The Sun Hotel and Bar, one of Lancaster Brewery’s family of hotels and pubs, has been chosen as a finalist in this year’s Great British Pub Awards in the ‘Best Beer Pub or Bar’ category. The Sun is one of only six pubs in the country to make it to this stage of the awards.
Now in its 17th year, The Great British Pub Awards is the leading national pub awards – run by the Morning Advertiser – the trade magazine and website of the pub industry. It is described as the “Oscars” of the pub industry.’
The Sun has been shortlisted thanks to its superb beer offering and a range of initiatives which really make the pub stand out from the crowd. The pub and hotel has previously been named regional winner in the Best Freehouse Category, back in 2009 and 2010, plus it was ‘highly commended’ in 2011 and 2012.
Phil Simpson of Lancaster Brewery comments: “We are delighted with this news. We are obviously hoping to win, but even to get to this stage is an incredible achievement and a real testament to the work the team are doing here, day in and day out, across our food and drink range.”
“We aim to make a visit to The Sun a delightful experience – for people who value taste above hype. We do not stock the obvious market leaders and big national brands, and instead seek out the best authentic, mainly independent and genuinely high quality products.
“Our best selling beer, Lancaster Blonde, is brewed at our very own Lancaster Brewery. Our house gin is Tanqueray. Our coffee is brewed by Atkinson’s independent coffee roasters. We are proudly leftfield.”
The Sun manager Gemma Ritchie adds: “We have a fantastic team of die hard beer fans working here and it has paid off. Because of our link to Lancaster Brewery we have direct access to a working brewery. Our bar staff regularly visit, not only to tour, but also to participate in the brewing process hands-on. This gives our team a much deeper understanding of brewing, to the point that our staff can on occasion tell surprised customers that they may actually have helped to brew the very pint of beer they are drinking!”
Simpson agrees: “We stock beer and spirits that are often unavailable at other pubs in our city and we’ve become known as the place to discover really great craft beer and spirits for the first time. For instance, aside from our wonderful beer we also stock over thirty different gins and over a dozen different tonics. We do try and do things a bit differently at the Sun.”
The Great British Pub Awards ceremony is Thursday 7 September at London Hilton on Park Lane. The team will be anxiously waiting to hear the results and hoping to bring home a gong for Lancaster.
