Category: Brewing

| Beer, Brewing, Craft Beer

Let’s Make Craft Beer Great Again

It may look like the golden years of the craft beer boom are over. But this is not the time to give up. It’s the time to remember why we’re here in the first place.

The bad news just keeps on coming. For as long as we can remember now, every day seems to bring more news of UK breweries that are closing or in trouble. Sometimes it’s someone you’ve never heard of. Other times, it’s someone you thought was too big, too popular to fail.

Among those who are still here, it’s very much survival mode. When I wrote the first Sheffield Beer Report in 2016, the city’s brewers were tiny, but two-thirds said they were planning expansion and investment in the near future. When we asked the same question this year, the response was “Are you fucking kidding?” Whatever cash reserves brewers once had are gone. For many, it’s a question of just hanging on until some unspecified scenario causes things to improve.

The problems facing small brewers are many. But they can be simplified to a sickening Catch-22: costs of production are soaring, so brewers need to either put up their prices or sell a lot more beer to remain profitable. But they can’t sell more beer because their routes to market are increasingly tied up by big corporations. And this means they can’t put their prices up because they have to discount their beer to compete for limited available spaces on the bar. The bar in turn has to buy on price because drinkers are themselves facing a cost of living crisis, which means they’re spending less in pubs and bars.

One by-product of all this is that the sheer energy and joy that once characterised craft beer is no longer the spirit that defines it. It is still there, in tap rooms and at festivals, but it’s slightly jaded. The naïve sense of adventure seems to have gone.

You could say the industry has matured. You could say it needed to. But it’s also in danger of losing what made it exciting in the first place.

As a humble writer, I can’t do much about routes to market and raw material costs. But maybe I can offer some context and commentary that might prove useful.

There’s a new generation in craft brewing now – drinkers, brewery workers, commentators – who don’t remember what it was like before all this happened. I’m conscious that, being older, I can develop a tendency to dismiss new things (I’m just not that keen on hazy, juicy pales, OK? Or brioche buns being used for bacon rolls. And I accept that some of that is my problem.) But at the same time, some younger people can reflexively dismiss anything that came before their time, and that’s at least as problematic. (Last year I was talking with a talented brewer who not only said that all IPAs are hazy, and that a clear beer cannot be an IPA, but that it had always been thus. He simply denied the existence of the clear IPAs we were all drinking until about twelve years ago.)

These people don’t remember what it was like before the craft beer boom – they were too young. So let’s look at the current situation with a bit of longer-term context.

For decades, beer and brewing weren’t interesting to anyone beyond people who worked in the industry (and not always then) and a handful of hobbyists. I began working in the industry as a strategist helping to create ad campaigns for Stella Artois and Heineken. Back then, many of my clients couldn’t tell you what beer was made of, what hops were, what the difference between ale and lager was, or the history of their beers. They said no one wanted beer to have flavour or character. They said people “drank the advertising.” They said beer was “fuel” for 18-34-year-old men on a big night out. And that was it. Oh, there was the Campaign for Real Ale, but they were all really old (i.e. over 40), set in their ways and fuddy-duddy, so there was no point talking to them. They said.

Every few years there’d be a pink beer aimed at women, with pictures of stilettos or jewellery on the label, and it would fail just as spectacularly as the last one.

The situation for good, flavourful, interesting beer back then was a lot worse then than it is now.

I started writing about beer instead of making ads because I thought my Big Beer clients were wrong. People were becoming more interested in flavourful food and drink, more curious about where it came from and who made it. I simply didn’t believe that this could apply across every single aspect of food and drink except beer.

And I was right. The introduction of progressive beer duty in 2002 created an explosion of small brewers. Then a few of us discovered American craft beer. Eventually, brewers such as Thornbridge, Dark Star and Roosters began experimenting with American hops, and reinterpreting American takes on traditional British beer styles, such as IPA, stout and brown ale, in a friendly game of transatlantic craft-brewing tennis.

This all came with a culture of openness, idealism and joyful optimism. We were a small community, and most people knew each other. People who met online would meet up IRL for “Twiss-ups.” We’d travel miles for the opening of a new craft beer bar. Beer blogging side-stepped the (still current) near-total blackout of beer reporting in mainstream media, to document the scene in real time as it evolved.

This spirit, this energy and optimism, helped make craft beer attractive to a previously non-beery audience. Mainstream beer had become something you bought on price, by the slab, from the supermarket. But within a few years, beer was cool again. It was new and exciting. It captured the public imagination. Its cultural value – which had always been there – was finally recognised.

Maybe I’m just out of touch these days, but it feels like this spirit has been lost. We seem to talk so much about the issues and problems in the industry, the gossip and scandal, the bad practice and culture, who’s gone under and who’s been bought out, that there isn’t much time for talking about the joy of beer and brewing and drinking.

Things are still way better now then they were back in the day. I still believe that craft beer has the potential to grow further if it remains interesting and fun. So if you are feeling jaded and wondering where to go, I’d like to offer some prompts to rediscovering creativity and joy.  

