The discussion about the re-launched Let There Be Beer campaign has now reached the point that I actually know why people are against it. Still don't agree with them mind.
Amongst the mass of incoherent ranting a comment from Dave Bailey has brought some clarity to the matter. He aligns himself with discerning drinkers, so feels more in common with wine drinkers than drinkers of mass produced beer. I myself feel no affinity with any inferior fruit based beverage, and the best pint I ever had came from a national brewer. I'd rather see someone drinking pretty much any beer rather than wine.
There seems to be clear division between whether we should be promoting beer as a premium product or beer for mass consumption. I find one of the beauties of banging on about beer is that in the broader scheme of things it's pretty much irrelevant, but having said that if we're not aiming to make decent beer available to all at a reasonable price then it's not my revolution.
So beer geeks, the line has been drawn: Which Side Are You On?
Come all you beer drinkers
Good news to you I'll tell
Of how the good old Campaign
Has come in here to dwell
Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?
My daddy was a drinker
He's now in the Rising Sun
He'll be with you fellow drinkers
Until the battle's won
Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?
They say with beer drinkers
There are no neutrals there
You'll either be a CAMRA man
Or a mug for 'craft' hot air
Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?
Oh drinkers can you stand it?
Shit, how much for a can?
Will you be a craft wanker
Or will you be a man?
Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?
Don't fork out for keg beer
Don't listen to their lies
Poor folks can drink good beer
and still have cash for pies
Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?
I must admit I am fairly contemptuous of those that seek to make beer an upmarket drink, taking it away from most people and from the pub and claim at the same time some sort of altruism and superior view of "good beer", while pricing many out of this "good beer" revolution. (Less but better is pure bollocks by the way.)
ReplyDeleteThe term "beer snob" wasn't coined for nothing.
I know whose side I'm on.
I agree with this
DeleteI agree with this...though I don't mind having that expensive stuff around. Serves to separate the sheep from the goats.
DeleteAgreed x 2
DeleteHad a pint of London Pride in a Gatwick 'Spoons the other week after 10 days of sampling expensive American craft beer ( aka a succession of over-hopped IPAs all tasting exactly the bleedin' same ) on a road-trip around the Florida Panhandle.It was an Ice Cold in Alex moment.
Let me tell you, ale is the new craft.
Yep, this "beer could be the new wine" thing gets my goat. Dave's always been rather pro. See here.
ReplyDelete'Beer should be cheap'
ReplyDeleteThe rallying cry of people who have never had to risk their own Capital on the manufacture and sale of beer.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI don't hold the view that capitalists should decide things for the rest of us.
Deletebeer should be cheap because its actually very cheap to make - even good beer- and a competitive market should reflect that
DeleteFunny thing to say. Some beer is cheap to make, and some isn't.
Deletetrue. But the stuff that isn't better be absolutely incredible otherwise its not a viable product.
DeleteMost beer that people want to drink on a daily basis is very cheap to make.
It reveals as well one of the longstanding truths about craft beer, that it is an elitist product of the bourgeois. Not that it makes it bad, but that a middle class do not want the products used by a working class. That products are seen as reflective of lifestyle, status and class. They want their own distinct products exclusive to them. From cars, to clothes to food and drink. They also have more money to spend and allow retailers a higher margin.
ReplyDeleteIt’s arguably a more honest approach. For 40 years CAMRA has been a middle class drinking club of Guardian readers claiming to enjoy the working class boozer when actually most prefer a middle class multi beer house facsimile. Cask beer is as much middle class beer as craft is. It just that older beards seem to prefer weak brand value and lower prices and younger beards prefer the higher brand value and higher prices of craft.
But as you insist we pick a side, and neither look appealing, I’ll ask which side has need of mercenary soldiers. Not being one for causes or Queens or countries, and rather liking cold hard cash, I shall choose my side accordingly. I shall spend my gold on cans of cheap lager.
What's with the whole zero-sum approach? Beer can be an exotic, expensive, shiny-packaged, cleverly marketed product; or it can be a plain and simple cheap everyday drink. And there's both great stuff and utter shite in both genres. And neither side is ever going to dominate the other.
ReplyDeleteBeer you don't like can just be ignored. There's no reason to fear it or fight it unless (like the founders of CAMRA) you are actually factually unable to buy the beer you want to drink.
A central plank of the original ethos of CAMRA was that good beer was something that could and should be enjoyed by all drinkers. Much of the current ferment about craft beer seems to value the obscure and expensive for its own sake. Of course people are entitled to take that view, but to say it isn't elitist is absurd.
ReplyDelete"What's with the whole zero-sum approach?"
