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WHAT BEER ARE YOU BREWING TODAY? ARE YOU SIPPING YOUR COFFEE IN PREPARATION OF GETTING STUCK IN TO THAT TASTY LITTLE NUMBER EVERYBODY KNOWS AND LOVES. THE ONE YOU’VE BREWED A THOUSAND TIMES AND WILL BREW A THOUSAND MORE. MAYBE YOU’RE SITTING, PENCIL POISED OVER A SCRAP OF PAPER AS YOU COMTEMPLATE SOMETHING NEW. PUSHING YOUR OWN BOUNDARIES, PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES OF EXECPTABLE TASTE, MAYBE EVEN PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT A BEER IS? WE LIKE TO LISTEN TO YOU TALK. WE HAVE CONVERSTATIONS WITH TIRED, ACHING GRUMBLERS WHO WHEN ASKED ABOUT BEER BECOME NEW. LOUD, PROUD, TOWN CRYERS OF AN EVER GROWING COMMUNITY CALLED CRAFT, WHERE AS LONG AS YOU CARE ABOUT WHAT YOU DO, THEN ALL IS (MORE OFTEN THAN NOT) WELL. LET THE HATERS SPIT AND THE CYNICS SCOFF, NO MATTER IF YOU’RE WINNING OR LOSING TODAY, LIKE US, YOU’RE DOING IT WITH HEART. Tel: 0800 1075073 enquiries@simplyhops.com
Issue 1 - The Future of Beer Inside Inside some of the world’s most interesting breweries. Everything you need to know about the beer world. From recipes to hardware, staffing to software. You don’t get quality beer without quality ingredients. How to make people love your brand and beer. Getting your beer into the hands of fans. Stories from expansion, crowdfunding, selling, managaing.
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Portfolio News Brewing Ingredients Marketing Sales Owning
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Portfolio
Harvey’s Brewery was founded in 1790, and has been part of the fabric of Lewes ever since. The beers produced by Miles Jenner, head brewer and joint managing director, are among the world’s most respected. We got a peek inside the brewery notable for its open fermenters.
Brewing sheets at Harvey’s.
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Many of the ingredients are local to the East Sussex brewery.
Portfolio
The brewery dates back to 1790 and is today a blend of the old and new.
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The brewery’s open fermenters are partly responsible for the unique Harvey’s flavour.
IAAB News
News
Carlsberg to glue cans together • Carlsberg has announced its Snap Pack as part of a move to reduce plastic waste globally by more than 1200 tonnes a year the equivalent to 60 million plastic bags. Recyclable glue will be used to fix the cans together, eliminating plastic ring packs that pose a serious threat to marine life.
Welcome to I Am A Brewer • What is I Am A Brewer? It is a celebration of brewing. The art, the skill, the technique and the business of brewing. There are three key elements. Firstly, it’s a print magazine posted out to as many breweries as we can muster in the UK and Ontario six times a year. Secondly, it’s a weekly podcast called the 10-Minute Masterclass. It’s also a weekly newsletter snappily titled 7 Things You Need To Know About Brewing This Week. Events are being planned too. The idea is that the words you read and hear are from those best placed in the industry worldwide, whether that is brewing lagers, using Citra, rocking social media or designing eye-catching packaging. That’s why we’ve articles from Cloudwater’s Paul Jones and beer writer Adrian Tierney-Jones. It’s why we’ve interviewed Fergus Fitzgerald and Derek Prentice. We have articles about what we can learn from Irish market and why owning a brewery means a responsibility far beyond the beer. I Am A Brewer, from the publishers of Original Gravity, is founded on the generosity of knowledge and the kindness of people in the industry. We’re all in the business of helping people drink the best beer they can. It’s about better beer for eveyone and, you know what? today, anything is possible. Daniel Neilson
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Queer Brewing Project launched • The Queer Brewing Project is a new non-profit collaborative brewing initiative led by artist and beer writer Lily Waite. Inspired by Denmark’s Hops Not Hate and London’s Craft Beer Cares festival, Waite hopes to use collaborative brewing as a vehicle for fundraising and conversation, raising awareness of LGBTQ+ issues. “This project is, to me, many things: equal parts fundraiser, increaser of visibility, and raiser of awareness,” Waite, a queer trans woman, says. “I want it to start conversations that otherwise might not happen.”
More diversity needed for beer growth • The New York Times reported that breweries must look beyond ‘White Dudes With Beards’. “If you are going to grow, you cannot simply sell beer to young white dudes with beards,” J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham said in May, during her opening address as the first diversity ambassador at the Brewers Association, the largest US beer trade group, representing almost 7,000 small, independent brewers. According to the article, the US market has slowed in part to wines and spirits, as well as the continuing deregulation of cannabis across the country. Mikkeller launches sports brand • In a rare move for a brewery, Microbrewery Mikkeller and design firm Femmes Régionales has launched an athletic clothing line called Final Gravity for runners. The move came out of the hugely popular Mikkeller Running Club (MRC) popular worldwide.