  • Remember why you got into this in the first place. What was the beer that made you go crazy about beer? What made you give up your old job or hobby for this one? Is that beer still around? Have you had it recently? How did it make you feel? What ideas did it inspire? Who did you share it with? If you had forgotten about this until now, write it down now and capture it. Because if you see someone drinking Madri and they seem to be having more fun than you, maybe you’ve lost your way.
  • Look to home brewers for inspiration. Ever since the first days of the North American craft-brewing revolution, home brewers have brewed the styles they yearn for but can’t get hold of commercially. This is how modern craft beer started. Today, it’s fascinating to judge home brews in competition, because if the beer isn’t everything the brewer wants it to be, they don’t send it in, so the standard of beers that do make it to the competition is very high. I’ve judged a couple of home brew competitions in Continental Europe recently, and they’re increasingly interested in traditional British ale styles. Partly they’re looking for session-strength beers, but with some interesting flavours. But is there something else behind it too? What will they look to next?
  • Remember you’re allowed to like more than one thing. Increasingly, social discourse is binary. Short attention spans reward constructs like, “Are you Team A or Team B?” “This random thing: good or bad?” The world isn’t like that. Not all big brewers are awful and not all small brewers are good. Mild doesn’t have to be either the coolest thing going or utterly irrelevant. You can enjoy both cask and keg, craft and macro, Batham’s Bitter and Vault City 24k Maple Caramel Carrot Cake. Drinkers do. Be more pluralistic. Less binary.
  • If you’re a brewer, read a book. It doesn’t have to be one of mine (but it would be nice if it was.) But books take a long, broad view, stepping back and taking things in. They reveal history and explain things. The best compliment I get as a writer from brewers is “You made me want to do this” or “You reminded me why I do it.” Maybe inspiration and joy still lurks on the shelves.
  • If you’re a commentator, do a brew day. I understood brewing on an intellectual level for several years before I actually went to a working brewery. It was only then that I truly got it. It’s the aromas – the stomach-rumbling breakfast cereal smell of mashing in, the heady perfume of the hop addition. Even today, after twenty years, any time I’m in a working brewery on brew day it reminds me why I do this, and I grin like a loon.  
  • Try something that’s not on-trend. But don’t do it because it’s not on-trend. It’s not about trying to make dark milds cool again. It’s about brewing and/or drinking a dark mild (or a tripel – please – or a wheat beer, or a saison – remember them?) on its own terms, and asking yourself, have I missed anything here?
  • Answer this question honestly. Why don’t you think of Timothy Taylor Landlord as a Craft Beer? Or Budweiser Budvar? Or Orval? You do? Great! You’re still in touch with what most people out there think of as craft beer. If you don’t – why not? Is it because you don’t rate that particular beer? Or is it because, secretly, your own personal definition of craft beer isn’t about quality and flavour and ingredients and process and intent, but about whether it’s new and it’s got a label with cartoons on it and it’s using this year’s cool new hop? If so, I’m afraid you’re starting to sound a bit like my old Stella and Heineken clients. Craft beer has always been around, even if it hasn’t always been called that. It always will be, in some form.

For my own part, I’m going to search for the good news stories. And when I find them, I’m going to share them. This is me relaunching my blog, after neglecting it for years. It’s Friday. It’s sunny. Let’s go drink something great.

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| Brewing, Brooklyn Brewery, Cask ale, Thornbridge

Thornbridge and Garrett Oliver Save the Famous Burton Unions

A Bank Holiday Monday seems an odd time for Carlsberg Marston’s to announce a major story about Britain’s brewing heritage. But we live in odd times. Whatever – it’s good news.

Sometimes there’s a happy ending.

In January, Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company (CMBC) announced that they were getting rid one of the last remaining pieces of Burton-on-Trent’s brewing heritage. For decades, the old Marston’s brewery insisted that you couldn’t brew proper Marston’s Pedigree unless it went through the unique, eccentric Union fermentation system. Then suddenly, the story changed, and you could brew Pedigree even better in the same kind of fermenters everyone else uses.

Anyway, now it turns out that at least one of the Union “sets” has been saved. It’s currently being installed at Thornbridge in Derbyshire (photo above). This was announced, sort of, today by CMBC, who posted the tweet below. At the time of writing, the accompanying link is broken and there’s no relevant press release currently on the CMBC website.

Happily, Thornbridge will be providing clarification over the next day or so. And I’ve had a sneak preview.

The deal seems to have been orchestrated by Garrett Oliver, legendary brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery. Oliver has had a close relationship with Thornbridge for many years. And Brooklyn Brewery has a longstanding commercial relationship with Carlsberg. (It’s complicated – Carlsberg don’t own Brooklyn, but do have international rights to sell Brooklyn beers in Europe and other parts of the world.)

Oliver said:

“When I heard that the unions were slated to go silent, I immediately thought that Thornbridge would be the perfect inheritors of this beautiful piece of British brewing heritage. I’m thrilled to provide the ‘assist’ on this historic play.” 

For their part, Thornbridge are going to do some really exciting things with the Union set that kick against the narrative that contributed to CMBC’s decision to discontinue the Unions: that cask ale is supposedly in terminal decline and brewers can’t make money from it any more.