ReplyDeleteBeer Nut asks a good question.
"...if we're not aiming to make decent beer available to all at a reasonable price..."
Mostly that, along with a smattering of mad, weird, posh stuff that might well be a bit pricier. Choice. Variety. Healthy beer culture.
When did they drop that ethos and become a middle aged middle class micro brewery drinking club, Mudge?
ReplyDeleteLate 80s/early 90s, I'd say. Growth of micro-breweries and multi-beer alehouses, guest beer provision of Beer Orders.
ReplyDeleteI’m more thinking medieval monks spending for ever debating how many angels can dance on a pinhead
ReplyDeleteif we're not aiming to make decent beer available to all at a reasonable price then it's not my revolution.
ReplyDeleteWell said that man.
I was in Sheffield yesterday; on my way home I naturally made tracks to the Sheffield Tap - only to find it was closed for refurbishment. I can report that there are a lot of pubs in the centre of Sheffield which serve Hobgoblin & Pedigree/Cumberland & Deuchars IPA/Wainwright & Bomber/OBB/etc. (I might have gone for the Thwaites' house if I was just looking for a drink, but the prospect of the Tap had raised my sights a bit.)
But I ended up at the Roebuck, in decor and ambience as pubby a pub as you could wish for, where they were serving six different beers from two local breweries; I had a pint of a 6.8% IPA and paid £3.10 for it. That's what we should be aiming for.
A fault with this post is that it assumes the reader has a choice of which tribe to join when actually the tribe will choose you.
ReplyDeleteGot a waist size that fits skinny jeans? You are craft whether you like it or not. £9 cans of imported stuff for you.
Got an elasticated waste on those millets trousers? You are a CAMRA man whether or not you wish to be. Get you and your £2.60 down to the gaff with the certificate on the wall.
Hmmm...I may have to eat more pies in that case.
DeleteYou say that people are choosing to be on one side or another, but it seems to me that you are choosing to place everyone into one of two categories to better understand what's going on, which isn't the same thing.
ReplyDeleteI don't think everyone is falling into two camps, and even if they did fall into the two camps you describe, better beer becoming more affordable would be an end result of each side's campaigning.
I don't think beer should be the new wine, I think it should just keep getting better, because better breweries making better beer get bigger and become more able to sell their beer cheaply (which is gradually happening for the newer brewers). This is making it easier for everyone to find good beer and more likely to afford to try it out in the first place.
Yes, some beer will always be more expensive, but it doesn't mean ALL good beer will only be expensive. Nor does it mean that anybody actually wants that to be the case, either. Some beer will always be cheaper, but doesn't mean that ALL cheap beer will be bad. It is isn't as simple as that, never has been and never will be.
I can tell that you feel strongly that all what I've said isn't the case, though. I just don't see it myself.
Actually I try not to take beer things too seriously, as after all, it's only beer. I am pleased there's the big diversity of beers out there now, but I do think amongst beer geeks there poles around which you can group people views about where they think beer should be going and I know which side I'm on.
DeleteChris, it's not about beer, it's about the tribalism of the species. You have to pick a tribe, goddammit. Then you have to chuck sticks and rocks at the other tribe and piss in their drinking pond. Them's the rules. I didn't make 'em Them's been the rules for millennia. In the prophetic words of Run DMC, it's like that and that's the way it is.
ReplyDeletePick a side, Mo Fo.
@Cookie is right of course. But it's a fact that people create and join "tribes" on, at first glance, irrational grounds. Being "wine-drinkers" of mediocre wine, when they could be drinking excellent beer for the same money.
ReplyDeleteBeing bigger does make your production costs lower, but it doesn't much effect the cost of your raw materials.
ReplyDeleteYou might be able to negotiate discounts for bulk purchase, but the best ingredients are very much a limited commodity. You could choose not to use the rarer hop varieties, you could choose to forgo the traditional floor malted English barley, you can play tricks with chemistry to make less of those expensive ingredients go further.......but it won't end with a better beer.
But that's only a tiny percentage of the cost of your pint anyway.
The Economic interest in Property in this Country sky rockets the cost of a beer that you drink in a Pub, because someone has to own that property, and if it belongs to one of the large owners, then they need to make more profit from it than they would make if it where a Tesco Local or a few Flats. That's because behind the bucolic Pubco names you have large financial instituitions like Nomura whose interest is a million miles from a cheap pint in a welcoming hostelry, and they spend hundreds of thousands of pounds a year on lobbing to ensure they maintain the competitive advantage in the market that they enjoy, abusing both the lessee and the brewer as well as the customer.
