It is certainly true that, compared with ten years ago, the excitement surrounding craft beer has very much worn off. And that is perhaps a key point, that it was a concept that was all about novelty and innovation, but there is only so far you can take that before you enter the territory of embracing unusual flavours and ingredients purely for their own sake. People inevitably became a bit fed up with it all and preferred to return to tried and trusted favourites. Plus the drinkers who fuelled the initial boom have grown older, bought houses, had children, got more responsible jobs and don’t have so much time for it any more.
From the start, a key problem was always that “craft” is, as the article states, “an unclear marketing term”, and there have been endless debates over how it should be defined. As I wrote last year, “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?” For many drinkers, the term has come to be synonymous with a particular type of heavily-hopped, astringent and possibly hazy keg IPA.
The issue was further clouded by some of what were perceived as the leading craft brands, such as Camden and Beavertown, being acquired by the international brewers. To counter this, SIBA launched a campaign to stress breweries’ independent status, but the problem with this is, that while it’s useful to know, of itself it says nothing about the character or quality of the actual beer.
Craft has also suffered from an often justified perception that it is expensive. As Matthew McAloone of 40ft Brewery says:
“It's the more expensive part of the bar and the charges that have been levied on hospitality in terms of duty the government has put in, it has made it impossible for bars and restaurants to do what they want to do, so they’re consolidating range, which is normally into mainstream products and they’re sacrificing craft… it makes commercial sense and you sell a lot of beer, big guys will give you money just to stock their beer, and their stuff’s cheaper… its the safe bet”.It’s certainly the case that “craft keg” in pubs tends to sell at a considerable price premium over equivalent cask beers or mainstream lagers, and the craft section is by far the most expensive part of the supermarket beer aisle. So, at a time when many people’s budgets are stretched, it’s hardly surprising that they’re less willing to splash out on it.
Craft is also characterised, almost by definition, by stronger and more distinctive flavours than mainstream beers. This may have encouraged people to try it out of a spirit of experimentation, but are they going to decide that it’s something they want to drink on a regular basis? And it isn’t helped by many craft offerings being hazy or cloudy. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but it remains something that is perceived by most beer drinkers as offputting.
Craft beer became associated with the stereotypical image of the “hipster”, and was seen as being surrounded by pretentiousness and pseudery. Some craft brewers also saw themselves as engaged in a socio-political crusade rather than just brewing interesting beer, which to some extent limited their appeal and has come to be increasingly at odds with the current Zeitgeist.
In the middle of the 2010s, there was a wave of enthusiasm around craft beer, which could almost be described as a feeding frenzy. Staid family brewers were jumping on the bandwagon in the fear that they might end up being left behind, and all kinds of wacky brewing projects were being launched. I wrote about what appeared to be the peak of the bubble in 2017. As Matthew McAloone says:
“We were expecting it to grow and grow and grow and take over everything, but it just wasn’t what the market wanted and now we know were it’s at, we know how much is up for grabs, there just won’t be as many people able to compete for it."The craft boom also caught CAMRA like a rabbit in the headlights, and resulted in the ill-advised Revitalisation Project, which didn’t at the end of the day resolve anything. CAMRA beer festivals can now sell keg beers that do not qualify as “real ale”, but there is no clarity as to what is acceptable and what isn’t. “Real Ale” at least is something that can be objectively defined.
The froth had very much gone off the top by 2019, and it was clear by then that expectations for the growth of craft had been grossly over-optimistic. James Watt’s assertion that IPA would eventually replace lager, as lager had replaced bitter, sounded questionable then, and with hindsight seems risible although, as is usually the case with BrewDog, it was probably mostly just a case of courting publicity. The Covid lockdowns and pub closures of 2020-21 dealt a further blow to the market.
