these days from a glittering ale emporium. Even the much-shrunken Oddbins is on the case. It stocks over 200 beers across its shops and has recently launched its own craft beer.
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