For anyone wondering what the hell a union set is and why it’s important, this would be a good point to explain. It would be perfect if this news could have waited till after my forthcoming article in Ferment magazine on this very subject. But that’s going to be a week or two. And it’s now. So let me sum up briefly.

In the nineteenth century, Burton was the most important brewing centre on the planet, home of the OG IPA. The Union system emerged in the town in the mid-nineteenth century. It was a curious – no, let’s not beat around the bush – it was downright weird and strange and brilliant and British. A bunch of wooden barrels or a “set” – sat horizontally alongside each other in a kind of scaffold. Held in union. On top of this scaffold sat a big iron trough. Swan-necked spouts stretched form each barrel into the trough. After beer had been inoculated with yeast, it would be pumped into the barrels. As it fermented, the yeast pushed up through the pipes, foamed into the trough, and sat there happily for a bit before gradually running back into the barrels. It would keep doing this until it finished fermenting. Why? Apparently, it kept the yeast really happy and healthy, and that meant better beer. You want a definition of craft beer that’s actually about, y’know, the word “CRAFT” rather than who owns what? This was it.

That’s why it’s important that at least one Union Set has been saved. This is our brewing heritage. When Burton produced a quarter of all the beer in Britain, plus a big chunk of its exports, all Burton breweries used unions. To be fair to Marston’s, they clung to the unions decades longer than everyone else did.

CMBC cited “Low volumes due to the decline of the UK cask market” as the reason why “using the Union sets is no longer viable.” So why does a brewer like Thornbridge think they are?

Starting with a brew of their flagship beer, Jaipur, they plan to follow up by brewing other well-loved beers from their armoury, some brand-new new beers specifically designed for the Union set, as well as collaborations with other brewers who are keen to see what a union-fermented version of their beers will look like. I’m told at least one of these will involve Garrett Oliver, sooner rather than later.

Every aspect of this serves to premiumise cask beer, which is what cask beer has to do if it is going to thrive.

Let’s see what else Thornbridge reveal. Let’s see if CNBC can decide if they’ve issued a press release or not before then. I’m sure there’ll be lots of hot takes on this. But Britain now has an authentic union set brewing beer again. Which it didn’t have before this deal was struck.

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| AB InBev, Bass Ale, Beer, Beer Marketing, Brewing, Brooklyn Brewery, Cask ale, Craft Beer, Dark Star, Fuller's, Goose Island, Lager, The Business End

Who Really Owns/Brews Your Favourite Beer?

There are many reasons to drink craft beer or real ale. There are other reasons to drink exotic ‘foreign’ lagers. But if ‘authenticity’ or supporting small, independent brewers is one of your motivations, you might find this useful.

There’s no getting away from the economic reality that if something challenges a big player in any market, the giant will either try to destroy it, replicate it, or if that doesn’t work, buy it.

As craft beer went mainstream, it attracted a much bigger audience than just beer geeks. It sold at a premium compared to mainstream lager. Big brewers had commoditised their own brands, so they got jealous and wanted a piece of craft’s action. (You might think that’s unfair, but if you were working for one of these big brewers, that’s what you’d do too.)

Many leading craft brands have now been acquired by the giants. That’s just how it is. Now – the ownership structure of the beer industry may be of no interest to you. If you’re already drinking mainstream lagers from global giants and you just occasionally fancy something hoppier, that’s up to you. I won’t judge.

However, if one of your motivations for drinking craft beer – or just as importantly, cask/real ale – is that you want to support small, independent businesses, it’s not always obvious whether or not the brand in front of you is the real deal. Big corporations pay a lot of money to acquire the cool cachet of craft brands, and they’re not always eager to tell you the truth.

So I’ve compiled a list of who owns what. If your favourite brand is not here, then it is what it claims to be – independent at least, if not always small.

I’m passing no judgement here. Some of the beers below remain excellent beers, and there are quite a few that I regularly buy myself. I’m not telling you not to buy them. I’m just providing the information.

As I went through the corporate websites, I also encountered a lot of what we now call “world lagers.” People often buy these beers partially because they’re buying into an idea of the country of origin, believing that they have been imported to the UK. But most of these lagers are in fact brewed in the UK. Some of them have never even been near the place they are supposedly brewed. So all the beers below are brewed in the UK unless otherwise stated.

First, here’s a list of brewery/beer brands in alphabetical order, so if you want to check on a particular beer, you can find it easily:

