State of independence

“Craft beer” started to become a widely-used concept in the UK around fifteen years ago. But ever since then it has been dogged by the issue of how it is actually defined. Is it the type of beer, the kind of ingredients used, the size of the brewery, the independent status of the brewery, the ethos of the brewery, or some kind of nebulous combination of all these factors?

And then a fly in the ointment appeared, as the major international brewers started to buy up what were perceived as “craft” brands such as Camden and Beavertown. Punters might think that pint of Neck Oil comes from a hip, edgy brewery, but in fact it’s an offshoot of Heineken.

This process was described by a newspaper article as How Big Lager Crushed Britain’s Craft Beer Revolution, but that is something of a misrepresentation of describing an entirely normal business process. In any industry, when a new product category appears on the scene, existing companies will attempt to get a share of the action, either by developing their own competing products or taking over the innovators, and that is exactly what has happened in beer. Sometimes a start-up emerges from the pack to became a major competitor in its own right, as has happened with BrewDog, although I would expect them to also sell out to a major corporate in the fullness of time.

To counter the confusion created by these craft takeovers, SIBA (the Society of Independent Brewers) have launched an initiative to highlight breweries’ independent status, using an Indie Beer badge. It is open to all breweries to use this, not just members of SIBA, provided that they are genuinely independent from the control of larger corporations, and account for no more than 1% of the British beer market, indicating a production level of around 220,000 barrels a year.

There’s a lot to be said for transparency, but the question has to asked to what extent this is something that drinkers class as important. They may say in opinion surveys that they prefer beer from small independent breweries to that made by giant corporations, but their revealed preference often indicates otherwise. All they want at the end of the day is a decent pint. And this is a beer market where the majority of sales are accounted for by UK-brewed versions of international lager brands. This is not to say that people are stupid, just that independence and authenticity are not in practice given a high priority. I’d guess that most of the people to whom it really matters that Neck Oil is brewed by an offshoot of Heineken are already well aware of that fact.

It also needs to be remembered that independent status is not of itself necessarily a mark of quality, and, to be fair, it isn’t really being suggested it is. Over the years, I’ve encountered no shortage of poor products from micro-breweries, and indeed “this tastes like home brew” is a common criticism. On the other hand, while not all of their products may be to your taste, Asahi/Fullers at Chiswick, Greene King at Bury St Edmunds, and Carlsberg-Marstons at Burton and Wolverhampton are all pretty competent brewers who know what they’re doing. Beer isn’t purely a functional product, and people often take into account the wider connotations of a brand when choosing which one to buy, but it takes a certain amount of perversity to deliberately opt for an inferior product purely because it comes from a small company. There will be plenty of items in your house that were supplied by major corporations and which you have bought for practical reasons.

It was noticeable on the day that this campaign was launched that one of the first brewers to use the badge was Timothy Taylor’s, who brew the second best-selling cask ale in the country. They were followed by Arkell’s, Felinfoel and Palmer’s, three of the most conservative family brewers in the country, and known for the (in some people’s eyes) brownness and boringness of their beers. All the remaining family brewers fall comfortably within SIBA’s definition of independence, but no doubt some people will feel a little uncomfortable with this. I ran a Twitter poll showing that 85% of respondents thought they should be included, but 15% didn’t.

POLL: Would you classify long-established family brewers such as Holt’s and Robinson’s as “independent” brewers?

— Pub Curmudgeon 🌸🍻 (@oldmudgie) October 22, 2024

In the early days of the British craft beer movement, many of those who were most committed to it as a kind of ideological crusade saw the family brewers as embodying everything they were opposed to. This attitude has mellowed somewhat in more recent years, and only last week Timothy Taylor’s been promoting a stout made in a collaboration with Northern Monk. But it still persists, and is perhaps particularly prevalent in Greater Manchester, where the four surviving family brewers perhaps have a greater share of tied pubs than anywhere else in the country.

Only the other day, I saw some twerp on Twitter saying “I hate Robinson’s”, and the attitude is exemplified by the response to this column that I wrote for Opening Times five years ago. Some people are going to continue lumping Batham’s and Hook Norton in with “big beer”, and when they see Shepherd Neame using the Indie Beer badge will mutter darkly “this isn’t what it’s supposed to mean!”

And it would be a splendid piece of trolling if Samuel Smith’s, who describe themselves in their publicity as being “a small, independent brewery” also decided to adopt the Indie Beer badge.