Archive for the ‘opinion’ Category

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Marketing: the work of the devil?

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

According to some people, there are two big reasons for crappy industrial beer: bloody accountants and bloody marketing people.

Now, there are some things for which brewery marketing departments might deserve the blame: packaging that damages the product, both literally and in terms of its reputation; empty blandishments — “finest malt and hops”; “premium world lager”; “only four ingredients“; and gimmicky “innovations” forced upon sometimes unwilling brewers.

But can’t marketing, at it’s best, be a bridge between the specialised world of the brewer or beer geek and that of the as-yet unconverted? Like a kind of translator, perhaps.

“Naff marketing terms” might wind-up seasoned beer geeks but they can engage people’s interest in a product they might otherwise never notice or, worse, entirely dismiss. (And they do gain charm with the patina of age…)

Is the best marketing, in fact, a form of beervangelism?

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Posted in marketing, opinion | 24 Comments »

Coca Cola flavours

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

Re-reading Stan Hieronymous‘s Brew Like a Monk, we were struck by this statement from brewer Yvan de Baets on p213:

One of the main goals of Belgian brewers should be to fight against the Coca-Cola flavors and those kind of gadget tastes… We should be about cultural tastes, not animal tastes.

He sounds like an artist or writer rather than a manufacturer. It’s almost poetry. We don’t quite know what he means by “animal tastes” but the phrase “Coca-Cola flavors” chimes strongly.

When Belgians say things like this, they sound like Obi Wan Kenobi. When British brewers try it, they sound like berks. Our culture just doesn’t tolerate anything that smells remotely like pretension, does it?

For about the eightieth time, we must add that, if you haven’t read BLAM (hey, cool acronym!) then you should. Very readable, full of characters and stories, as well as technical detail.

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Posted in Belgium, opinion | 10 Comments »

Depends, how much did it cost?

Wednesday, February 1st, 2012

Last week, this Tweet got us thinking:

Well, in a way, the answer is yes, but bear with us.

How do you reduce the price of beer when you’ve got a price point to reach? You reduce the cost of production, storage and distribution by

  • producing in greater volumes
  • using fewer and/or cheaper ingredients (e.g. hops)
  • conditioning/lagering for shorter times (see Tandleman on this here)
  • brewing your beer to be acceptable to the widest possible market.

It’s still possible to brew a good beer within those parameters and, in fact, we’ve had the odd pint of Sam Smith’s Old Brewery Bitter which rivals Harvey’s Sussex Best for complexity and zing. On the whole, however, the more corners are cut, the more industrialised the process, the less likely the beer is to excite anyone. Everyone got that likely, right?

While it would be wrong to answer the question “Is this a craft beer?” with “Depends, how much did it cost?”, it wouldn’t be reckless to bet that a pint that costs £1.30 will be a bit boring. It might still be satisfying, it might not be nasty, but it probably won’t be exciting.

Note: we’re not making the case for super-expensive beer; our beer of the year for 2011 costs £2.60 a pint. And the Sam Smith’s beer pictured above is anything but cheap…

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Posted in buying beer, Generalisations about beer culture, opinion | 100 Comments »

Bar well and truly raised

Friday, January 27th, 2012

The Bull, Highgate

Ten years ago, with the range of beers they offer today, the Red Lion in Leytonstone or the Bull in Highgate would have been among the best pubs in London. Now, while certainly way better than run-of-the-mill, they merely count as friendly neighbourhood craft beer bars.

That’s right: every neighbourhood in London now seems to have a craft beer bar and many (like the Bull) are also brewing. Everywhere you look, there are enamel signs advertising Orval and glowing neon Brooklyn Brewery logos. These days, you’re never more than a bus ride from a pint of Dark Star or a Camden Helles.

These kinds of places seem (thank God) to be replacing the kind of ‘style bars’ or ersatz ‘gastropubs’ which were everywhere until recently and which had snobbery without the saving grace of exciting beer. They were the kinds of places where you would be charged a fiver for a pint of stale Erdinger wheat beer or four quid for a pint of UK-brewed San Miguel; now, for that money, you get beers that are (arguably) worth the asking price.

