Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 607 Do you call yourself a craft brewery, I asked one of Britain’s best and brightest brewers? He shook his head, a semaphore of ‘we’re a bit beyond that now’ and carried on telling me about his brewery’s barrel-aging programme. This was a couple of years ago and I think that was the moment when a big bell clanged within my head: ‘we don’t need a definition of craft beer anymore’ sang these metaphorical bells of, let’s say, St Clements. I can still feel those reverberations (and I’ve had similar comments from other brewers since that epiphany). If you are a brewery who is making exciting beer, whether it’s a barrel-aged saison, a Flemish-influenced sour brown, a vibrant IPA (West Coast, English, Czech-style, take your pick), a sleek muscular English bitter or an elegant Pilsner brimming with Saaz spice, calm down you don’t need to let the world know you’re craft anymore. You need to move on and instead tell the world that you make great/fantastic/savagely-delicious beer (the word awesome is so yesterday), and that the farmhouse ale (for instance) you brew owes more to a tradition in southern Belgium than a marketing term. Let me explain. Breweries, PRs and writers have been using the phrase ‘craft beer’ since the last decade, sometimes knowingly and other times with a nod and a wink. However it seems that since 2012 it has become essential for everyone and their mothers to declare, yes they were craft (with accompanying tattoos/beards/take-your-pick). At the same time, there was no definition of what it meant. Were craft brewers small, independent, cuckoo or gypsy, young, old, trendy or brash? No one knew but everyone had an opinion (I think the beer equivalent of Kim Kardashian breaking the internet for me was Stuart Bateman growling that he too was craft). Meanwhile, the likes of Guinness and Fosters got in on the act, telling their drinkers that they were craft as well (or at least crafty). The result, to my mind, is that craft doesn’t mean anything anymore; it has become a redundant catch-all term and something that marketing departments use to try and get their beers into the supermarket or onto a bar in a fashionable festival, without really thinking about what it means. This rash of me-tooish has also infected brewers, marketing types and beer writers, who argue that there is the need for the continuation of using the word craft. That it helps a brewery explain to the befuddled consumer that their farmhouse ale (again for instance) is something special that they should also pay a premium for (price is another kettle drum of hop-infused wort so let’s not go there for the moment). The argument continues that once a definition is found only then can British beer continue into the kind of sunlit pastures that Boris Johnson promised if Britain voted Brexit (that went well didn’t it?). Then of course the argument gets bogged down as the endless wheel of definition goes round and round and nothing much happens. Instead, I would argue that brewers should be bold and confident and say, paraphrasing Oscar Wilde, that they have nothing to declare but their collective brewing genius; that their beers are strong enough to be sold to a drinking public who are thirsty for beer. After all, we are in perhaps one of the most exciting times in British brewing since the 19th century and there is no need to dress it up with faux American declarations or definitions that have written by a committee of wise men and women. Of course, there are always clouds on the horizon when it comes to British beer: buyouts of breweries continue to cause dismay amongst the fervent; experimentation can often topple over into gimmickry (I’m not a great fan of fruit-infused IPAs for instance); and not every example of bottle-conditioned beer meets the high standards that those of us that love beer expect. However, on the other hand when I taste something like Thornbridge’s Sour Brown (Derbyshire meets West Flanders and they both get on famously), Chorlton’s Amarillo Sour (a grapefruit just grew up and started drinking beer) or Fourpure’s Shapeshifter, which is perhaps one of the best West Coast IPAs I have ever had from a British brewery, then I know that the future is bright and that we never have to hear the word craft again… So my message to British brewers would be move forward with confidence and hope, drop the word craft and let those who continue to use it be seen as hollow men and women unable to leave behind a gimmick. After all, in one of my previous working existences as a music writer I do remember the pity that those who still claimed to be punk in the mid 1980s were held… Adrian Tierney-Jones Adrian Tierney-Jones We’re not craft any more Adrian Tierney-Jones is a freelance journalist whose work appears in the Daily Telegraph, All About Beer, Beer, Original Gravity, Sunday Times Travel Magazine, and Publican’s Morning Advertiser amongst many others. He’s been writing books since 2002 and they include West Country Ales, Great British Pubs, Britain’s Beer Revolution (co-written with Roger Protz) and the history of the International Brewing Awards Brewing Champions; general editor of 1001 Beers To Try Before You Die and contributor to The Oxford Companion to Beer, World Beer and 1001 Restaurants You Must Experience Before You Die. Chair of Judges at the World Beer Awards and also on the jury at Brussels Beer Challenge, International Beer Challenge and Birra Dell’Anno. brewingbusiness.co.uk 7_Layout 1 28/07/2016 09:25 Page 1