Then the Government uses the Tax paid on the cost of your good honest pint to pay for the social costs of mass produced drinks, the profits from which flow abroad very quickly.
The cost of moving a pallet of beer a few miles quickly eats into the cost of a pint, once the Publican adds the multiplier to the price to get his GP.
Too many of those promoting beer as an upscaled product at a higher price are those pocketing the surplus revenue for me to take it seriously.
ReplyDeleteYou know any rich brewers then Alan?
DeleteWhy yes I do. Plenty. You don't?
DeleteNo but there are plenty of expensive inefficient ones.
DeleteOf course I know wealthy brewers. Who doesn't?
Deletei dont, and im a brewer
DeleteBeer Nut and Chris Hall are absolutely spot on on this - there's no reason that we can't have both, and the OP seems like fairly pointless (if deft) trolling.
ReplyDeleteFor my part I'm another with a foot in both camps - I like being able to drink decent pints all night without needing to take out a loan, but I'm not averse to forking out a bit extra for something really special on occasion.
I do, of course, only write this blog for my own amusement.
DeleteEd, why you frontin'?
ReplyDeleteThe only reason you perceive there to be 'sides' is because they exist because you chose to fabricate them. Yes, beer is evolving and changing but it is not leaving its roots behind. Different people choose to enjoy beer differently and that's a cool thing whether you're drinking £15 bottles of Cantillon, £6 pints of Kernel IPA, £1 cans of Stella or £2.50 pints of Landlord. People seeking out new beer experiences who are happy to pay for them should not affect your own and if you're worried that your own niche in beer is shrinking because of this well then why not put the energy you put into moaning about your perception of the scene into enhancing it.
It is pure arrogance on your part to lump a perceived group of beer drinkers that you've decided you don't like much into a different category to your own. I wager that if you sat down for a pint and a chat with some people on the 'other side' you'd be surprised by how similar we all are. Hell you might even enjoy yourself, gods forbid.
Not sure what "frontin'" is I'm afraid. I did google it but still not entirely certain so I'll move swiftly on.
DeleteMouthing off on the internet doesn't take that much time, and it keeps me off the streets. The song I adapted for the end was with tongue very firmly in cheek. "Poor folks can drink good beer
and still have cash for pies" is not exactly the most serious thing I've ever written.
As to not liking a group of people, it was never my intention for people to get that idea. I'm sure you're all wonderful human beings. If we did sit down for a beer it would have to be in thirds though surely? ;-)
I only drink out of my personal pewter thimble these days.
DeleteGood stuff, I will expect to see it in action on Dec 13th.
DeleteWhy can't people enjoy all different types of beer? Or wine for that matter. Just the other day on Twitter there was a discussion about there being a time and a place for crap beer and a time and a place for more expensive beer.
ReplyDeleteJust because someone only drinks 'crap' beer or only drinks 'craft' beer doesn't make them bad.
People should be free to do as they wish, surely?
Promoting beer for mass consumption, using mass media is fine. Promoting niche, premium products for consumption by more discerning drinkers is fine too. It seems to me the the blurring of the edges (e.g. Wetherspoons craft range) is the thing causing most consternation.
We're the People's Front of Judea!
ReplyDeleteGuess what? I really like beer. I really like Fosters and I really like Cantillon and I really like BrewDog and I really like Guinness and I really like Beavertown and I really like Budweiser.
They all have their place in my fridge. They will feature at different times and in different quantities than in your fridge but I don't care.
Let's imagine the beer blogosphere as one big pub crawl. We're all out for a night on the town and somebody asks "Which side are you on?" That's my cue to immediately stand up, put my coat on and sink the rest of my pint/third/can/bottle/nip or whatever it is I am currently drinking.
If anybody chooses to join me, I'm going to the next pub, where I'm going to get a drink. And if anybody mentions sides I'll leave that one too.
Could you imagine if you stopped going to the pub with your mate because he started to wear a tatty old bomber jacket, one that he found in the back of his wardrobe and wears because he remembers good times fondly because of it? Or if he bought himself a nice new watch and a pair of chinos. "What's wrong with a normal pair of trousers Dave?" you'd say, before going off in a huff and writing a blog about how he's changed and he thinks too much of himself now.
I want good beer at a decent price. What constitutes a decent price is dependent on how much I value the craft of a particular beer. That's dependent on a number of factors. And if anybody told me I was wrong, then they'd receive a friendly smack in the chops in the taxi rank on the way home, to extend my poorly constructed metaphor.
I think you're reading too much into this.
DeleteWhat constitutes a decent price is how much it costs to make plus a fair return on capital and labour, nothing more and nothing less.