AmstelHeineken
Asahi (Brewed in Italy/UK – seems to be moving aroubnd a bit.)Asahi
BackyardCarlsberg Marstons
Banks’sCarlsberg Marstons
Bass (Brewed by Carlsberg Marstons)AB-InBev
BeavertownHeineken
BecksAB-InBev
Blue MoonMolson Coors
BoddingtonsAB-InBev
BrahmaAB-InBev
BrixtonHeineken
BrixtonHeineken
Brooklyn (not owned outright but Carlsberg Martsons has brand rights in Europe – they brew and sell the beers here)Carlsberg Marstons
BudweiserAB-InBev
Caffrey’sMolson Coors
CaledonianHeineken
Camden TownAB-InBev
CarlingMolson Coors
CarlsbergCarlsberg Marstons
CobraMolson Coors
CoorsMolson Coors
CoronaAB-InBev
CourageCarlsberg Marstons
Dark StarAsahi
DesperadosHeineken
Deuchars IPAHeineken
Eagle (Waggledance, Eagle IPA etc.)Carlsberg Marstons
Erdinger (Independently owned and brewed in Germany. UK marketing and distribution by CM.)Carlsberg Marstons
Estrella Damm (Independently owned and brewed in Spain, packaged in UK. UK marketing and distribution by CM.)Carlsberg Marstons
FostersHeineken
Franciscan WellMolson Coors
Fuller’sAsahi
Goose Island (Brewed in UK)AB-InBev
Grimbergen (brewed in Belgium, France, Poland and Italy)Carlsberg Marstons
Grolsch (Brewed in Netherlands)Asahi
Heineken (Brewed in Netherlands)Heineken
HobgoblinCarlsberg Marstons
Hoegaarden (brewed in Belgium)AB-InBev
HolstenCarlsberg Marstons
JenningsCarlsberg Marstons
John Smith’sHeineken
Kirin Ichiban (Owned by Kirin, brewed and marketed in UK by CM)Carlsberg Marstons
KronenbourgHeineken
Lagunitas (brewed in Netherlands)Heineken
LechAsahi
Leffe (Brewed in Belgium)AB-InBev
Lowebrau (Brewed in Germany?)AB-InBev
MadriMolson Coors
Marstons (Pedigree and all others)Carlsberg Marstons
MeantimeAsahi
MichelobAB-InBev
Miller Genuine DraftMolson Coors
MorettiHeineken
Murphy’s Irish StoutHeineken
Newcastle BrownHeineken
Peroni (Really brewed in Italy!)Asahi
Pilsner Urquell (Really brewed in Pilsen!)Asahi
PorettiCarlsberg Marstons
PravhaMolson Coors
Red StripeHeineken
RingwoodCarlsberg Marstons
Sagres (brewed in Portugal)Heineken
San MiguelCarslberg Marstons
Sharp’s (Doom Bar and all others)Molson Coors
ShedheadCarlsberg Marstons
ShipyardCarlsberg Marstons
SkolCarlsberg Marstons
SolHeineken
StaropramenMolson Coors
Stella ArtoisAB-InBev
Tetley’sCarlsberg Marstons
TigerHeineken
TuborgCarlsberg Marstons
TyskieAsahi
WainrightCarlsberg Marstons
Warsteiner (Brewed in Germany)Carlsberg Marstons
Worthington’sMolson Coors
WychwoodCarlsberg Marstons

Now, here’s the same list sorted by corporation – just for interest really – so you can see who owns what:

Bass (Brewed by Carlsberg Marstons)AB-InBev
BecksAB-InBev
BoddingtonsAB-InBev
BrahmaAB-InBev
BudweiserAB-InBev
Camden TownAB-InBev
CoronaAB-InBev
Goose Island (Brewed in UK)AB-InBev
Hoegaarden (brewed in Belgium)AB-InBev
Leffe (Brewed in Belgium)AB-InBev
Lowebrau (Brewed in Germany?)AB-InBev
MichelobAB-InBev
Stella ArtoisAB-InBev
Asahi (Brewed in Italy/UK – seems to be moving aroubnd a bit.)Asahi
Dark StarAsahi
Fuller’sAsahi
Grolsch (Brewed in Netherlands)Asahi
LechAsahi
MeantimeAsahi
Peroni (Really brewed in Italy!)Asahi
Pilsner Urquell (Really brewed in Pilsen!)Asahi
TyskieAsahi
BackyardCarlsberg Marstons
Banks’sCarlsberg Marstons
Brooklyn (not owned outright but Carlsberg Martsons has brand rights in Europe – they brew and sell the beers here)Carlsberg Marstons
CarlsbergCarlsberg Marstons
CourageCarlsberg Marstons
Eagle (Waggledance, Eagle IPA etc.)Carlsberg Marstons
Erdinger (Independently owned and brewed in Germany. UK marketing and distribution by CM.)Carlsberg Marstons
Estrella Damm (Independently owned and brewed in Spain, packaged in UK. UK marketing and distribution by CM.)Carlsberg Marstons
Grimbergen (brewed in Belgium, France, Poland and Italy)Carlsberg Marstons
HobgoblinCarlsberg Marstons
HolstenCarlsberg Marstons
JenningsCarlsberg Marstons
Kirin Ichiban (Owned by Kirin, brewed and marketed in UK by CM)Carlsberg Marstons
Marstons (Pedigree and all others)Carlsberg Marstons
PorettiCarlsberg Marstons
RingwoodCarlsberg Marstons
ShedheadCarlsberg Marstons
ShipyardCarlsberg Marstons
SkolCarlsberg Marstons
Tetley’sCarlsberg Marstons
TuborgCarlsberg Marstons
WainrightCarlsberg Marstons
Warsteiner (Brewed in Germany)Carlsberg Marstons
WychwoodCarlsberg Marstons
San MiguelCarslberg Marstons
AmstelHeineken
BeavertownHeineken
BrixtonHeineken
BrixtonHeineken
CaledonianHeineken
DesperadosHeineken
Deuchars IPAHeineken
FostersHeineken
Heineken (Brewed in Netherlands)Heineken
John Smith’sHeineken
KronenbourgHeineken
Lagunitas (brewed in Netherlands)Heineken
MorettiHeineken
Murphy’s Irish StoutHeineken
Newcastle BrownHeineken
Red StripeHeineken
Sagres (brewed in Portugal)Heineken
SolHeineken
TigerHeineken
Blue MoonMolson Coors
Caffrey’sMolson Coors
CarlingMolson Coors
CobraMolson Coors
CoorsMolson Coors
Franciscan WellMolson Coors
MadriMolson Coors
Miller Genuine DraftMolson Coors
PravhaMolson Coors
Sharp’s (Doom Bar and all others)Molson Coors
StaropramenMolson Coors
Worthington’sMolson Coors