There’s more detail on each of these pubs to follow in subsequent posts. Suffice to say we liked them all the more for their localness: drinking in them didn’t feel like a trip to Beerworld, Britain’s newest theme park.

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Posted in london, opinion, pubs | 10 Comments »

Making the case

Friday, January 27th, 2012

Is this nitro-keg stout from a regional family brewer a so-called “craft beer”? What about this notoriously boring cask bitter from another? What about the keg version of this borderline bland but kind-of-OK cask beer?

There is nothing inherently ‘craft’ about one beer or another, and no device you can use to measure a beer’s ‘craftness’. Because it is more subjective than deciding whether a beer is ‘real ale’ or not, it boils down to whether:

(a) there is something like a consensus that a particular beer has craft status (i.e. it ticks all the boxes and leaves little room for argument) or

(b) someone has made the case for it ticking at least some of the boxes.

That might be drinkers (or ‘fans’ as we increasingly frequently call those who boost one brewery or another) or, more often, the brewers themselves. One way the latter can do so is by being transparent about their methods and materials.

Actually, a better question than “Is X craft beer?” is “If Y is craft beer, why isn’t X?”

Ninety nine per cent of the time, though, if you’re asking about a particular beer, you’re being mischievous, and already know the answer.

P.S. Are Eddie and the Hot Rods punk? What about Elvis Costello? What about the reformed Sex Pistols?

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Posted in opinion | 15 Comments »

Them and us

Thursday, January 26th, 2012

Broken glass

Two hours in to a busy shift at one of London’s currently trendy specialist beer bars, we see a barman heading into the gents. He’s wearing rubber gloves and carrying a mop because someone has pissed all over the wall and floor.

Fifteen minutes later, he picks up a broken glass from a shelf near us, only just avoiding cutting his hand. His face reddens. “Fucking pigs,” he says under his breath, and you know he means all of us — every one of the tipsy, slightly loud people crowding the bar that night.

Later, when we’re at the bar, he doesn’t seem to be in the mood to talk to us or anyone else. He is tight-lipped and frowning. In fact, he doesn’t seem to want to be there at all.

Of course it’s never the customer’s problem that the barman is having a bad day but, sometimes, especially in overstuffed London, we do understand where the scowls and aloofness come from.

Some bar staff and managers handle this by Tweeting their fury in real time which can be enlightening and dispiriting in equal measure.

Pic by Paulius Peciura from Flickr Creative Commons.

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Posted in london, opinion, pubs | 13 Comments »

The Premium Sausage Problem

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
A sausage delivery truck.

Detail from "Sausage truck" by Tuppus (Flickr, Creative Commons)

At some point in the last twenty years, the concept of the ‘premium sausage’ emerged: a banger with fewer additives, better quality meat and stronger flavours.

The problem with premium sausages? They’re sometimes too meaty — they lack a cohesive texture — and just don’t taste like sausages.

Yes, some really cheap sausages are downright nasty, made entirely of salty breadcrumbs dyed pink, but, really, the point of sausages is to make good use of offal and fat. They’re supposed to be full of crappy but delicious meat, fat, flavourings and, yes, breadcrumbs.

How does this relate to beer? After much experimenting, we have to conclude that we can’t taste the difference between whole leaf hops, pellets, extracts and oils, at least not in normal pub-going conditions; refusing to use sugar in beer on purity grounds seems to be missing a trick; and one of our favourite bottled lagers, Svyturys Ekstra Draft, uses rice in its grist, and we’re sure there are others.

Maybe more beers made lovingly but with cheaper ingredients would help to bring the price down? As long as brewers were transparent about it, we wouldn’t mind at all.

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Posted in opinion | 20 Comments »

Hypothetical pubs — post mortem

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

Or “To put it another way…”

Our post in which we asked people to choose pubs based purely on keg/cask beer selection generated plenty of comment and — as we’d hoped — gave us plenty more food for thought. So, here are a few further observations, as the dust settles.