DeleteWe are very lucky that actually, beer is very cheap to manufacture, even really good beer. Anyone who tells you different is trying to rip you off.
I'd like to see some figures that prove that beer is "very cheap" to manufacture. :)
DeleteIngredients on their own are relatively cheap, as any home-brewer knows (albeit big hopped-up IPAs can get a bit pricey). But then there is equipment (often debts to repay on it), commercial rents (in many parts of the country these are huge), and wages (which in turn sit on top of living costs).
Ultimately a 'decent price' is determined by the consumer of course. If the product is simply too expensive on the market the breweries will fail and you'll have to be happy drinking Greene King and Marstons I guess. Luckily, from what I can see, there are enough people willing to pay a bit more for the different and interesting right now to keep the good pubs & bars going, and growing. (If the existing market is willing to pay over £4 for "premium lager" brands than £4 a pint for a good beer seems a bargain.)
Supply chain (me) has a role to play of course. I have rents and other expenses I hope to one-day be able to pay. But this does mark up the beer price to the pub and thus the overall costs are passed on to the consumer. The only reason it works is that there *are* publicans and punters willing to shell out a bit more £ for certain beers. And in my opinion rightly so. (But I would say that.)
Then there is the pub itself. More rent! (FFS, landowners... if we're to have a revolution I do hope we go after the right people. The landowning institutions and individuals. They're the real leeches.) Pubs have massive wages bills, even more massive if they're good employers who pay Living Wage and want happy staff (which as a punter *I* want). Pubs cost a fortune to heat, etc, etc. Some balance the price of expensive beer by buying cheap beer that they sell at a higher markup. Several make a lower GP on their cask products than their "lagers". Let us thank our lager-drinking friends for subsidising our good beer! Increasingly there are some that don't do the cheaper (cost) products at all and chose to only support non-multinational breweries, they have it worse still on pricing and cop flak as a result of their principles.
There is such a diversity of situation and route to market here that to assess any single pint on the cost of manufacture alone is nigh on impossible anyway. The fact that a pint can make it into anyone's glass for £3 astounds me really. Frankly I think the entrenched pricing for cask ale in the UK is unsustainable. Stick that in your pipe... ;)
*MakesCoffee*
@py it's a fact that large, "efficient" producers can turn out a high volume, narrow product range at a unit cost rather less than a smaller outfit will be able to. Unfortunately (for your argument) the demand is not entirely for a generic "Beer" product. There is demand for low volume, "specialised" beers. These will always cost more to make, and command higher prices. I suggest you don't buy them.
DeleteI don't, and once the bubble bursts, neither will anyone else. The craft beer market has been very loose these past 5 years, it won't stay like that forever. Unless your beer is head and shoulders above the competition, its going to have to offer a reduced price to maintain sales, and if your brewery is too small to be able to compete on price, expand or improve.
DeleteBut then there is equipment (often debts to repay on it), commercial rents (in many parts of the country these are huge), and wages (which in turn sit on top of living costs).
DeleteNone of which adds to the marginal cost of production and therefore should not come into a consideration of price in a competently run brewery.
The raw materials for beer are surprising cheap when you work out how much it comes to per pint, but the labour costs certainly add up, and don't forget the taxes.
DeleteYvan:
DeleteIf the product is simply too expensive on the market the breweries will fail and you'll have to be happy drinking Greene King and Marstons I guess. Luckily, from what I can see, there are enough people willing to pay a bit more for the different and interesting right now to keep the good pubs & bars going, and growing.
The idea that if you won't pay 'premium' prices you'll be stuck with GK and Marston's is ludicrous - see my comment upthread about drinking in Sheffield. The huge, huge majority of cask beer is on sale at under £4 a pint, and that includes some amazing beers from cutting-edge breweries.
To be honest I think there is room to nudge some cask prices up a bit - emphasis on 'some' and 'a bit' - but it's not up to me as a drinker to advocate changes that would cost me money!
No @py, you're wrong. Over the long term (over all volume steps) all costs are marginal.
DeleteI'm guessing you're not an economist, Stringers, am I right? Pricing decisions are made in the short term, not the long term.
DeleteI wrote a big reply to this, with numbers and everything... but BlogSplat ate it. *sigh* Wasting time I don't have, eh.... it was rambling anyway, however now I tap this lot in even more haphazardly.
DeleteMost cask in Cambridge is under £4 a pint. Can't speak for London, only drink there about twice a year as it is far too expensive to get to in the first place.
Cost of living in Cambridge is a nightmare, let alone London. I can see how beer here would be more expensive than many other places - Sheffield perhaps included. (I don't know what rents/etc are like up there though.)