There remains a definite niche for interesting, innovative keg and canned beers sold at a premium price, but it’s only a small segment of the overall beer market, and the excitement of ten years ago has pretty much entirely dissipated. I’ve made the point in the past that the enduring legacy of the British craft beer movement is likely to be the presence of a hoppy keg IPA on many bars, of which Neck Oil is possibly the prime example. There recently been an new entrant in the form of Alpacalypse, a collaboration between the independent Salt Brewery and Molson Coors. But the question has to be asked how many of these beers will still be on bars on twenty years’ time. I’m pretty certain Guinness will be, though.
It has to be remembered that beer is a product that is generally consumed in a social context, and drinkers will inevitably be influenced by the choices made by their companions, and feel some kind of desire to fit in. This applies to home drinking too. Most off-trade beer is still drunk in company, not in isolation. And craft, for many people, now comes across as either highly idiosyncratic or just old hat.
Craft is and was always about selling indentikit over-hopped home-brewed IPAs at premium prices.
ReplyDeleteMost is and was undrinkable slops.
The worst part about the craft beer ' revolution ' is how it leeched into traditional brewing persuading established breweries and the conglomerates that own them to mass produce identical versions of insipid pale ales/IPAs, chasing that elusive 18-35 market at the expensive of their long-standing brands.
Even the TT Landlords of this world seem pale, pun intended, in comparison to what they used to taste like.
I try most of them that appear in my local pubs and most are shite.
The local craft beer bar, Kettlesmiths, produces appalling badly-made beer and charges a king's ransom for the pleasure of sitting in a former shop window on a stranger's lap.
Once in a while I get a murky grapefruit juice that's drinkable for about a quart.
Craft beer dies not because it's different but because it took samey.
I totally agree Professor ! All the craft i have tried is like drinking grapefruit juice. I detest it. I am very lucky in my area to have Bathams, Enville, Holdens, Three Tuns, and Wye Valley. In the South of course there is the wonderful Harveys Best !!
DeleteYes, I asked the lads again tonight about craft beer and " fuck that " was the general opinion. https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.Xg6ls6T4hgfbph9ZBN9tbwHaGV%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=72d471495aab07405e3b1d34d232819d25f94056b01c9b6b8ea07c2348a50065&ipo=images
DeleteAnd those are proper caps. Not those Peaky Blinder nonce-bonces the likes of Beckham wear.
Delete( Five pints of Old Rosie since you ask ... )
I'm in Shetland and I once heard craft described as "Yun craft greth" Greth is Shetlandic for piss.
ReplyDeleteI can walk into any number of trusted pubs and enjoy a DDH DIPA or a kumquat sour or an Imperial Pastry Stout or a Thiolized Brut Black Saison or whatever.
ReplyDeleteCraft isn't dead - it's just no longer the darling of the transient hipster types who have moved on to other things, as you rightly point out, and who were largely never concerned with the actual beer anyway.
And that's a good thing. Boundary -pushing, tasty, well-made beer is still around for those of us who are in it for the beer, not because we follow mindless fads.
Now we just need the tiresome 'anti craft' brigade to move on from their vacuous and uninformed sideline carping and we can all get on with our lives.
Prog rock didn't die when punk came along - it just returned to its rightful owner. Same with beer.
Yes, I'm a beer snob and not a typical drinker, but I have a feeling it's going to be customers like me that keep 'craft' alive now the conformists have lost interest.
Which bears out my point. really - it is still there as a niche product for those who want it, but the days when it was going to revolutionise the wider beer market are long gone. And in the generality of pubs, the only evidence you will see of it are those keg IPAs, like Punk and Shipyard in Spoons.
DeleteChill out, have a Madri, ffs.
DeleteA wonderful comment Bon, one that evokes the full self regard many beer enthusiasts display. More please! The more craft declines to a more selective appreciation, the better you are!
DeleteThere’s little to disagree with in your perspective. I’d add a couple of points of my own.
ReplyDeleteIn relation to CAMRA the revitalisation project was a necessary attempt at organisational survival. Those with affection for the organisation may have regret it failed. There is a certain type of person that joined organisations like CAMRA and across generations had been doing so. A new generation had chosen that craft keg beer was their drink of choice to intellectualise drinking and show discernment and CAMRA had alienated them. Some, like Curtis, have subsequently joined you, many didn’t. The result is you missed a chunk of members and volunteers to keep the shebang on the road. The shebang isn’t cask or tradition. It’s sniffing a weird brown liquid and talking about it and making it a hobby rather than necking it.
