Commercial versus Craft
Head over to any fan-boy beer/brewing forum and you’ll easily find a discussion about how evil the big, commercial breweries are and how craft beer is awesome.
But somehow the world can’t agree what actually defines craft – or mainstream in any meaningful way. For what it’s worth – here are some of my thoughts on the matter.
It seems that those breweries on the craft-end of the beery spectrum feel the need to define themselves, or the industry. Also, the lobbyists in America have succeeded in passing laws that define craft by how the brewery is owned and how much beer it produces. A group of British breweries are looking to do the same over here and it poses some interesting questions as to why.
Why do we need to define who ‘we’ and ‘them’ are? Why would it matter if a cutting-edge craft brewery did a massive brew with Molson Coors that saw their beer hit the mainstream? Would it really no longer be as good? For many, the issue of quality doesn’t matter – it’s all about principle and that’s where I think the crux of the problem lies as, in my mind, it’s all about quality.
When I drink a beer, I’m not weighing up the relative points associated with how ‘craft’ the beer is – I drink it and decide whether I like it. I’ve had some awful ‘craft’ beers that would score A+ for craft credentials and I’ve had very enjoyable beer from breweries that would score B-.
When it comes to unifying the industry, which can only be a good thing, I’m very sceptical that looking to create, define and protect ‘craft’ is going to help consumers. Sure, set-up an infrastructure that helps new breweries survive, give access to shared resources, and promote the positive sides of the industry but are things really going to improve by defining ‘them’ and ‘us’. I’m not sure.
Devil’s liquid?
Speaking to a writer who was researching the world’s best beer for a forthcoming book, he was musing over the merits of Budweiser. In terms of their flagship brew, the level of consistency when brewed across so many countries, the purity of their ingredients and ability to manufacture such an enormous amount of beer is truly staggering.
And the beer doesn’t taste bad – in that it isn’t contaminated and, following on from an earlier post of mine, they put ‘born on’ dates on their beer promoting freshness in a way that was market leading.
Looking at Carling (the UK’s most popular beer) recently, I read on the can about how they use double-walled technology to keep the beer fresh and noticed that they even have a temperature sensor to show that the beer is being stored correctly.
When was the last time you saw anyone on the ‘craft’ side of things putting this amount of information in front of their customers promoting the integrity of their beer? (For me, it was Maui, by the way).
At the other end of the scale we have breweries putting the words ‘craft’, ‘hand crafted’ and other meaningless statements on their cans/bottles to try and position their beer as being good. This feels simply inappropriate – let others refer to you as craft if they wish but referring to yourself as craft is just a bit, well naff.
Andrew Morgan, founder of The Bottle Shop
I agree (and I’m sure Andrew would too) with your thoughts. Thanks for the comments. Agree, most of this is off the radar but that as it goes more mainstream then hopefully quality will win out – regardless of the moniker we give to the liquid.
An interesting title for the piece and some good points. I am concerned that the adoption of ‘craft’ by certain breweries is becoming divisive and has become almost meaningless other than for marketing purposes or a precursor to suggest the beer will cost more.
If the use of the word ‘craft’ is to infer skill, quality, innovation, brewing expertise and the production of beer on a smaller scale (than what I’m still not sure) then it still kind of fits what I consider to be craft beer.
The success of some craft breweries suggests they are very commercial and the industry as a whole has to remain profitable and sustainable, considering there are now more than 1400 breweries in the UK they’ve got to be selling beer to someone.
In way of a conclusion the issue of craft versus commercial was illustrated in a recent night out with work colleagues (not my usual drinking companions). We were in a Wetherspoons pub and I asked for a pint of Crafty Dan 13 Guns which they had on tap, the rest of the round consisted of x pints of lager. Given Wetherspoons probably had 5 lagers available (not including bottles) the barperson invariably asked “Which lager would you like?” and one was chosen by the guy buying the round and everyone drank their beer without a second thought of which lager it was, where it had come from, what hops were in it etc. I offered my pint for people to try and there were a few takers (I like to broaden people’s beer appreciation where possible). One guy liked it so much he’s now a convert but for the most part the guys stuck with lager, any lager it would seem. The issue of craft versus commercial was not an issue to these guys. For the most part craft beer doesn’t even appear on their RADAR and in theory they are representative of the vast majority of drinkers.
In time with more commercial success and marketing the mainstream will start to try and hopefully like other beers (whatever they are called). I feel the promotion of quality beer should be championed and the creation of factions and veiled elitism should be discouraged.