I see a lot of beer prices from breweries. I can't say I think any are taking the piss... a few are a little on the pricey side, but mostly for good reason. And there isn't a hell of a lot in it is. Less than a 20% range from cheap (and usually it tastes cheap) to the top-end. This does translate to more than +50p price on a pint at a 60% GP though. Still... I don't see the brewers in these breweries buying mansions and zooming around in sports cars (yet?). And I'm happy to pay 50p more for a beer I know I'm going to like. And hell, £1 more for keg because I don't have to play cask-quality-roulette and I can just get on with my drinking without the fuss of returning beer or putting up with a semi-drinkable pint. (And this goes for sodding "craft beer bars" too... oh how many complaints about their cask quality I see on Twitter, some do seem to offer the best of both worlds though, and it sounds like some others are cottoning on.)
[IMO, if there is one thing CAMRA could *really* do for the future of cask ale, & the good of the cask ale drinker, it would be to drop most of what it does now and focus entirely on quality of beer at point of dispense. Because on average it is abysmal. This might even help save flagging pubs.]
" a few are a little on the pricey side, but mostly for good reason"
DeleteAnd its the one's that aren't, that should be concerned. If your beer isn't good enough to justify a price premium, at some point people are going to figure that out.
Round here Oakham set the standard. There beer is available for ~£3.50 a pint. If you're selling your beer for £4 a pint, is it really 50p better than something like Oakham Citra? I seriously doubt it.
A £1+ difference between cask and keg might be ok for you, but that's surely not sustainable. A lot of smaller craft breweries are either going to have to bite the bullet and install a kegging plant or stick to cask in future.
No, I'm not an economist. Are you? But if I, in my brewery business (are you a business owner either?), make my pricing decisions purely on a short term basis then that's the kind of future my business would have: A short one.
DeleteYou make an interesting mistake. I might ask the Prof about it on my blog. He'll explain it to you.
Yes I'm an economist, hence my interest. Deciding what size brewery to build and deciding what beer to brew on a given week and what price to sell it at are decisions taken over very different timescales. The former we call the long run, the latter we call the short run.
Delete@py. That explains much.
Deleteoh good.
DeleteI think there's a relatively serious point here, and it has nothing to do with liking different kinds of beer - let alone criticising people for liking the wrong kind of beer.
ReplyDeleteIt's not about where we are, it's about where we want to get to. I want to get to a world where every pub in the country is serving something as decent as Wainwright or Landlord, and most pubs are serving something brewed locally. (I don't say this because local beer is better, but simply because it would guarantee geographical diversity.) If there are also bars charging £5+ for a pint of smoked rye IPA or whatever, that's even better - I'd probably spend most of my drinking time in those bars. But a flourishing craft scene, to me, is an extra; it's not what's really important.
This may be totally unfair, but I get the impression that Dave & others would happily leave the masses to their Pedigree & their Spitfire (or their John Smiths Smooth) as long as there was enough really good beer out there for the people who appreciate really good beer. That's the side I'm not on.
You're on the side of taking the beer that people enjoy away from them?
DeleteDo you live in a hollowed-out volcano and stroke a white cat?
I could dress this up, but... what are you talking about?
DeleteBeing evil. Not leaving people alone to enjoy the beer they like is evil.
DeleteI think you're getting the wrong end of the stick there TBN.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to see some figures on it, but my guess would be that the ex-brewery cost price of a cask or bottle of "craft" beer versus one of "mainstream" beer of the same strength would only differ by a couple of percentage points. Ingredients as such - which is where the difference is claimed - probably make up less than 10% of the selling price of even the craftiest beer.
ReplyDeleteA lot of the mediocre and/or inefficient breweries riding on the craft bandwagon are going to get a nasty shock one of these days. Having to charge £5.50 a pint for something that tastes identical to another beer at £3.50 a pint simply to cover your costs of production and distribution is not a viable long term business strategy.
DeleteBad guess. Here's a figure for you: Small brewers generate about one job per 500hl annual production. The industry overall figure is one per 3,000hl . i.e labour costs are at least six times higher for a small brewery than for one of those big beer factories.
DeletePresumably another part of it is how much of any given recipe you're producing? I've always imagined that for small breweries that do relatively small quantities of dozens of different beers, the cost of trying out and refining the recipe until it's ready to produce commercially is a relatively large part of the cost of any given beer, compared to somewhere with a similar total output that basically sticks to their half dozen tried-and-tested beers with maybe a couple of specials a year...
Delete"Imagine" is the key word there, though - I'd be interested to know if I'm totally off the mark.