This list is correct to the best of my knowledge but clearly things will change. I am more than happy to accept corrections and additions from either the brands and brand owners themselves or from drinkers who spot something I’ve missed. I will keep it up to date from now on.

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| Beer, Brewing, Water, Yeast

What is beer? No, seriously.

I’ve been writing about it for twenty years and drinking it for forty. But after a mind-bending dive into beer history, I’m not even sure what it is any more.

Last weekend I was in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, at the Ales Through the Ages Conference. I was honoured to be giving the keynote speech, which was titled “The Highs and Lows of Researching Beer History.” (You can see the full speech and slides if you sign up for my Patreon.)

In the speech, I questioned some of our assumptions about history. I basically took 45 minutes to say what Hilary Mantel said far more elegantly than I ever could in a couple of sentences: “History is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. It’s the record of what’s left on the record.”

And that record changes. As new technologies evolve and new discoveries emerge, the picture we have of the past changes: history changes. The past doesn’t change – obviously – but our understanding and knowledge of it does.

In a stroke of great fortune, these thoughts dovetailed perfectly with the opening speech of the conference proper. Travis Rupp, “The Beer Archaeologist,” spoke on the subject of “Defining Beer in the Ancient World.”

When I first started writing about beer, the consensus was that brewing began around 3000BC in Sumeria, because that’s how far the oldest evidence dated back. Within a couple of years, new carbon dating technology had pushed this back to around 7000BC. Then, in 2018, the whole ancient history of beer was rewritten once more.

Archeo-botanical evidence shows that the Natufian people of the Levant were fermenting grains 13,000 years ago, most likely to produce a drink for honouring the dead.

Does this make beer the oldest drink in the world?

Going into the conference, I’d followed the belief that mead must be older, because honey just got made in hives that hung around in forests. But Rupp completely disagrees. “It was very difficult, and very expensive, to gather enough honey to brew mead,” he says.

What about wine? Well, if we’re talking about something made from 100% grape juice, that’s pretty recent too. Wine was given a great press (so to speak) by the ancient Greeks and Romans, but before then, beer seems to have been dominant. New discoveries suggest the ancient Egyptians had commercial breweries capable of 5,000-gallon brews – way bigger than most craft breweries today.

But when we get back as far as the Natufians, we have to ask whether what they were making could technically be called beer. (For the purposes of this discussion, we’re ignoring the obsolete Middle Ages distinction between “beer” and “ale.” Hops were a very recent addition to beer across the total sweep of its history.)

I’ve always had a very simple distinction. All fermented drinks are based on sugars that yeast converts to alcohol. If those sugars come from fruit, the drink is wine (real cider is, effectively, apple wine.) If those sugars come from grains the drink is beer (which is why Japanese sake is technically rice beer rather than rice wine.) The domestication of grasses such as barley and Emmer wheat is pretty much the earliest marker for stable, permanent communities as opposed to nomadic wandering.

Ah. Says Rupp. But of the starches in the Natufian beer, only 34.2% came from grasses. The rest were a mix of starches from a wide variety of plants including lentils, tubers, leaves, even flowers. Fruit was likely added not primarily for flavour, but because the yeast on the skins would have started the fermentation.

So is this still beer?

For Rupp, it is. The key difference between the fermentable sugars in fruit and those in other plants is that the sugars in grains and tubers are stored as starch. Sugars in fruit will start fermenting as soon as yeasts can get to them. Starch needs to be modified in some way before yeasts can start to ferment. That’s why we malt grain in the brewing process, and why the evidence of Natufian brewing involves the grinding of both grains and tubers.

So for Rupp, “beer” is a drink that has been through a process we can loosely call brewing: it’s probably grain-based, but it has been mashed and heated in its production, before fermentation.

As the present changes the past, so the past changes the present. Just when you thought craft brewers had added everything imaginable to beer, let’s look forward to lentil, potato, rose and wheat beer…

Enjoyed reading this? Then please have a look at my Patreon and consider subscribing, from as little as £1 a month. It features exclusive and preview content and many other benefits such as free books, depending on your subscription level.

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| Beer, Brewing, Media bollocks, Pubs

An update on TOTAL lockdown beer sales

In May I debunked misleading media stories implying that people were turning to drink during lockdown. I only had data up to the end of March. Now I have it to the end of May. Here’s a brief summary, followed by some comments.

