Tag: Guinness

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I just realised how the debate about craft beer is changing

Last week, my latest column for the Publican’s Morning Advertiser focused on the response to craft beer by the giant, global brewing corporations that dominate the beer market. It was inspired by a new project at Guinness which has produced some beers I consider to be very good indeed. I suggested that maybe we’re getting to the end of the usefulness of the term ‘craft beer’, because it disguises the fact that breweries of any size can and now sometimes do make really good beer. 
The response to the piece was mixed, from sentiments along the lines of ‘Damn right, it’s all about good beer, whoever brews it,’ to ‘No! Big brewers are shit by definition and we will always need craft brewers to stand against them.’
The more I thought about these differing views, the more I realised they were arguing about different things. 
The narrative of craft beer is a familiar one: global brewers make boring bland beer because they are trying not to offend anyone, they always want to cut costs, and they sell style over substance. Craft brewers saved us from mediocrity by brewing more interesting, flavourful beers, operating a more nimble business model, driven by passion and flavour rather than shareholders, marketers and accountants. Medium-sized brewers – such as regional and family-owned real ale brewers in the UK, or brewers who were craft but have grown huge, sit somewhere in the middle and generate most of the argument about what is and isn’t craft.
It can be expressed as a linear continuum along which you can plot your favourite and least favourite brewers and beers:
I think this is how most of us see the issue. But it’s rather too simplistic. If it ever was right, things have moved in beyond it.
We’re kidding ourselves if we think every beer created by a craft brewer is good – there are some awful beers out there from passionate beer advocates who simply aren’t very good brewers, or who might be walking the craft beer walk but are in reality just as cynical as the big brewers, but operating on a small scale hoping to get rich quick from the latest craze. And on the other hand, there are big brewers who have bought smaller brands and haven’t (yet) screwed them up. And there are the occasional beers – such as the best ones I tasted at Guinness, and Carlsberg’s Jacobsen range – that are simply very good beers made by brewers employed by a global corporation, that in a blind tasting would be considered good craft beers. 
So it would be more accurate to look at the market on two axes rather than one continuum, like this:

Now, if you were to plot every beer brand in the world on this chart, the vast majority of global brewers’ brands would still be in the bottom left quadrant, and the majority of craft beers would probably sit top right. But there would be notable exceptions, so I think the reality of the beer world today probably look like this:

When you look at the market in this way, your emotional response to it will tell you what you really care about in beer, and different people care about different things at different times. That’s why we sometimes talk at cross-purposes in debates about craft versus big.
Given a free choice, I’d prefer to drink in the top right quadrant. I prefer to drink good quality beer brewed by a small, passionate company. I’m sure most of you would agree. But if these beers weren’t available to you, would you rather have a very good beer brewed by a big, nasty corporation, or an inferior beer brewed by a really great guy under a railway arch just down the street?
If the quality of the beer is the most important thing, you’ll happily drink a great beer from Carlsberg or Guinness. But if that thought makes you angry, then you aren’t actually thinking about the beer at all. You’re thinking about the craft beer movement, and your decision is driven by your beliefs, politics and morality rather than your taste buds.
I’m not knocking either approach. What I am saying is that if we confuse arguments about beer quality and flavour with arguments about an unfair balance of power, the importance of supporting small local businesses and the excitement of feeling like part of a movement, we end up sounding stupid. Anyone who genuinely believes big brewers are incapable of making and releasing good beers simply doesn’t know anything about brewing. And anyone who thinks any small-scale craft beer is automatically good because of where it comes from has their head in the sand. 
This made me think about where I stand as someone who makes a living writing about beer. If I discover a great beer made by a big brewer and I refuse to write about it, or I say it’s shit when it isn’t, I’m not doing my job properly. I can choose what I want to focus on in the most detail, but I do have a duty to report interesting stuff that I find out in the course of doing my job. If I was thinking purely as a fan of beer, I might have a different view. 
The craft debate will rumble on. Beer gets under our skin precisely because it is many things – that’s why I started writing about it in the first place. In most cases, it’s not just about the quality of the beer – it’s about expressing who we are, making choices that say something about us. It is politics and fashion and identity as well as flavour. In reality, it’s these aspects that are driving most of the current debates about the future of craft beer.
It’s your choice what you drink. If you choose to boycott any beer made by a large corporation, no matter how good it is, I’d have some respect for that point of view. Just don’t tell me you’re doing it because the beer is shit.