I'm sure most breweries that put out lots of different beers make them on production scale to start with.
DeleteYou wouldn't know it to taste most of them.
DeleteMost new beers are just rebadged old beers anyway; if you're lucky they might have tweaked the recipe, but not much
Plenty of micro-breweries seem to be able to knock out cask ales that sell for £2 - £2.40 in pubs. Now either they're making no money out of that or their unit costs are not that much different from Bombardier.
ReplyDeleteYou've forgotten "or the profit on Bombadier is really high".
DeleteAlthough that doesn't really answer the question - if size of brewery is more important than cost of ingredients, how come Bogshed Brewery's Best Bitter can be priced to hit the bar at £2 - £2.40 but Ironic Tache American Pale can't?
DeleteI get the impression - based on stuff that Yvan's posted that things are similar around here. A lot of local pubs aren't interested in stocking interesting stuff from Weird Beard or Moor because they can shop around and get mediocre brown beer from small local breweries significantly cheaper. (And then proudly trumpet their "lineup of real ales from local microbreweries".)
how come Bogshed Brewery's Best Bitter can be priced to hit the bar at £2 - £2.40 but Ironic Tache American Pale can't?
DeleteIts not that it can't, its that it currently doesn't have to, because due to current fashions, simply adding some fancy craft beer branding to your beer adds a price premium.
That's not going to last forever - at some point Ironic Tache American Pale is going to have to compete at a more realistic price or go bust.
On those prices, I'd hazard that Bogshed will go bust before Ironic.
DeleteI love the sound of this world where beers cost £2.40 :) Only sub-£3 pint I've seen for a long time is drinking Brodie's in the King William IV (a true Mecca for beer value).
DeleteThen again I rarely go to 'spoons... but their beer selection is abysmal, whatever the 'spoons-lovers say, and 'spoons in my area are just grim. (I went in and enjoyed the Adnams/YeastieBoys Gunnamatta when it was on and then legged it and haven't been in since - the place smelt of stale beer and BO.) Continuing on the 'spoons point - I know of at least 3 small breweries who tried to play the selling-to-'spoons game and all went out of business not long after. Selling beer cheap does not pay the bills. When a small brewery does it I smell desperation.
Every now and then you do find a beer down at the sub-£60 price bracket that truly shines, but they're rare. In my opinion of course, and my beer tastes are certainly no standard to judge by. The fact is the 'boring brown bitters' do attract drinkers. I was speaking to a publican the other day... he made the mistake of putting Wherry on the bar, a decent enough pint if you're into that sort of thing. The mistake? Beer on his two other lines didn't sell, pretty much at all. So the canny publicans put Wherry, Doombar, and Black Sheep side-by-side and don't suffer this problem. Normal people walk in and are dazzled by the all-star beer line-up. (I can drink two of them without complaint, but Doombar, even in the best of condition, just doesn't work for me.)
Financially this all-star pub is likely making more money than the beer-geek publican with 3 interesting/different rotating cask lines who has to charge near the same 'pint' price on the bar. (This publican doesn't put on a 'big' brand cask ale for the reasons given in previous para... no matter what the Cask Report says on the matter. It puts sales of his other beers in danger. I'm thinking out-of-town pubs here, FWIW, town-pub volumes mitigate this affect.)
Anyway, even if the "boring" (sensible) publican is earning just +10p per pint, across the year that is probably more than +£300 per-line in pocket. And really it is probably closer to a +30p per pint difference.
There is more complexity to this of course. I know a beer-nerd publican out woop-woop who pays a peppercorn rent. He puts on lots of exciting beer & likely make decent money. (But still doesn't drive a sports car or appear to live any sort of "high life".)
Eh, enough verbose rambling from me... it isn't a considered/ordered set of thoughts. And I'm just a learner and observer, no expert!
I rarely go to 'spoons... but their beer selection is abysmal, whatever the 'spoons-lovers say, and 'spoons in my area are just grim.
DeleteThe ambience isn't great. But the beer selection varies enormously, and in some cases it's good or very good. (One of the Manchester Spoons has Elland 1874 Porter as its house beer!)
My local Spoons usually has beers from one or more of Ossett, Ilkley, Brightside, Bradfield and Allgates. Ilkley Mary Jane has often featured, which is an excellent quaffing bitter of moderate strength.
DeleteAnd actually, unless you're a bit of a snob, Spoons often have a good, lively, "pubby" atmosphere. It varies between venues and times of day, of course.
I suspect Cambridge may simply suffer from crap 'spoons then. (I'll pop in again, but every past experience has been … less than fantastic.)