When we were looking at March data for beer sales versus the same period last year, we had to bear in mind that we were looking at half a month where people were starting to avoid pubs because of fears of Covid, and half a month where pubs, restaurants, hotel bars etc. were on mandatory lockdown. The figures didn’t represent a full month of lockdown. Now we can see what that looks like.

In April and May, on-trade sales were obviously down -100% versus 2019.

Off-trade, sales were up by +39% in April, lowering to +25% in May.

That adds up to TOTAL beer sales being down -24% in April and -30% in May.

Add up total beer sales in March to May and compare it to the same period in 2019, and volume sales are down 22% overall.

So just in case you see any further reports trying to claim that we were boozing our way through lockdown, if we were, we weren’t doing it on beer. 

Breaking it down, ale fared far worse than lager: total (i.e. on-trade plus off-trade) ale sales were down 31% in March, -58% in April and -59% in May, whereas total lager sales were down -10% March, -15% in April, and -22% in May. 

Some observations on this…

One, as lockdown progressed, we drank less.

It’s worth noting that weather is a key factor in beers sales, particularly for lager. April was unseasonably warm and sunny, but May was a scorcher, officially the sunniest calendar month on record. Yet beer sales were lower in May than in April. One possible reason for this is that panic-buying early on in lockdown meant we bought less as it went on. Another is that we simply started getting out of the habit of drinking beer in the absence of the on-trade. But based on the weather, we should have expected sales to be better in May than in April.

Two, Lockdown has hit small, independent craft brewers and cask ale brewers far harder than Big Beer

Ale fared so much worse than lager because ale skews far more to the on-trade than lager does. Before lockdown*, supermarkets and off-licenses already accounted for around 55% of the lager we drank, whereas with ale, we were still drinking 70% of it in pubs, and only 30% at home. In volume terms, if my sums are correct, while ale had an 18% share of total beer sales before lockdown, it has accounted for 38%% of the total beer market volume loss during lockdown.+ Stout is counted separately. Together, ale and stout used to account for 22% of total market volume, and have taken 48% of the total volume loss.

This is the most worrying aspect for fans of craft beer and cask ale. Ale is far more skewed to small, independent brewers than lager is. The vast majority of lager is brewed by giant multinationals. So here is incontrovertible proof that while all brewers have suffered due to the closure of pubs, and while Britain is drinking significantly less overall, lockdown has hit craft and cask ale brewers far harder than it has Big Beer.

SIBA’s survey of their membership during lockdown was based on a smallish sample of their members and didn’t use audited data, so I always thought (or rather hoped?) that their claim that, on average, SIBA member brewers’ sales were down 82% was overly pessimistic. Having looked at total market data and broken it down like this, I now suspect it’s pretty close to the mark.

Now lockdown is easing, things don’t look much better. It seems that, despite predictable media sensationalism about “Super Saturday”, only half of pubs have reopened so far. Those that did reopen are seeing trade pan out at half its normal level. 25% of pubs cannot open viably even with social distancing reduced to one metre. These are smaller pubs, particularly micropubs, which are more skewed towards ale and craft beer than the average pub.

To really rub salt into the wounds, smaller and wet-led pubs got nothing from the chancellor’s mini-budget that reduced VAT on food sales and incentivised eating out, but provided nothing to support beer.

So please, if this upsets or concerns you, why not get online, or go to the pub if you feel safe doing so, and buy some beer from your local craft/cask ale brewer? They need our custom now more than ever.

For more detailed insight on the future of post-pandemic craft beer, with some light at the end of this long tunnel, check out this summary of my report on Craft Beer After Covid.

*For “before lockdown,” I’ve used figures for total beer sales for the calendar year to December 2019.

+ Calculated by working out total beer volumes March to May 2019 and comparing it with total beer volumes March to May 2020.

Data taken from BBPA sales audit.

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| Beer, Brewing, Budweiser Budvar, Cantillon, Lager, Miracle Brew, Water, Yeast

Three Examples of Why Some Good Beers Cost More

One of the biggest frustrations for brewers is when people who self-identify as lovers of good beer insist that it should always, without exception, be inexpensive. Is it fair to condemn this inverse snobbery? Or could the industry and beer communicators be doing a better job of explaining and justifying the high price tags attached to some beers?

The ‘special’ shelf in my cellar.

Notwithstanding the steady descent of Twitter generally into a platform for people to get furious over trivia and hurl abuse at people they don’t know, there’s been a spat going on over the last few days between a couple of contrarians and a bunch of beer people over the ‘outrageous’ price of a beer someone mentioned.

I immediately intervened on the side of the industry people defending and justifying the expense of some beers, tweeting:

“I find it amazing every time someone who claims to love beer asserts that beer can never be worth more than what you pay for the average pint. I’ve never heard a wine lover declare that Chateau Lafite, for example, should cost the same as Blossom Hill.”

