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Beer history News

Non-Craft Sub-Brand

In a weird inversion of the usual arrangement, a self-consciously-‘craft’ brewery has just launched a retro ‘real ale’ sub-brand. Well, sort of.

If you’ve read Christopher Hutt’s 1973 book The Death of the English Pub then you’ll know the story of Bullard’s of Norwich: along with the city’s other brewery, Steward & Patteson, it was taken over by Watney’s in 1963, and both breweries’ own bitters were replaced by a generic Norwich Bitter. Then, in 1968, Bullard’s brewery was closed down.

Nearly 50 years on, Redwell (perhaps best known for its dispute with Camden over the trademark ‘Hells’) has acquired the rights to the Bullard’s brand and revived it for a line of cask ales designed, in part, to appeal to those who have fond and lingering memories of the old brewery.

Redwell isn’t brewing on the old Bullard’s site, or using the original branding and, unlike other revived brands (Joule’s, Phipps, Truman’s) there has been no attempt made to recreate historic recipes, or even to ‘take inspiration’ from them. Bullard’s old yeast strain hasn’t been brought out of retirement, either, so, there’s really not much of the original brewery here beyond the name.

And here’s why we said ‘sort of’ in our introduction: the packaging still uses the C-word — ‘Craft Beers Brewed in Norwich’ — and the first products on offer are East Coast Pale Ale, ‘brewed with new world hops’, and a ‘hop bomb of an IPA’.

This isn’t, therefore, the perfect irony we’ve been waiting for — a trendy craft brewery aping the look of, say, Shepherd Neame, in order to market cask mild and best bitter on the sly — but it’s still, we think, an interesting development.

For more details, and some spiky local reactions, check out this substantial piece on the launch in the Eastern Daily Press.

19 replies on “Non-Craft Sub-Brand”

Head brewer Jones is quoted as saying ‘its unusual to brew a cask ale at this strengh ‘ referring to 6% bullers #2 . That man really needs to go to some better pubs

It is unusual, isn’t it? Not *unheard of*, especially if you hang out in craft beer bar type places, but certainly unusual.

Ah, well — ‘unusual’ is an unhelpfully woolly word. We can go months without seeing a cask ale over 5% down here in Cornwall.

I’d say it’s unusual. It might be increasingly common in specifically beer-geeky pubs, but those are fairly unusual in themselves, and I’d be very surprised to see anything over 5% in a village pub or a neighbourhood local or a town centre chain pub or whatever.

The Redwell / Bullards thing does seem a bit odd – they’ve already got a reasonable reputation for doing new-wave crafty beers, so why buy up an old brand with completely different associations to use for similar beers on cask?

Not normal for Norfolk? 🙂

Several good pubs in Cambridge have a beer around, or above, 6% on. Some of these from Norfolk, Grain’s 6% ‘Slate’ is awesome and regularly brewed.

Then again I regularly hear complaints from Norfolk/Suffolk breweries along the lines of “we can only brew beers below 4% because nobody buys anything over that.” The situation across the wider countryside in the region is quite different to that in the cities of course, and the cities not populous enough to support much avant guarde brewing.

OTOH this is a brewery not unfamiliar with media spin. A bit of headline grabbing for the sake of brand recognition.

Never really got the “reviving-old-dead-beer-brand” thing myself. Harking back to the old times, very British-fading-empire I suppose. Has the phrase “nostalgia marketing” been coined yet? 🙂

Otherwise it is an interesting inverse of the standing-back-from-format of craft-exploring established trad brands.

Nowhere near as hilariously bonkers as the Arran/Devil’s Dyke PR piece mind you.

Should add that at least in this case there isn’t an attempt to hide the facts as with some “craft” sub-brands. Though it would be better still if the actual brewery name was on the pumpclip.

“Never really got the “reviving-old-dead-beer-brand” thing myself.”

No, but then you’ve got a Vulcan Mr Logic thing going on…

Though we’re hard pressed to say that any of the breweries doing it whose beers we’ve actually tried are very exciting, we do think it’s interesting and probably worthwhile. It’s about harking back to pre-Big-Six era rather than the Empire, I think — that is, returning to the point where many would say British beer ‘went wrong’ and picking up the thread.

If someone (decent…) revived Starkey, Knight & Ford and I could buy a pint in my home town, I’d be delighted. My Dad used to drink it as a young man, all the pubs in town had the livery when I was a kid, and there’s *nothing* hyper-local I can get excited about otherwise.

Yes, the Empire comment perhaps a tad hyperbolic. But to highlight an observation that there’s a UK tendency to look too much to the past. Not that Aus is in any way immune to similar sorts of nostalgia. Nor even myself from time to time.

Wouldn’t you be just as happy with any decent new brewery? Does reviving a brand add spice to the experience of the beer that takes it to another level?

I’m afraid it’d probably be opposite for me. An ashen taste of my own marketing cynicism. Then again, I’m a rootless colonial mongrel!

As for the Vulcan thing… oops, sometimes I let my inhumanity show too clearly 😉

I am unclear. Is the Empire that degraded a brand through cheeky Tory associations and historic military conquest angst that there is no marketing scheme of the Georgian to Edwardian that could gather enough warmth to sell a beer?

Kind of a counter-example: one of my favourite newish Welsh breweries, Evan Evans. They produce very much the kind of sweetish malt-forward session bitter that Buckley’s used to (and Felinfoel still do), which has a strong & only partly nostalgic appeal to me – i.e. I still like the taste. Evan Evans also have family connections with Buckley’s, which gives me an irrational & entirely sentimental fondness for them. But they haven’t revived the Buckley’s name – and if Brains (who own it now) did revive it, or sold it off to some new contender, I can’t imagine I’d be that bothered. The thing to revive is the beer, surely – and it certainly doesn’t sound as if Redwell have done that (although I like the idea of an ‘East Coast’ pale ale).

Funny how one of the comments attacking Redwell on the local newspaper website says:

“They’re known for charging the earth for insipid, tasteless lager”

If there’s one thing Redwell are known for on the London market, it’s being REALLY cheap. Never bought them myself but seen the invoice for a fellow pub owner who has.

Yes their wholesale prices are certainly very cheap for a “craft” brewery. Based on my experience with their steam lager it needs to be

I tried both beers yesterday, and they are rather good. #1 in particular is super, I found it similar to Ghost Ship. #2 did not seem like a “hop bomb” to me, it was more in line with English IPAs. Both beers were in superb condition, which certainly helped. It’s nice to have another solid cask option in Norwich.

How strange… Buy up a trad brand and then do crafty beer… Anyone for Boddington’s Imperial Mosaic Saison?

Well, I think it’s a pity that no attempt was made to brew the beers as last made in the early 80’s. If the character was felt wanting, then a Bullard’s recipe from an earlier period could have been used. I’ve nothing against new formulations, but why use an old name for a new beer? I get the marketing angle, but wouldn’t people who remember the name want the same taste (or as close as possible) to what they remember? And for younger people it won’t matter anyway since the name has no resonance for them presumably.

Pabst did something similar with its revived Ballantine IPA, not 100% but by incorporating a number of hops in the beer not known before 1972. It’s a fine beer but does not taste like the old Ballantine IPA in my view.

Or, given two beers were issued, why not do one historical recipe and one new one?

Gary

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