I went round Meantime for work a few months back. Lovely it is. Lots of shiny, shiny things. I've heard they spent half a million quid on the floor alone. If I remember rightly production is 100,000 hl (17½ million pints) a year. And though the beer may be evil keg, and thus damns them to an eternity in the fiery pit, it wasn't bad stuff.
I've a couple of pictures of the place. I thought I had more but buggered if I can find them.
Anyway, looking at the pictures and thinking of the scale of production ask yourself: is this brewery craft or industrial?
Don't trouble yourself with nonsense about whether it's owned by the bourgeoisie or the petite bourgeoisie; or even worse start talking about passion. That sort of thing might be acceptable to a frenchman but surely has no place in British brewing. Just think of the scale and the shininess and cast your vote.
Same scale as craft stalwarts BrewDog, but the lack of neon signage or graffiti murals means that they were never a craft brewery. Get some spray paint on them there shiny tanks and we can talk.
ReplyDeleteGood point, selling the whole company rather than tiny amounts at not so tiny prices counts against them too.
DeleteWe need to ditch "craft" and adopt the Irish defn of "artisanal": https://www.fsai.ie/publications_food_marketing_terms/
ReplyDeleteMakes a lot more sense that 'craft' means up to 6 million barrels a year.
DeletePrecise? It's positively restrictive! I like it! I wonder how many craft brewers would actually qualify.
DeleteThe experimental brewery was already planned: it's the fact that it'll now be used to experiment for SAB Miller as well that's the new wrinkle, although that got lost somewhere along the telling of the takeover story.
ReplyDelete