DeleteMy local 'Spoons is one that has a good range but no matter what the beer range is like they all lack atmosphere so I can't say I'm hugely fond of it.
DeleteI was drinking an 11% stout in a 20cl glass in Mikkeller & Friends on Saturday night that cost DKr45 – if my calculations are correct, that's about £13.60 a pint. It was a fine beer, and I sipped it slowly, taking about the time I'd have taken for a pint of much weaker beer, and the satisfaction from my 20cl was at least as great as I'd have got from 56.8cl of something 4% abv or so. The place was packed, albeit with people almost entirely half my age. Nobody as far as I could see was drinking wine, or spirits, just beer, although mostly very strong beers in small glasses. It was an experience ujnlike any I have had in a bar in the UK. These were people experiencing beer as a quality product worth drinking in small amounts to properly appreciate it. I'm not sure UK culture could cope with that.
ReplyDeleteI've been meaning to do a post on national beer culture for a while as I get irritated by the twerps that pop up occasionally and ask "Why isn't the British beer scene like the American beer scene".
DeleteI certainly couldn't cope with the situation you experience in Denmark. I'm still so conditioned that I can't really cope with pubs being open past 11pm and I'm sure I'd have no hope of lasting even to 11 if I was drinking 11% stout.
If I'm thirsty, and have a tenner in my pocket and a 20 minute drive home, paying £14 for an 11% stout is not exactly what I'm looking for, no.
ReplyDeleteThat's fine. That's your choice. But not everyone is like you, or in the position you describe. I know some narrow minds struggle with "heterogeneity", but you must know that "it takes all sorts".
DeleteYou can't force people to drink something they don't want to drink. If UK pub culture can't cope with 11% beer, then you're not going to have much luck selling it.
DeleteNope, he's struggling with that one too.
Delete"paying £14 for an 11% stout is not exactly what I'm looking for, no."
ReplyDeleteI didn't. I paid £4.50 for 20cl of stout - about the same as you'd pay for the same amount of wine for the same sort of strength. Which was fine for late on a long Saturday night. The great thing about beer is that it can offer a solution for every situation. Sometimes you want something cheap, weak and quenching. Sometimes you don't. To approriate a phrase, There's a Beer For That.
aye, but as you point out, there's not really that much call for that in the UK and ignoring the reality of your target audience is not normally a winning business strategy.
DeleteSo why the hell get all up in arms about the few places that seem to successfully serve this small market? Do you simply have some deep seated hatred for the people who like drinking these beers? You would take their toys away out of pure spite?
DeleteYou rant at them that they're being ripped off by pubs, by brewers... in essence you label them all shmucks... what's your problem? Does it rankle you that these folks seem to enjoy themselves and the beers they drink? That they'll spend a £1 more on a beer and drink one less of an evening. Why is this so vile to you?
What is this "target audience" you speak of? Not every pub and bar needs to target the average beer drinker. The average is pretty well served, such is the power of market forces.
If the market is too small, and is actually unsustainable, then this small craft beer bubble will pop of course. If so, so be it. I agree that market forces are king. But we have a few brewers & bars trying to carve out and expand a niche, which I and others like me enjoy. Let us be, and stick to your plethora of cheaper locals serving cheaper beers if that is more your style.
Or move to The North where the rents are cheaper as are the beers. Hell, I almost did. I probably should have. Why I've persisted to live in the Cambridge area is often beyond my understanding.
people do get very angry over the reality of the UK beer market not being what they would like it to be, don't they.
DeleteIf only everyone would just understand that they should just hand over more than they can afford to buy something they don't actually want!
The market is what it is, little point being angry about it. There is a growing number of bars opening that I like to drink in. There is a growing number of beers available in pubs that I like to drink.
DeleteI'm quite happy with the current & developing state of the UK beer market.
You on the other hand seem to have some sort of pent-up resentment about it? That does make me a tad frustrated - yes.
I never said anybody should 'hand over more than they can afford to buy something they don't actually want' - that is just moronic. Nor do I imply any 'weasel words' that would infer as much. I stated that the average desire of the market is well served. And I use 'average' in a purely statistical sense, not as a slight.
Meanwhile, my gripe with Cambridge is the cost of rentals and the terrible flatness of the place. The rental cost makes what I am doing likely to be non-viable. We'll see. The beer market is a bit behind the likes of Manchester and Edinburgh, but given Cambridge's tiny size that is no surprise. And there are at least 4 places in Cambridge I can always find a beer I'll enjoy. Live & Let Live with excellent Oakham is and always has been right at the top of that list.
I don't know what makes you think that. I'm just agreeing with Martyn that 11% beers will always be something of a niche taste.