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Guinness back to what it does best

It really is good for you.

Ah, St Patrick’s Day: guaranteed to drive some angsty beer geeks to ask why everyone insists on drinking Guinness when there are so many superior stouts available, and explain to their friends that it’s not really an Irish beer at all because it was derived from London’s porter tradition, so really the whole of Paddy’s Day is a sham, and anyway it’s an Irish festival and we’re not Irish so why are we celebrating this one instead of celebrating with real ale on St Georges Day?

And no one listens to them. Instead, everyone else sees it simply as an excuse to spend another boozy night in the pub enjoying themselves, buying into a version of the Irish craic that may not have anything true about it, but is perfectly good fun nonetheless, if you’re in the mood for it.

Guinness is facing an interesting time at the moment. It’s the very best illustration out there of our declining need for big brand reassurance in the beer market. In the late nineteenth century, when brewers floated on the stock exchange to raise funds to buy the pubs that sold their beers, Guinness followed a different path, building a singular, iconic brand rather than a tied estate of pubs selling a range of different beers. Throughout the twentieth century, it didn’t matter whether you were drinking in a Whitbread, Courage or Watney’s pub, a freehouse or a managed pub – you had to have Guinness on the bar. Pretenders like Murphy’s came and went, but consistent investment in building a brand that looked like no other kept Guinness strong. There aren’t many brands that enjoy seeing tourists actually spending money to buy copies of their adverts from seventy or eighty years ago.

Three for a tenner on Portobello Road
This brand strength has meant that Guinness can get away with charging pubs more than other beers. I’ve spoken to publicans who feel bitter, almost held to ransom, who believe they must have Guinness on their bar even if it means paying through the nose for it. And market research shows why: in the late nineties, more people claimed to drink Guinness than any other beer brand. Some of them may have only drunk it on one day of the year; others were simply lying – they liked to think of themselves as Guinness drinkers, or be seen by others as Guinness drinkers, even if they didn’t actually like the taste. 
Things are different now. Brewers such as Brains, Fullers, and Wadworth are developing their own 4.0-4.2% nitrokeg stouts and discovering that Guinness is pretty easy to copy. When they put it on the bar, they’re finding that these days, people who actually like the beer are OK not to have the brand – especially if their pint is a bit cheaper.
How did this happen?
Well, partly, it’s that mainstream brands have become boring and commoditised across the board, and drinkers are increasingly confident to try something that hasn’t been on the telly.
And partly it’s that the iconic advertising lost its mojo. 
When you’ve made a commercial that is routinely voted as the best TV ad of all time (an early work by the director of this year’s most talked about film) it’s a hard act to follow.
The last decade and a bit has seen huge budget Guinness ads that have been very easily forgettable, with the possible exception of this one:

which always seemed to reappear a few months after the latest misguided spectacular had quietly disappeared.

But suddenly, the mojo seems to have come back. Possibly the two best commercials I’ve seen in the last year both turned out to be for Guinness.

The first one pulls you in and you hesitate, worried that you’re going to like the film only for the rug to be pulled at the end and it turns out to be something cynical and cheesy. In fact the pay-off is quite moving, and fits perfectly with what Guinness wants to say about both itself and its drinkers.

And then there’s this beauty, which starts off so good you think you’re almost certainly going to be disappointed, and you’re not – thoughtful, spectacular and bang on for a brand that’s at least as popular in parts of Africa as it is in Ireland.

If you find this as compelling and beautiful as I do, you might also enjoy the five minute film they made:

These two are possibly the best beer ads we’ve seen in a decade. Whether they are enough to make Guinness as indispensable and irreplaceable as it once was, we’ll have to wait and see. But I would imagine that the Paddy’s Day toasts at St James’s Gate are a little easier this year than they have been.

Oh, and there’s one more beer bore cliché we have to get out of the way while talking about Guinness. If you think it’s just a tasteless, bland brand produced by a big corporation that is scared of flavour and has no idea about how to get it into their beer, that’s because you’ve fallen for the trap that there is only one Guinness. Last time I visited the brewery, we were given a tutored tasting of seven different Guinnesses that were all on sale at the time. If you do want a powerful stout that’s up there with the very best, seek out Guinness Foreign Extra Stout:

One of the best stouts in the world.

