Category: Generalisations about beer culture

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American beers Generalisations about beer culture opinion

What do Brits Think of American Craft Brewing?

Vintage American beer label.

Earlier today, we saw this interesting question on Twitter:

Now, there’s no simple answer, and, even if the British beer fraternity did share a single opinion, we wouldn’t be qualified to state it. Nonetheless, here’s our attempt to summarise the various camps.

1. People stuck in the nineteen-seventies don’t know it exists

Back then, there really wasn’t much ‘characterful’ American beer — check out Michael Jackson’s World Guide to Beer for a valiant attempt to find some. As far as British beer enthusiasts were concerned, American beer was all ‘cold fizzy flavourless piss’. Some people, though they profess to be ‘into their beer’, still believe this is the case, if our experience of conversations at beer festivals is anything to go by.

2. Some people seem to dislike America, let alone American beer

They deny any American influence on British brewing in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary; they fail to see what American beer has to offer that can’t be found better elsewhere; and find the people in 5, below, extremely irritating.

3. Some simply prefer British beer (or beer from elsewhere)

There’s no malice in it — they just like what’s local and fresh. The beer from here is pretty decent and increasingly varied and interesting — why look abroad? Many ‘real ale’ enthusiasts are probably in this camp. British  drinkers and brewers who had their ‘eyes opened’ by American beer before, say, 2007, when there were few examples of, e.g. strong, intensely aromatic British IPAs, have moved into this camp in recent years. (Brewers are sometimes motivated by a protectionist impulse: ‘Buy British!’)

4. Some feel very warm towards American craft beer

They’re interested in what’s going on in the US; will drink an interesting US beer in preference to a boring British one; generally like British beers in the US style.

5. Some think American craft beer and the attendant culture are where it’s at, and everything else is basically rubbish

The chaps at Brewdog have expressed this view, and are fairly open in their worship of Stone Brewing. We’ve spoken to other British brewers who were absolutely clear that their favourite beers and greatest inspirations are American. Many brew beers which seem to us to be obvious attempts to clone specific US brews. Some enthusiasts speak with almost religious fervour of beer enjoyed on trips to the US.

This is traditionally where people comment “I’m a 4!” and so on. Feel free to do so, or to suggest categories you think we’ve missed.

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Generalisations about beer culture pubs

The Pub Remains the Default

The Buckingham Arms, Westminster, London.

People worry about pubs: they’re in decline, disappearing, not what they used to be. If they do survive, argues M. Lawrenson, it will be as the preserve of the oddball, the poseur, the ‘connoisseur’.

But, while we suspect that there will be fewer pubs in a decade’s time, we also feel confident that they’re too useful ever to disappear completely.

When we’re visit old stamping grounds and tell friends we’ll be in town, despite our frightful middle class tendencies and impending middle age, no-one ever says, ‘Let’s have dinner’, or ‘Let’s go for a coffee’ — it’s always ‘Which pub?’

They’re spacious, generally comfortable, and open later than almost any other establishment. They usually sell something to eat, even if it’s only a bag of crisps. Where could be better if, after nine in the evening, you need to spend two hours with someone at a location convenient for their house in one suburb and yours in another?

Everywhere we have ever worked, the pub has been the default location for ‘leaving dos’, celebrations, (real) team building exercises (as opposed to contrived ones), and even difficult conversations. Sometimes, the pub felt like a compromise — perhaps the wine drinkers and the trendy young ‘uns sulked, crying ‘Can’t we go somewhere nice?’ — but it did the job better than any other venue.

They’re still where we find ourselves after weddings and christenings, in neglected back rooms, with neatly-trimmed sandwiches and unbuttoned uncles. When people bang on about pubs as ‘community assets’, is this what they mean? It ought to be.

Perhaps we’ve over-optimistic on behalf of the pub, though, and maybe this instinct is dying out. We’ll have to ask around.

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Generalisations about beer culture

Beer: You Can’t Handle the Truth!

Psst! Whispering men.

Psst! Psst! Yeah, you. Who do you think owns the brewery that makes that beer you’re drinking, that ‘Dan Spinnaker’s Fat Legs IPA’? Ha! That’s what they want you to think.

There is no ‘Dan Spinnaker’. Designed by focus group, he was. The bloke you see at press conferences is an actor. Been in Casualty, under a different name of course. The beer’s brewed under contract, by Global Beverages Incorporated, at a state-of-the-art plant in Poland. It gets shipped over in tankers and then bottled on Shadrack & Duxbury’s line in Warley. They sneak it back into the so-called Spinnaker’s ‘brewery’ in midnight convoys. Not very ‘craft’ that, is it? Eh? Eh? Follow the money, sunshine — follow the money. It’ll lead you to a shadowy group of Russian investors — FACT!

As for Shadrack & Duxbury… don’t get me started. Old Bob Duxbury was nice as pie when you met him but it was known in the trade that he was a member of a pagan cult. Used to kill goats with his bare hands. Most of the profits from the brewery still go to the Esoteric Order of Dagon. What did I say? That’s right, follow the money.