DeleteThe sum total of your posts on this here blog.
DeleteI'm just explaining what's going to happen over the next 10 years in as dispassionate tone as I can muster. Breweries that are currently only viable businesses due to a price bubble in the higher strata of the market will struggle and go under. I'm not happy or sad about that, I'm just realistic.
DeleteLet's try this argument in another market. Let's date it around 1909, the year Chanel was founded. "Fashion houses that are currently only viable businesses due to a price bubble in the higher strata of the market will struggle and go under." Whaddaya think?
DeleteIncidentally @Ed, can I just say that at Stringers mansions we thought your post (and lyric) jolly funny.
ReplyDeleteCheers Jon, I have been a bit concerned that going from the comments some people don't seem to have realised the post was meant to be humorous.
DeleteSurely the OP's point was criticising those who objected to the "Let There be Beer" campaign as a bit snobby, exclusive, elitist or whatever in saying that they didn't want to be associated with bog-standard mass-market beer.
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone on the "other side" is arguing that people shouldn't be allowed to drink expensive niche beers if that's what they like.
I think some people are confused about how a competitive market works - just because some punters might be willing to pay more for a pint of beer, does not mean that that is where the market will end up, no matter how much brewers exhort people to voluntarily give them more money because "they deserve it".
Delete@py I think I see the basis for your confusion here. You're assuming that these "pints of beer" are substitutable, that there is in fact a single market for "pints of beer". As a number of people have attempted to point out to you - this is not the case.
DeleteNot at all. Beer is clearly a heavily differentiated market, with a wide range of different styles, strengths and flavours available. It features both horizontal and vertical differentiation.
DeleteBut such is the number of breweries and relative ease of replicating different styles, there is no such thing as an un-substitutable beer.
If you make a 4.5% beer hopped with Fuggles and Goldings and charge £1 more per pint than a virtually identical beer being sold by the brewery down the road, then you're simply not going to sell any beer (after a while, once people figure out what is going on). Eventually the price will be driven down to something more competitive.
@py, seriously dude, I'm not sure your example has any relevance to the discussion. Is that what we were talking about? "4.5% beer hopped with Fuggles and Goldings"? Nah. Leave it now.
DeleteAny beer you care to name, there will almost certainly be a very close substitute available that it is in competition with.
DeleteI am sure you must to competition analysis at Stringers to see what the closest substitutes to your beers are in the local and national markets and how much they cost in comparison to your own beers.
By tracking your direct competition and their pricing structure, you can then get an insight into why some of your beers are selling better than others.
Please tell me you do this.
We do indeed gather data on our competitors. (We have a thing: "Other Peoples Prices") We also observe that we sell some of our stuff (in pleasing quantities) at a bit higher price than they sell broadly similar products. Equally, we observe that some products out there are selling at prices for which there appears to be no rational justification. Good (or in some cases better) substitutes are available cheaper.
DeleteIt's daft to expect naive equilibrium economics to give definitive answers at any particular time in this kind of market. Else, we'd be millionaires on the strength of having read a few books.. Real businesses in a highly dynamic marketplace go out of their way to perturb the equilibrium. This is the whole basis of marketing, "innovation" and the old USP thing. Things which undermine substitutability.
Economics is fun, but it's really the astrology to the astronomy of real world business.
As I said over here, craft keg can be 'better' than cask in a whole range of ways - people may think it's better because they want that particular beer and it's only available on keg; or because they prefer their beer colder and fizzier; or because it's that bit smoother, blander, less twiggy round the edges; or even because it's dearer ('reassuringly expensive' rides again).
ReplyDeleteI think the first of these is a very good reason & the other three are very bad ones, but I also think a lot of people quite sincerely believe in them. They're all wrong, of course, but it may take me a while to get to them all and tell them individually. (They'll be glad of it in the end.) In the mean time, I'm afraid the market's probably going to stay distorted. As Keynes said, markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
Only just got here. Sorry I was late to the party. What can I say?
ReplyDeleteBravo, take a bow Ed, wonderful stuff. That's what I think I'll say.
And, for the record, I'm on both sides.
Cheers Dave, though there is a serious point in the post I was mainly trying to be funny and I've been a little concerned that the humour didn't come across to some people.
DeleteYes, I do get that you were being more humorous than serious, although I do get the serious side too, even if I don't totally agree.
DeleteI think you were also being nice to me in your original post, which I forgot to thank you for.
A fun debate though, in which Stringers puts up a good rebuff against the "beer is cheap to make" corner. I am really quite proud of the fact that I've resisted wading into that one.
Nice one!
ReplyDelete