At 7.5%, rich and complex with vinous notes and spiciness twining around the usual big blocks of coffee and chocolate flavour, it’s a genuine classic that allegedly makes up over 40% of total Guinness sales worldwide. For those who take notice of these things, it scores 96% on Ratebeer and 91% on Beer Advocate.

Not bad for a dull, corporate global brand.

Slainte.

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Guinness for You – A Warning From History

We’re in a hip East End Record Shop – a fitting venue for the headfuck that is about to follow.

It’s the launch of this excellent Double DVD from the BFI:

This is a collection old promotional films for pubs made between the 1940s and 1980s, and I’ll be writing more about the amazing collection of moving, educational and sometimes hilariously bad films in the Publican’s Morning Advertiser soon.  (There was a good if over-pessimistic review in the Guardian this week.)

On launch night, Robin Turner, author of this excellent book and the DVD sleeve notes, tells us we’re about to get ‘a ghostly view of what pubs used to be like’, does a reading, and then shows us a heartwarming film of pub life in 1945 that was made for troops fighting abroad, to show them what they were fighting for.  It brings a tear to the eye.  Luckily the lights are down.

After a short break for another beer (Sambrooks is sponsoring the event) one of the chaps from the Pub History Society introduces the next film.  It’s a short, experimental piece made in the early seventies for Guinness, basically looking at the production process, the care and attention that goes into a glass of Guinness, and was designed to be shown in cinemas.  Guinness has an unrivalled pedigree of TV advertising over the decades, but this is another story – the film is fifteen minutes long.  I’m suddenly very interested, never having come across it on any historical showreels in my time in advertising.  The Pub History Man keeps repeating the word ‘experimental’.  

“If any of you have tabs of acid, now is the time to take them,” he suggests.

There’s no need.

The next fifteen minutes shows what happens if you take the typical ‘making of beer’ film that every brewery has as part of its brewery tour, and you process it through a 1960s lysergic filter then broadcast it on Mars.  It’s a film about how a beer is made, but it’s more interested in colour, shape and texture than narrative. Guinness has never made – and never will make – anything as bold, daring, experimental and pure batshit crazy as this short film ever again.  And on balance, we should be thankful for that.

Bottles resemble aliens, the production line a spaceship.  The popping of a cork is like watching Martians fucking.  The printing of labels resembles insects eating.  The manufacture of bottle tops a plague of crickets having an orgy.  

Shit, we haven’t even got to the beer itself yet.

The bottling line is an Orwellian stew of rutting dead objects, filing to their doom as Arthur Guinness gazes on.

And then we’re onto barley growing, and it’s growing in a scary way, nature transmuted into a sinister force.  Your instincts tell you that you must never go near that awful field.  A combine harvester appears and turns the field into a concentration camp, a charnel house, the grassy final solution.  

There’s brief respite when we get to the hop farms, where the jagged electronic soundtrack is replaced by a wonderful, soaring cor anglais over peaceful images of hop bines and oast houses.  But hang on, what’s happening?  Now the hop bines are dancing like tripping triffids, and the cor anglais mutates into squawking, mewling modern jazz.

Water is something creepy and dangerous. Barley malt is a plague of locusts, the malting process the work of these countless billions of insects.  

Sparging offers us another brief interlude of beautiful visual poetry, but the results of the mash are landscapes devastated by nuclear war. As we prepare for the addition of the hops the music creates rising tension and fear, and then the boil is accompanied by a noise so terrifying this DVD should not have a PG certificate.

I can’t even bear to describe the timelapse imagery of yeast fermenting inside padlocked storage vats.  Let’s just say I won’t be able to sleep for about a week.

These scenes are intercut with a glass of Guinness being poured, the familiar anticipation as the drink makes its way to you.  Each time we cut to the glass we get monks chanting like they do on the Omen films just before someone gets cut in half or skewered by a spike.  By the time you see a human hand raising the glass, you want to cry “Nooooooooo! Don’t drink that, it’ll turn you into Swamp Thing!”