I steadfastly believe in the validity of this comparison. But looking at the sheer ignorance of the people we were debating with, two things occurred to me. One, yes, it’s probably not worth bothering engaging with people who for some reason have chosen to spend their precious time on this planet arguing with people they don’t know about subjects on which they are entirely ignorant. But two, the frequency with which this particular attitude surfaces suggests that perhaps we’re at fault too. It’s not just on social media: in pubs and bars, when there’s some strong, rare beer being sold in thirds or halves only, there’s always someone who works out the cost of a pint (even though you can’t buy a pint) and decries how outrageous it is. Sometimes it even makes national news. And yet, we never see stories about what a rip-off it is that a pub wine list has a house white at 13.5% ABV for £14 and another wine at £65 that’s also £13.5% ABV. Even those (perhaps especially those) who are ignorant about wine are quite happy to accept that some wines are intrinsically worth more than others. If asked to explain why, they might invent an answer, but they would probably be more likely to come up with an explanation that sounds plausible to their ears rather than crying foul on pricing.

That such people are unable to do the same for beer surely says more about them than it does beer, but we can’t let them shoulder all the blame. Some of the replies to these people have been impatient, perhaps even condescending, and I thought: why would we assume people would have this knowledge when, unless they’re avid readers around beer or visitors of breweries, no one has told them?

So, in a blog post that won’t make a blind bit of difference to the professional contrarians whose only motivation is winding people up on Twitter to afford the illusion that their sad little lives mean something, here are three examples, offered with the best intentions, to explain why some beers cost more than others. These are not the only three – but they’re the three that came to my mind first.

1. Some beers have more stuff in them than other beers.

Here’s an interesting stat: in North America, craft brewers account for around ten per cent of total beer volume brewed. But craft brewers buy 25 per cent of all the hops grown in America. That means on average, craft brewers put two and a half times as many hops into their beers as mainstream commercial breweries. That means the cost of the hops going into each pint is at least two and a half times higher. (Possibly more when economies of scale and sizes of contracts are taken into account.) If you don’t like hoppy beer, or don’t want to pay a premium for it, that’s your choice. But surely the financial logic is undeniable. And that’s before you take into account the extra expense of ensuring a very hoppy beer remains chilled from the point of packaging to the point it’s bought by the drinker, to preserve the freshness of the hops.

2. Some beers take longer to make than other beers

There are various examples of this, but let’s look at lager. The word ‘lager’ means ‘to store’, and it’s generally accepted that a good quality lager should be lagered, or conditioned, at low temperatures for at least four weeks. This is because the yeast throws out various flavour compounds as it’s fermenting and conditioning. But left long enough, the yeast will then reabsorb these compounds, leaving a fresh, clean beer that’s crisp and refreshing but still has flavour and character. Not only does the lagering process tie up your capital for weeks because you can’t sell the beer you’ve just bought all the ingredients for and paid someone to make, it needs to be stored at cool temperatures – around two degrees Celsius. Keeping huge rooms full of tanks at that temperature consistently costs a serous amount of money. Budweiser Budvar lagers its beers in this way for at least ninety days. Some mainstream commercial brands go from brewing to packaging in 72 hours. If asked, they’ll tell you that modern technology has removed the need for lagering time. But taste a properly lagered lager alongside one that’s been made in a few days, and you might be sceptical about this.

3. Some beers use rare or special ingredients or processes

Lambic and geueze beers were at the centre of the recent Twitter spat. There are many, means reasons why these beers are expensive compared to a mainstream lager, but I want to focus on just one.

Instead of adding laboratory-cultured yeasts to start the fermentation of sugar into alcohol, lambic brewers rely on the natural yeasts in the air around them. It’s not quite the same thing as sourdough versus regular bread, but it’s close enough for comparison. The air around us is filled with a swirling cocktail of microflora, and its composition changes depending on where you are. There are certain parts of Belgium where this airborne biome produces great results in beer: other parts, not so much. So beers in this style are tied to particular places. But the cocktail doesn’t just change depending on where you go; it changes depending on the time of year, too. In warmer months, the party gets a little crowded, and as well as the ‘good’ yeasts you want in your beer, there are lots of uglier critters floating around that will spoil the beer and made it undrinkable. This means lambic producers can only brew during certain months of the year. The traditional season runs from October to April, when the average temperature is between -8 degrees Celsius and +8 degrees Celsius. But global warming means this window is now narrowing: the unseasonal warm weather we’re having now is catastrophic for lambic brewers. At Cantillon, the world’s most famous lambic brewery, the limited brewing window has contracted from 165 days in the early 1900s to about 140 days today. Within that period, sudden spikes mean a beer has to get poured away. This is a small, family business – the beer you brew over 140 days – once it’s been stored for three years, matured and blended – has to support people’s livelihoods for the whole year round. Prices have to rise, or the company will go out of business.

I’m not denying that there are opportunistic brewers and retailers who are cashing in on the craft beer boom to sell beers at artificially inflated prices because there are people who are willing to pay them. But I offer these three stories as examples that not all beers are the same. Brewing is an extraordinarily complex process and the ingredients of beer are each complex in their own way.

As with anything you buy in the supermarket, there are cheap versions and expensive versions – if all you can afford is an Iceland spag bol at £1 for an individual portion, it would be wrong to judge. But surely you’d appreciate that a scratch-cooked version using better quality tomatoes and beef is going to taste better? Brewers face similar decisions to you. If you’re not interested or not able to afford the better quality stuff, fine. But it’s simply inverse snobbery to criticise those who would rather splash out.