The other point I’d make is craft beer has a class perspective. It was about middle-class people creating a product of discernment separate from the mainstream. It was never inclusive to all drinkers. Traditionally beer has been a domestic drink of the labouring classes, whilst the administrative classes favoured imported wine. In taking Schumacher’s conceit that small is beautiful from CAMRA they created a domestic alternative to wine imports whilst protecting their financial interests. Macro brewing and Pub Cos being FTSE quoted companies are owned by pension funds and their success benefits their own consumers in a virtuous circle. Small privately owned companies funded by Daddy transferred wealth from mug punters wanting status to established wealth. Yet they convinced so many that the guys paying the profits into their pensions were the bad guys.
Next its interesting to note how the American fad affected our European neighbours with stronger beer drinking traditions than our own and stronger attachments to domestic brands, styles and traditions. It was never much more than a hipster fad that came and went among the kids along with check shirts and beards. The Trad beers are still in rude health. Unlike our own that remain in terminal decline.
I deliberately didn't mention class, but a taste for craft beer is an archetypal middle-class signifier. Real ale, in contrast, at least in its early days was drunk by all classes, although that is less the case now.
DeleteThe thing about Revitalisation is that ultimately it failed. It was an attempt to switch CAMRA from a campaign for "real ale" to a campaign for "all good beer", i.e. the beers than beer snobs approve of. But, while it may give a nod to "interesting range of craft kegs", all CAMRA's awards and listings still revolve around what real ales are available, and the move to disbar "low-quality macro real ales" never came to anything.
DeleteYou still lost a cohort in previous generations, you'd of gained had a keg product of beer discernment not appeared. You notice it whenever you notice how old your CAMRA group is.
DeleteAs for Jimmy Brewdogs sage predictions. People speak to an audience, Jimmy was selling investments as much as he was selling beer. Telling them IPA was going to overtake lager was hyping the shares he was selling.
That's a very accurate and well written article.
ReplyDelete"A particular type of heavily-hopped, astringent and possibly hazy keg IPA" never reached many of the proper pubs I've tended to use, except perhaps a redundant Neck Oil tap recently. Draught Bass is appearing in more of those pubs now, so that's probably what they should have been selling all along.
I miss beer that tastes of beer.
ReplyDeleteThere is still plenty of that around :-)
DeleteJust had some in the form of a 6% half litre bottle of dry stout.
DeleteOscar
I like this. A small pearl in the oyster of pub gloom. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/united-kingdom/my-dry-january-pub-crawl-in-britains-drinking-capital/
ReplyDelete( Just the four pints of Rosie's Pig and a brace of Krakens tonight since you ask. It was Burns Night in the pub and I told my annual joke of being invited to a joint celebration of Burns and the Chinese New Year called Chinese Burns night. I wasn't originally going to go but they twisted my arm ... )
Difficult to disagree with anything there. It seems obvious in hindsight (doesn't everything?) that the craft empire was built on pillars of sand. The difficulty I have now is the retrenchment of craft, and the lottery of cask, sometimes leaves a tough decision on what to buy at the bar. If its a trusted pub, I'll stick with cask, if its an unknown, I'll pick up on cues and make a decision. But in some cases if you don't like lager or Guinness, you're now in a worst position than the pre craft boom. Of course cask quality has declined for many reasons, but drinkers leaving for other products hasn't helped.
ReplyDeleteCraft legacy might just be the occasional keg IPA, and a few more interesting bottles in a fridge, and a specialist bar in city centres. But on a wider point where cask is struggling to shift, pubs might be better switching to a keg IPA from a semi-mainstream brewer.
Yes, craft undermining cask volumes and thus quality is a further issue. I've often said that venues that struggle to turn over a nine in three days would be better off switching to keg.