We never see the drinker.  But the film ends with multiple sighs of enjoyment that are cut artificially short – proof that this has actually happened.

Shaken, I turn to the sleeve notes.  The film was written and directed by Eric Marquis and the music was by ‘experimental British composer’ Tristram Cary, who also did music for Dr Who and for Hammer Horror films.  This makes a lot of sense.

Cary is no longer with us, but Marquis is, and fair play to the BFI, they not only track him down but publish the full details of their exchange with him.  He begins by saying he has ‘little memory of it’, and describes it as ‘twenty minutes or so of clever-dicky images’.

The BFI then sends Marquis a copy of the film to refresh his memory, and he replies, “My first reaction has been reinforced (and multiplied). If you do not wish this disc returned I will cheerfully burn it and wish that all other copies extant could also be destroyed!  I can only say that I am deeply ashamed of having had anything to do with the making of it.  And you can quote me if you like.”

What better endorsement could there be?

Hats off to the BFI for pulling this collection together. Buy it now. Just make sure there’s no one of a nervous disposition in the room when this particular film comes on.

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Happy Paddy’s Day!

While I was writing Three Sheets I found this great book called Planet Party.  Basically it’s an analysis of ten of the world’s greatest festivals, from Munich’s Oktoberfest to the Mexican day of the Dead.

The central thesis of the book is that civilizations need rules, conformity and order to survive.  But as we live most of our lives like this, we also need occasionally to let off steam, to throw over the rules and routine and go a bit batshit, safe in the knowledge that everyone is doing so, that this is a temporary suspension of order, permissible anarchy.  Author Iain Gately then travels the world demonstrating this principle in every continent and culture on the planet.

The only problem with the book is that for such a joyous subject, he writes it in a very dry, semi-academic fashion.  Perhaps that’s partly why it’s now out of print.  Since reading it I’ve wanted to do a similar book, going to the most extreme drinking festivals on the planet, following the same principle but getting stuck in as I do so rather than observing from outside.  The publishers won’t buy it though: it feels too much like a direct sequel to Three Sheets, and that’s the poorest selling of my three books (it sold well – just not as well as the other two) and it feels like it would serve the law of diminishing returns.

I haven’t let that stop me enjoying myself along the paths Gately has illuminated though: I go to as many of these festivals as I can.  The Jack in the Green Festival in Hastings on May Bank Holiday is a marvellous release of pagan lust and joy until about 4pm, when everyone goes back home and puts the kettle on.  And I’ll soon be writing about various Wassails I went to in January – hundreds of people standing in a muddy farmyard at night in the middle of January, worshipping trees and getting riotously pissed, smack in the middle of the grimmest time of the year – it makes me tear up just thinking about what a wonderful expression of the human spirit this is.

Which brings us to St Patrick’s Day, celebrated around the world today.

Here’s are ten things that I really, really don’t want to talk about today, because it utterly misses the point (even though I might have done in the past – today is not the day):

  • How St Patrick wasn’t really Irish
  • Why we celebrate St Patrick more than our own patron saints
  • How tedious it is that everyone seeks an Irish connection
  • How the Paddy’s Day Angry Birds update is possibly racist
Did someone say “Thieving Irish pigs”?
  • Plastic paddies and bad Irish theme pubs
  • The fact that stout (or rather, the porter that led to it) actually originates from London
  • Opinions as to whether Guinness is any good or not in a world where we now have lots of quality stouts and porters
  • Whether or not Guinness tastes better in Ireland
  • Whatever Guinness is doing marketing/PR-wise on its biggest day of the year
  • Why people who drink Guinness today don’t drink it the rest of the year
What I shall be doing instead is marvelling at the way people across our entire planet use a flimsy excuse to give themselves permission to celebrate, not celebrating anything in particular, not really, but rather adopting an oversimplified version of one of the world’s greatest drinking cultures and pretending to be part of it for one night, knowing that everyone else in pubs and bars the world over is doing the same.  And I’ll be marvelling that beer is at the heart of this, that beer’s sociability, its miraculous ability to bring joy to its groups of drinkers, is at the core of the ritual. 
What will I be drinking myself?  Well, I’ll probably go to the Auld Shillelagh on Stoke Newington Church Street and fight my way to the bar in what is normally a quiet Irish pub, and have a couple of the best pints of Guinness in North London.  I might come home early and open the bottle of Otley porter I was sent for St David’s Day, or the stunning Imperial Stout that debuted the Meantime College Beer Club, or the Quantock Brewery Stout that won bronze in SIBA’s national bottled beer competition and turned up on my doorstep yesterday.  It doesn’t matter.  I’ll be drinking dark beer because that’s what you do on St Patrick’s Day.  It’s what everyone does.