These days, of course, Shadrack’s Champion Best is supposedly top-notch cask-conditioned ale, but here’s what I heard: it’s high-gravity brewed using turnip starch and hop extract, and then they filter it before putting back just enough yeast to satisfy CAMRA’s technical committee. Total con.

As for CAMRA… I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you, know what I mean?

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Generalisations about beer culture marketing opinion

Habits of Successful Breweries

Detail from the cover of Trouble Shooter 2 bySir John Harvey Jones.

There’s been an outbreak of fretting about the sheer number of breweries in operation in the UK, and people in the industry speak to us in ominous tones of a ‘great shake out’ being due. Summary: she cannae take much more, Captain! She’s breaking apart!

British ‘alternative’ beer has been an aggressively competitive climate for decades, though, and it is only natural for there to be slightly more breweries in operation that the market can support. Breweries will come (‘Surely there’s room for a little one?’) and go.

Of those ninety-five small breweries open in 1981, only eighteen were still in business in 2001. However, a survival rate of one in five over twenty years compares very well with most small business sectors, where the average age of a new company when it dies is said to be just four years.

Martyn Cornell, Beer: the story of the pint, 2003.

Taking as given that they make beer which at least some people like, what seem to us to have been successful brewing businesses tend, we think, to do one or more of the following.

  1. Identify a new market and get in first, rather than waiting for others to test the water. For example, Sean Franklin’s Rooster’s (still going, under new management, after twenty years) was on the forefront of the trend for hop-aromatic golden ales; and David Bruce kickstarted a brewpub craze from 1979, despite everyone telling him there was no demand.
  2. Build a successful brand and put it at the centre of their business. Hopback (26 years and counting) have Summer Lightning; Thornbridge (approaching their first decade) have Jaipur; Butcombe (founded 1978) have their flagship bitter.
  3. Invest constantly, often using borrowed money or government grants. Bottling and canning lines, for example, though expensive to install, generate income and open up new markets. (PR bonus: their expansion becomes a story in its own right, generating news coverage.)
  4. Have the nerve to charge a premium. People really will pay more for something new and exciting, and they really are daft enough to believe that if it costs more, it might be better.
  5. Own a pub, or at least have an idea where their beer will sell. It’s no good starting a brewery and having your fingers crossed that you’ll find an outlet in a landscape dominated by pubcos and regional brewers.
  6. Hire star players. Magic Rock, for example, hit the ground running partly because Stuart Ross had built a name for himself at the Crown Brewery.
  7. Demonstrate a strong, distinctive ‘personality’. Other companies might be cheaper, or imitate the style, but customers are drawn to sincerity, individuality and originality.
  8. Behave with a certain arrogance. Once they’ve decided on a course, they stick to it, ignoring critics and pressure groups. (Meantime spring to mind here.)
  9. Or, alternatively, respond to the market. If their beer isn’t selling, they find out why and fix it. If they can do so convincingly (without looking like Dad in a backwards baseball cap) they reinvent themselves for each new era. (Crouch Vale, 32 years old, might be a good example of the latter, as might Moor.)
  10. Bottle and/or keg beer for export. For example, St Peter’s — hardly our favourite brewery — has been around for seventeen years, the vast majority of its beer being sold overseas. Relying on one market, e.g. cask ale in pubs, is very risky.

Have we missed anything, or even completely missed the point? Let us know what you think, especially if you’re a business person or brewer.

Here’s what we said on the subject of the boom in January. We await this year’s figures on new brewery openings with interest.

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Generalisations about beer culture

When Boutique was the Beer Buzzword

Thirty years before everyone started getting annoyed about the term ‘craft beer’, the phrase that looked as if it might take hold was ’boutique beer’.

Here’s Michael ‘Beer Hunter’ Jackson in the introduction to a new edition of his World Guide to Beer in 1988:

The smaller the brewery, the more easily it can devote itself to speciality styles of beer… Not every brew-pub takes this opportunity, but many do. The best of the micro-breweries certainly do. A good few old-established independents have rediscovered the confidence to assert their heritage. Even on some of the national and international giants have found time to produce the odd speciality beer… In volume, sales of these ’boutique beers’ are tiny…

What we’ve found in recent months is that no-one hates the term ‘craft beer’ quite as much as some of the brewers to whose work it is applied. Mention it and they sigh, roll their eyes, and sometimes even groan, as if in pain.

There are various reasons for their antipathy: they’re bored of hearing people talk about it; they don’t like being labelled; they’re frustrated that a term they thought they understood has been undermined by excessive examination; and they feel it’s been devalued by bigger breweries slapping it on labels and pump-clips.

Jackson observed something similar in regard to ’boutique beer’ in the mid-eighties:

What the revivalists and new brewers offer is variety, not just of names and packages, but of classic beer-styles. That is why many of them dislike the term ’boutique beer’: it is descriptive, but perhaps suggests that their products might be ‘designer’ whims, fashionable but ephemeral.

To develop that thought, is it that brewers feel uneasy about being part of any ‘scene’ or ‘movement’ whose value may go down as well as up? Which might collapse when the ‘next big thing’ comes along?