DeleteVenues that struggle to turn over a nine in three days wouldn't if they installed a cask breather.
DeleteBest of the American style pale ales is Sierra Nevada pale ale and Galway Hooker pale ale both have a nice maltiness and not over saturated in their hoppy aspect.
ReplyDeletePersonally my favourite pale ale is Sullivans gold which uses English hops.
Oscar
"And craft, for many people, now comes across as either highly idiosyncratic or just old hat."
ReplyDeleteThose 'many people' are presumably the few in your bubble, because you couldn't be more wrong. All that's happening is that the market is maturing.
Aspirational ambitious work group goes into pub.
Delete"What are you having, folks"
"Guinness, please".
"Cruzcampo for me".
Looks at "craft wall" at the back of the bar.
"Oh, Pregnant Hippo IPA."
"Wanker"!
My experience of drinking in Bristol,Birmingham,London,Manchester and other cities shows that craft beer is doing well in environments such as tap rooms and appears to be far from dead. I am not sure what the 'ambitious work group' are aspiring to if it is drinking Guinness it clearly has no taste or aspiration.
ReplyDelete"Craft does well in craft bars" - that's rather my point. But apart from those keg IPAs it hasn't entered the mainstream.
DeleteThe pub industry is becoming increasingly fragmented with distinct sectors catering for distinct markets and what would have appeared as a mainstream market 5 or more years ago has become sub divided to an extent that there is perhaps no mainstream pub market left with different offers to suit one sector of the market,in such circumstances it would be difficult to claim that a product which is doing well in its own market sector is 'dead or dying' because it has not established itself in other distinct sectors of the market
DeleteAs January 29th shudders to a close it's comforting to know that there are only two more days before I won't feel that slight twinge of guilt pouring another gentleman's-sized Gordon's Gin and Tonic over a mound of ice. A pal on mine has drunk £30's worth of pints of soda water and lime this month and is counting down the minutes. It'll be like a yoghurt truck hitting a wall. I don't mind the Dry January types but it's those insufferabe bastards who say " Ya, you know, it's soo great feeling cleansed in body and soul that from now on I'm going to do it Mondays to Fridays. " Yeah, jog on pal.
ReplyDeleteIf you don’t like drinking fair enough but do not preach about it. Just as I would not preach about enjoying a few beers a few days a week.
DeleteOscar
Oscar - if you think I don't like drinking then I have been wasting my time all these years regaling Mudgie and various other beer bloggers ( I suppose the collective noun would be a pong of beer bloggers ) about the wide variety of ways I like to get shit-faced.
DeleteNo doubting your commitment to tippling.
DeleteOscar
Sort of drink-related with news that the Irish government has revealed the results of the first year of their Deposit Return Scheme on single use containers.
ReplyDelete980 million items were handed in.
I know I shouldn't be surprised but I am that a country as small as Ireland has put nearly a billion of these things into landfill every year.
https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/more-than-980-million-containers-returned-during-first-year-of-deposit-return-scheme/a1937712491.html
Many, possibly most, of those items would already have been recycled through existing system. Apart perhaps from when I'm on holiday, every drink container I buy gets recycled rather than put in the general rubbish.
DeleteProbably a little over-optimistic. https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/2024/12/15/irelands-recycling-rate-stalls-for-a-decade-while-waste-continues-to-grow/
DeleteInteresting nugget from today's Telegraph in a piece by Kamal Ahmed.
ReplyDelete" I have obtained an internal briefing document from the British Beer and Pub Association which details how one of those random announcements – a cut in business rate relief – will affect their members.
“When the relief falls from 75 per cent to 40 per cent on April 1, pubs will be much worse off – to the tune of many thousands of pounds each as their bills more than double,” the briefing says.
“This comes straight off a pub’s profit and means that they will have to increase their trade many times over this amount, just in order to stand still.”
And it's no April Fool's joke.
" Conservative Party research shows that over 36,000 pubs across the country face an average extra rates bill of £5,500 a year. "
ReplyDelete