Why are stouts and dark beers so hard to easily find?

Hubby and I are dark beer fans. We reckon the dearth of stouts and porters is because a toasted malt is more expensive to produce, as it uses more power. Breweries are going for cheaper to make beers. Shame you are so far down south. We found the situation definitely improved when we moved to Scotland. We get good stouts and porters all year round in Aldi and Lidl. I used to work in Tesco, and in theory they can get you any beer that is on their stock list, although you might find you have to buy a case. This should go for other supermarkets too, they all work in pretty much the same way. You could try asking for the following: Morrisons: Titanic Plum porter, Belhaven oatmeal stout Sainsburys: March of the Penguins, midnight sun. Tesco: Belhaven black, fullers black cab stout, orkney dark island. We get all these pretty easily up north. Good luck!