1. Craft beer’ and ‘real ale’ aren’t just about beer: they can’t be separated from all the cultural gubbins that surrounds them. That’s why several commenters questioned the very basis of the post, and why Simon “Reluctant Scooper” Johnson’s sarky aside about pork pies and topless barmaids is valid.

2. We don’t want to be pushed into taking sides in an imaginary battle between ‘real ale’ and ‘craft keg’. There’s room for complexity in this conversation, and absolutists on either side are in a minority. They’ve got a place in the conversation, too, but it’d be a shame if it was all about them chucking bricks at each other over everyone else’s heads.

3. Whether it should or not, this conversation makes people defensive and emotional. (Even we ‘threw our toys out of the pram’ this time which happens fairly infrequently.) Isn’t that bonkers? As we’re sure someone will point out before long, it’s only beer. (“Oh no it isn’t!”)

4. Finally, if we could choose from all four pubs, we’d be in the Bird in Hand, the pub with the interesting cask ale. We’re Real Ale Twats at heart. Others might well choose the ‘craft keg’ pub, the Red Lion, and we wouldn’t think any less of them for it.

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Posted in opinion, real ale | 3 Comments »

Five suggestions for Greene King

Friday, January 13th, 2012

Greene King, by all accounts, are puzzled and hurt by the disdain in which they (and especially their IPA) are held by beer geeks.

As usual, we (as Tandleman would say) sit on the fence a bit when it comes to Greene King: we recognise they make some good beers, but worry that their IPA is a Trojan horse — a beer so bland it has more in common with John Smith’s Extra Smooth than any other ‘real ale’.

However, inspired by this post at the Campaign for Really Good Beer, we thought we’d be constructive and suggest five things they can do to improve their image.

1. Instead of inviting critics and commentators one at a time to come and stand on your lovely roof and meet you charming head brewer, why not make a lot more information about how your beer is made available online? At the moment (unless we’re missing something) the website is all about branding and packaging.

2. Get out and try GK IPA as it is drunk in pubs all around the country: however subtle, balanced and well-made it might be at source, by the time it reaches, say, Exeter, it is usually, in our experience, warm, vinegary and flat. Has it got more market share than your quality control mechanisms can cope with?

3. As CAMRGB suggested, stop pretending that your pubs serve beers from a range of breweries and, in particular, nix the disingenuous London Glory. This is just cheeky and takes your customers for mugs.

4. With that huge London estate, surely there’s room somewhere for a pub which serves your full range of beers, from the rarely seen but apparently excellent mild, via Suffolk Strong, all the way up to the currently brewery-exclusive 5X? A flagship pub where you could send cynics to taste your best products as you intend them to be tasted?

5. On the subject of mild, given that anyone drinking GK IPA has already foregone any pretensions of youthfulness or trendiness, probably attracted by the low ABV as much as anything else, maybe there’s a market you’re failing to tap? We groan when we see your IPA on sale in a pub in Cornwall, but we’d be delighted to see your mild.

Some of this would also apply to St Austell and some other big regional brewers. If any of the above are already happening and we’ve missed them, let us know.

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Posted in london, marketing, opinion | 29 Comments »

Words as blunt tools

Thursday, January 12th, 2012

Last night, another conversation about the language we use to discuss beer kicked off when Lovibonds brewer Jeff Rosenmeier said this on Twitter:

Tweet: I don't like the term 'craft keg'. It's craft beer. Am I alone on this one?

Our two penn’orth was in the form of a quick diagram (above, top) which shows how we think it works in the UK, i.e. with ‘craft beer’ as a super-category which includes most real ale, some kegged beer and (not included in the pic) some bottled beer.

The fact is, though, that none of the terms we use are perfect; they’re just blunt tools to enable conversation.

We’re both reminded of meetings we used to endure in previous jobs. Typically, six hours would be set aside to solve a problem, of which five would be spent going round the table arguing about the language: “What exactly does ‘world class’ mean? I don’t like it.”

The last hour would be spent discussing how there was no longer enough time to solve the problem and agreeing dates for another six hour meeting.

 

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Posted in opinion | 18 Comments »

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