8 BREWING & BEVERAGE INDUSTRIES BUSINESS Is all beer created equal? Should we regard all beer, whether it’s brewed in a farmhouse hidden away in the middle of nowhere or a bright and sparkling industrial unit on the unlit edge of town or even a wanna-be megapolis sited just off a motorway, in the same way? Does it matter that a campaign to persuade more people to drink beer suggests Miller Lite, the ubiquitous Doom Bar or the Catalonian seaside special Estrella Damm as a match for a particular dish rather than something from Cloudwater, Magic Rock or Beavertown (I know which beers I’d devour)? Does it even matter that there seems to be a mantra running through the more venerable part of the UK brewing industry that all beer is good (as a beer writer I keep hearing it like an echo in a cave)? This then leads onto the next question: does ownership of a brewery matter? Independence even? Should we just drink what is in the glass and decide whether we like it or not according to our own personal preferences rather than how we look to those around us or who follow us on Twitter? The easiest answer to all of these questions is: yes, all beer is created equal. When it comes down to it, beer is a personal preference, you either like it or not. If it quenches the thirst, makes the drinker feel good about the day and is the clink of conversation in the pub, then who cares? On the other hand, beer also comes with a lot of cultural baggage and bias. Drinkers have their own views on the beers they like. And even though we live in exciting times, as well as what sometimes seems like an endless online war of words between those to which cask caters and those whose badge of craft is a uniform of modernity, this view of beer as being something more than the liquid in the glass is nothing new. Drinkers have always had their prejudices. I recall being told by the late founder of Butcombe Simon Whitmore that due to the logo of Bristol brewery Georges (swallowed up by Courage in the 1960s) being a carthorse, unimpressed local drinkers often said that the beer tasted like it had passed through one. Lager, of course, was another divider. Casketeers would talk of industrial yellow fizz (and some still do), while lager lovers would talk of old men’s beer. Nowadays this battle is joined between those who like ‘murky’ fruit-juice beer and those who love ‘twiggy’ ale. Then there’s independence. Back in the summer of 2016 SIBA launched the Assured Independent British Craft Brewer seal, a new kitemarking system that the Society’s members could feature as a logo on their products. To qualify, they had to agreed to abide by SIBA’s Food Safety & Quality standard; be an independent brewer who is a sole trader, a partnership, a limited company or a public company but is not a subsidiary of a larger firm with attendant or other subsidiary brewing interests; and finally brew less than 200,000hl annually. So far, it seems that over a third of members have taken up the offer of the logo. Independence is a very emotive subject as events in the UK and the USA easily demonstrate. I recall being on a press trip at BrewDog when news broke of the sale of Meantime to SAB-Miller (they are now owned by Asahi) — a journalist asked BrewDog co-founder James Watt if he would ever consider taking that route. His reply was an emphatic no (though back in April, a private equity firm acquired a 22% stake in the company) and Meantime beers were withdrawn from their bars; this also happened with US brewery Ballast Point. An ironic counter-withdrawal occurred when Burning Sky stopped their beers being sold in Brewdog bars, though this seemed more about the aesthetics of punk. Top of my head, other breweries that can no longer be considered wholly independent are Camden (AB-InBev) and Hawkshead (Halewood Group), but in my view they still make very good beers and I drink them when I find them. However, and this is just a personal view, I do have a very jaundiced view of the owners of Camden, who in the last few years have been on a medium-sized shopping spree in the US and Europe. Call it a prejudice, or an inability to move on from both the companies’ actions in the past or just a folk memory of the tales I heard about Whitbread’s buyouts in the 1950s and 60s, but I find it hard to trust them. This is despite Camden’s founder Jasper Cuppaidge being on record as saying that nothing is going to change (apart from of course the recently built brewery in Enfield). I hope he’s right. However, as for all beer to be considered equal I don’t really think so: in my personal preference. I don’t enjoy drinking ‘lite’ lagers that taste of nothing; I don’t like badly made bitters brimming with acetaldehyde or diacetyl; and I don’t like mild (there I’ve said it). Some beers are more equal than others, and it’s up to you to work that one out and not let anyone or any campaign change your mind about it. Adrian Tierney-Jones Called To the Bar Adrian Tierney-Jones is a freelance journalist whose work also appears in the Daily Telegraph, Original Gravity, Sunday Times Travel Magazine, Inapub and Imbibe 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 his latest The Seven Moods of Craft Beer; 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 the Brussels Beer Challenge, Dutch Beer Challenge and the Copa Latinoamericana de Cervezas Artesanales in Peru. Blogs at http://maltworms.blogspot.co.uk ADRIAN TIERNEY-JONES So just how equal is equal? 8_Layout 1 10/11/2017 08:03 Page 1