If anyone is interested in learning more about beer’s complex and wonderful supply chain, and the incredible lengths growers, breeders and scientists go to help brewers produce great beer, try Miracle Brew:

You’ll never see beer in the same way again. I know I didn’t.

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| Beer, Brewing, Harveys, Hops, Yeast

A Trip To Lewes Cathedral

Harvey’s Brewery in Lewes, Sussex, is as old school as they come. Sometimes, no matter how much you think you know about brewing, or how forward-looking you are in terms of what’s new in beer, you need to revisit a place like this to ground you and remind you what it’s all about.

We were in Lewes for a strategy day. Along with publisher Daniel Neilson and editor Adrian Tierney Jones, I’m now one third of Original Gravity magazine, the latest edition of which is just out. We got together a couple of weeks ago for a day or so to work out the future direction of the mag (clue: it’s really exciting). After a few beers the night before, the conversation loosened, and we got onto a bit of a riff I could clumsily title ‘Beers some people take for granted and others ignore completely because they’ve been here forever but if they were launched tomorrow by a hip new brewery you would totally lose your shit over how good they are.’

We came up with a pretty impressive list. Near the top was Harvey’s Best Bitter. I think we were excited because we knew that after our morning’s session, we had a tour of the brewery planned.

Harvey’s is an unusual brewery in that it’s smack in the middle of the town of Lewes, dominating the skyline. And it’s uncommonly beautiful to look at. It’s a Victorian ‘tower brewery’, where all the ingredients are hoisted up to the top floor, and then steadily make their way down through the various brewing vessels with the assistance of gravity. There are other Victorian tower breweries in town centres, but Wadworth in Devizes is the only other one that springs immediately to mind as such a compelling tourist attraction. Harvey’s has the edge on it: there’s a waiting list of two months here for brewery tours.

Miles Jenner – the third generation in a family of brewers – has been head brewer at Harvey’s since 1986, and joint Managing Director since 2000. His office, with its carefully painted door, is just opposite the main brewing copper. From the outside, with its coloured glass and gabled window, it looks like a small chapel in a Tudor Manor House.

The religious comparison doesn’t stop there.

“People often refer to the brewery as Lewes cathedral,” says Miles when we meet him in the brewery yard. “I changed the sign really to see if anyone would notice.”

Harvey’s was founded in 1790, and has been on this site since 1838. It’s been rebuilt and added to ever since, and there’s currently a lot of scaffolding and ladders around the place. It’s all done with an incredible attention to detail in preserving the feel of the original. It’s a lovely story, but the building is now Grade II listed. From an architectural point of view, so it should be. But for a live brewery, that occasionally needs to install new brewing or fermentation vessels – which are usually so big as to require a roof to be taken off or a wall dismantled to get them in – it’s a curse as well as a blessing.

That helps explain why even a lot of the new stuff at Harvey’s is quite old. Mash Tun number one looks like it belongs on the Nautilus. No matter what the agenda of the host, when you get to this room any group of visitors ignores everything else and stops to take photographs, trying to capture it’s deep sheen and industrial romance.

Eventually Miles drags us away and takes us through to the hop store. Harveys only ever uses whole leaf hops rather than pellets. It’s just proper. The hops are kept refrigerated by the hop merchants to preserve their freshness, and called into the brewery about a week before they’re needed. The brewery’s labelling system displays the name of the grower as well as the hop variety – Harvey’s isn’t far from the hop gardens of Kent and Sussex, and Miles likes to have close relationships with his growers.

Harvey’s mainly uses English hop varieties such as Fuggles and Goldings. In the age of the citrusy, tropical fruit delights of new world hops, these more conservative varieties often receive short shrift, being described as dull and twiggy. The Fuggles here are fresh and spicy, peppery with a hint of lemon meringue. If you can only make dull, twiggy beers with these hops, you’re either not buying from the right place, keeping them badly, or you’re not a very good brewer.

 

Those hops often end up in the old Harvey’s copper, which isn’t as old as it seems, and hasn’t been here for as long as you might think. When Miles opens the hatch towards the end of the boil, we brave scalding steam to see the drama inside and try to win an inhalation of that deep, spicy aroma.

Harvey’s still has open fermentation vessels, which means you can actually see the beer being made in the truest sense of the word. Different fermenters hold beer at different stages in its fermentation period. The yeasty head goes from brilliant white foam in the first to beige sludge in the older second, the scummy sides suggestive of the orgy of consumption and reproduction the yeast has enjoyed over the last couple of days.

All of this plays its part in making Harvey’s beers somehow better than others in their style. There’s just something more here, a slight wildness in the yeast – undetectable in the Best Bitter, but more pronounced in the Imperial Stout once its been aged for a few months. The quality of the hops. The experience of a head brewer who’s been in the job for over thirty years. the reverence this building inspires.

“There’s always speculation that we’re going to sell up and move, especially when there’s all this scaffolding around,” says Miles. “I mean we could. We could sell this place for an absolute fortune for redevelopment, and move to an industrial park outside town. But that would destroy everything that Harvey’s is about. So what would be the point?”

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