I’m mightily impressed by Barratt’s latest marketing wheeze – free beer for all people coming to view the showhouses at their Hawthorns development in Witham.

I like beer. I like it enormously. I like houses, too. So this is the kind of imaginative marketing I can really relate to.

If I was a bit closer to Witham I’d be implementing the following plan of action: turn up (in taxi); take a gander round the house; position self close to beer-dispensing person; proceed to sup fill of “specialist beers from around the world”.

There may, however, be a slight flaw in Barratt’s otherwise ingenious plan: the beer tasting will be held from 12 noon to 5pm.

That’s five whole hours of beer interspersed with the occasional bit of house viewing.

I worry that come 3pm it could all start to go downhill: grandparents wandering around the garden bladdered; defiant divorcees singing “I Will Survive” into the shower head; quiet men in the kitchen trying to make bacon sandwiches…

hawthorns-beer

Barratt might also come in for a bit of flak from the Health & Safety brigade, though Rebecca Littler, sales and marketing director for Barratt Eastern Counties, assures us that the beer is not the main event:

“We want to show people interested in buying a home just how much help Barratt can give them, whatever their circumstances.

“We can pay their deposit, or sell an existing home, or even help with mortgage repayments for the first two years. It’s really worth coming along to The Hawthorns to find out more.”

I hear you Rebecca, really, I do, and if naysayers, or wine-drinkers, complain, I’d point them towards the website of The Beer Academy, the people organising the tasting.

This delivers some startling facts about beer … such as …

  • Beer is packed with many of the nutrients the body needs for a healthy diet. In the old days it gained the accolade ‘liquid bread’.
  • We know that cereals are good for us, beer is made from cereals, but we often fail to make the healthy connection.
  • Unlike other alcoholic drinks it is chock full of vitamins and minerals.
  • A litre of beer will supply ten per cent of your daily protein needs, wine has none. It has absolutely no cholesterol or fat and has useful quantities of soluble fibre.

There you go: beer, it’s practically a health food. Knock back ten litres and your daily protein needs are sorted!

More about The Hawthorns, Witham.

Related Tags: Beer, General

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