And that is, in my view, what’s really worth celebrating.

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Happy St Paddy’s Day!

After having the naked audacity yesterday to suggest that a large regional brewer doing something that improves beer quality might actually be a Good Thing for beer drinkers, I’ve decided to completely blow any remaining credibility I might have with the miserable indie kid wing of the beer fraternity and write a post in praise of Guinness.

Beer Nut – I’m not necessarily calling you a miserable indie kid but I know how you feel on this particular issue. It might be best if you just look away now.
I like Guinness. Sorry, but I do. I like it as a brand – it’s stuck to its guns with mould-breaking, innovative creative advertising for eighty years now – and I occasionally like it as a beer. If there was a better porter or stout on the bar, of course I would choose to drink that instead. But the point is, in 99 out of 100 pubs, there isn’t a better porter or stout on the bar. There’s no porter or stout at all. Apart from Guinness. In fact when you think about it, the fact that Guinness – a dark, bitter stout – is as ubiquitous as it is in a world dominated by pale, tasteless imitation pilsners, it is a remarkable achievement. You might be about to comment that Guinness has been dumbed down and isn’t a patch on what it used to be. I’m not in a position to disagree with you. You might also be about to comment that Guinness isn’t a ‘real’ stout, that it’s way too bland or even that it actually tastes of nothing at all. There, I would have to disagree. Guinness is a big brand, one of the few beers that can truly claim to have a global presence. And the main reason it’s not even bigger? Survey after survey shows that the vast majority of beer drinkers find it too bitter, too challenging, too full-bodied. If Guinness were to reformulate to something as robust as the craft-brewed porters we all know and love, it would kill the brand stone dead. It might not be challenging to you, but it is to 99% of drinkers who ever come across it. And still it survives. The success of Guinness should actually give us hop that there are enough people who like challenging beer to make brewing something a bit more challenging worthwhile. If Guinness hadn’t kept the dark flame alive when porter and stout were otherwise extinct globally, would those styles have made the triumphant comeback that’s happened over the last ten years? And there’s one other thing. It’s St Patrick’s Day. If you really, truly believe that Guinness is shit, then go to a pub in Galway tonight and tell the people drinking there that they have crap taste in beer and don’t know anything about drinking. Good luck with that. I’ll be in the Auld Shillelagh in Stokie tonight, having a few pints, otherwise I’d come with you and help try to find your teeth on the floor of the pub. Guinness probably holds the world record (ironic that!) for number of books written about a single beer brand. Today there’s a new one out – Guinness ®: An Official Celebration of 250 Remarkable Year, from Octopus publishing. I don’t know if it’s any good or not, but it does have some recipes in it, and the publishers asked me if I’d put one up ande give the book a plug, so I am, because it’s Paddy’s day and I. Like. Guinness. So here’s one for Iced Chocolate, Guinness and orange cake. Slainte! This sumptuous cake is perfect for a special occasion. The recipe may seem a little involved, but it’s easy to accomplish if tackled stage by stage. Preparation time 45 minutes Cooking time 1 hourServes 8 2 large oranges250 g (8 oz) caster sugar175 g (6 oz) unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing150 g (5 oz) self-raising flour25 g (1 oz) cocoa powder2 teaspoons baking powder3 free-range eggs, beaten25 g (1 oz) ground almonds5 tablespoons draught Guinness 150 ml (¼ pint) double cream Icing20 g (¾ oz) unsalted butter50 g (2 oz) caster sugar3 tablespoons draught Guinness 100 g (3½ oz) plain dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), finely chopped step 1 Peel one orange. Finely grate the zest of the other orange and set aside. Using a sharp knife, pare away the pith from both oranges. Cut the oranges into 5 mm (¼ inch) slices. Put them in a small saucepan and just cover with cold water. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Add 50 g (2 oz) of the sugar and continue to simmer until all the liquid has boiled away, watching carefully to ensure that the oranges don’t burn. Leave to cool.step 2 Beat together the butter and the remaining sugar for the cake in a large bowl until very pale and fluffy. Sift together the flour, cocoa and baking powder, then beat into the butter mixture alternately with the eggs. Add the ground almonds, reserved grated orange zest and Guinness and beat for 3–4 minutes until you have a soft dropping consistency.step 3 Grease and line the base and sides of 2 x 20 cm (8 inch) round cake tins, then divide the cake mixture equally between the tins, smoothing the surface. Bake the cakes in a preheated oven, 190°C (375°F), Gas Mark 5, for 25 minutes until risen and firm to the touch. Leave to cool in the tins for 5 minutes before carefully turning out on to a wire rack to cool completely.step 4 Whip the cream in a bowl until soft peaks form, then spread over one of the cakes. Arrange the cooled orange pieces over the cream and carefully place the other cake on top.step 5 To make the icing, put the butter, sugar and Guinness in a small saucepan. Stir over a gentle heat until the sugar has dissolved, then bring to the boil. Remove from the heat and add the chocolate. Leave to soften, then beat gently with a wooden spoon. Leave to cool and thicken. While still warm but not too runny, pour the icing over the cake and use the back of a spoon or a palette knife to spread it evenly.

