On the Hop Forward Podcast, we travel to Notting Hill, London, to meet Nick Dolan and Tim Peyton from independent bottle shop Real Ale Ltd.

Having been running shops across London for 14 years, Nick and the team have been championing locally brewed, high quality beers ever since and were one of the first shops to stock Punk IPA in can, which - at the time - seemed like a novel idea.

It’s hard to imagine as little as 6 years ago where flavour profiles, packaging formats and the microbrewery boom would take British beer, let alone running shops back when the term ‘real ale’ was the descriptor for what we now call ‘craft beer’.

Founder Nick Dolan has had a front seat whilst navigating the landscape since the early days of driving across the country in his van picking up bottle conditioned beers direct from the brewer, to now sourcing and supplying beer for one of the UK’s largest retailers, Marks & Spencer.

In this episode, we tackle a variety of topics - ranging from quality, branding, pricing and supermarkets, right through to the future of the beer industry.

Make sure you tune in to this fantastic episode.