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Pure Genius? Or sheer idiocy?

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked by Marketing magazine to write a comment for their ‘Brand Healthcheck’ page, which looks at brands that are facing a rocky time and asks people what they should do. This one on Guinness was prompted by the fact that sales are down in the UK and Ireland, and there are rumours that Diageo (Guinness’ owners) are thinking of closing down the St James’ Gate brewery in Dublin, and brewing somewhere else more cost-effectively.

Here’s what I said:

Anyone at Diageo who thinks it’s a good idea to close Guinness’ Dublin brewery should maybe also give some thought to abandoning the famous two-part pour, making it paler – lager-coloured say – brewing it in a shed just off the M1 and changing the name to something snappier – what about Harp? Oh, hang on…

Guinness is an unparalleled icon in the beer market, peerless in terms of quality. The brand team that walks away from this kills the brand.

Everyone I’ve ever met who has worked on Guinness knows what the real problem is – a problem that was recorded at least as far back as the 1930s. People think it’s heavy, harsh and bitter, a challenging taste, whereas it’s actually silky, smooth and deceptively drinkable. They think it’s a meal in a glass, whereas a pint of Guinness actually has fewer calories than lager.

Beer is about heritage, romance and tradition, whereas taste is transitory and often cyclical. Guinness has always stuck to its guns, and has ridden out all short term trends. It should continue to do so.[Then you have to give a few bullet point, off-the-cuff marketing tips]

  • Step up experiential marketing – confront the misconception about the product head on by getting people to try it.

  • Events with vertical tastings of the many different Guinnesses available would only deepen people’s appreciation of the brand.

  • Don’t waver on ritual, and don’t lose the romance of the product

  • Try food pairings – why are so few people aware of what an amazing match Guinness is with chocolate desserts?

It’s not that difficult, is it? I would bet my house on the fact that, if Guinness closed their brewery as a cost-saving measure, they would find themselves with a more impoverished business twelves months later. Why do so few marketers (and I say this as a marketer) fail to see that it’s the romance of beer that contributes to profitable beer brands? Heritage, superstition, a respect for tradition, tribalism, belligerence, call it what you will, love it or hate it, all brand owners know that there is a huge but intangible value in the whole invisible history around any given brand. You can’t prove it’s there, so you can’t quantify the impact of its loss. Until it’s too late. And apart from that, isn’t the world simply a duller place when this kind of thing gets overruled in favour of simple, measurable metrics? (Sorry, but that’s what they call them – numbers.) Hoegaarden closed the brewery in Hoegaarden, and there are rumours of industrial unrest leading to supplies runnign out in the UK – just as competitors like Grolsch Weizen appear on the scene. Boddington’s clsoed its Strangeways brewery, and a year later announced that it was withdrawing advertising support (I would imagine, though Inbev would deny this, because the shrunken value of the brand doesn’t justify a big spend).Christ, it’s hardly rocket science is it?

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