IAAB News
according to the rules of alternating proprietorships. • Independent: Less than 25 percent of the craft brewery is owned or controlled (or equivalent economic interest) by a beverage alcohol industry member which is not itself a craft brewer. • Brewer: Has a TTB Brewer’s Notice and makes beer.
New definition for US craft breweries • The Brewers Association in USA defines an American craft brewer as a small and independent brewer and those involved can use the new certified ‘independent craft brewer’ seal on labelling. The Brewers Association claims that the independent craft brewer seal is a certification mark that identifies truly independent craft. More than 4,000 independent craft breweries have already joined the movement and signed up to use the seal.
UK beer sales up • Sales of beer in 2018 were up 2.6% on 2017, according to the latest Beer Barometer sales data from the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA). The increase marks the biggest year-on-year sales growth of beer in 45 years. In the off trade, full year 2018 sales of beer increased by 4.7% on full year 2017 sales. In the on trade, full year 2018 sales of beer increased by 0.1% on full year 2017 sales. Brigid Simmonds, Chief Executive of British Beer & Pub Association, said: “2018 has been a good year for beer and pubs. Considering the heavy cost burdens the industry faces from high beer duty, business rates and rising costs in general, it’s great to see beer sales doing the best they have for some years.
The definitions are: • Small: Annual production of six million barrels of beer or less (approximately three percent of US annual sales). Beer production is attributed to a brewer
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BrewDog guarantee two local taps • BrewDog has unveiled Local Tap, an initiative that will see the Scottish brewery and bar operator dedicate two taps in each of its 43 UK bars to pour beer exclusively brewed by local breweries. BrewDog bar staff will collaborate with local brewers on limitededition beers.
Norfolk malt seminar | May 24 • As part of the City of Ale Festival, Crisp Malt are holding a malt seminar on May 24. Participants begin with a visit to the Maris Otter mother field and a tour of Crisp Malt. From noon, talks begin at a pub or brewery near Norwich and include Time Team star Dr Neil Faulkner talking about excavating the oldest known malthouse in Britain. Tickets are £15. To reserve a spot email secretary@beerguild.co.uk.
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the future of beer
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Within the next five years, the beer industry will change more quickly than it ever has done, from marketing to sustainability. Here’s how
Brewing > Feature
The future of brewing Beer writer Adrain Tierney-Jones jumps into his DeLorean and looks how brewing could change over the next decade. The problem with prediction is that if you get it right everyone is like ‘you are brilliant’. On the other hand if you are as lacking in prescience as the man who turned down the Beatles thinking that they wouldn’t go anywhere, then you are, well, the man who turned down the Beatles. Back in the 1960s, when futurologists assumed that we’d all have our own jet cars by now, those looking ahead in the brewing industry had some interesting thoughts. Automatic beer dispensing machines were tried as pubs entered the themebar age, while on the beer-tasting front, brewery
it experimentation or indulgence, there’s a sense that anything can be added to a beer nowadays, whether it’s for a pastry stout (lactose, oats, dextrose, extracts), Brut IPA (the amyloglucosidase enzyme) or Fruit IPA (Black Iris’ Gimme Fruit Gimme Fire, Give Me That Which I Papaya has the latter fruit as well as blueberries). KEEP TRYING ‘Adjuncts like a rice or maize, long dismissed as cost reduction techniques by the big breweries are being embraced in brewing craft light lagers,’ remarks Adnams’ head brewer Fergus Fitzgerald, ‘while enzymes and hop extracts are finding a home in the upper echelons of the craft brewers. Every fruit or vegetable known to man and woman has been added to beer, though the addition of nuts is still very rare.’
There is a constant search for something new, which affects the way some breweries plan their future. Hence all the experiments conditioned beer was king and there were plans for fruit-flavoured beers (probably owing more to sweet shops than the relatively unknown beers of the Senne Valley). I haven’t seen any dispensing machine yet, though I did have a peach APA the other day
There is a sense when talking with both brewers and licensees, that younger drinkers are reluctant to stick with one beer; there is a constant search for something new, which affects the way some breweries plan their future. Hence all the experiments.
BACK TO THE PAST Let’s move forward to 2005, when Thornbridge began brewing. One of its first beers was Craven Silk, a session bitter flavoured with elderflower. I was underwhelmed on a visit and didn’t predict Jaipur, Punk IPA and all the other beers that have since swept the bar-tops of the UK since.
‘Experimentation in beer and style will continue,’ says Fitzgerald, ‘perhaps trying out the as yet unexplored treasure trove of the periodic table, some mashups with Noble hops and Noble gases must surely be a marketers’ dream.
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On the other hand, surveying the current state of the brewing industry, it’s a fair certainty that some of the beer styles brewers are knee and elbow deep in will continue to evolve. Whether you want to call
‘However, some consumers will tire of the constant churn and I think there will be a return to drinkers having a preference and mostly sticking to it. Those won’t necessarily be solely the classics of old, some will be but many will be the new classics.’
Feature < Brewing
Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash
Whether you want to call it experimentation or indulgence, there’s a sense that anything can be added to a beer nowadays
of the 1888 Brewers’ Congress in London on the ‘future of beer’, where a retort from an audience member at a forum was quoted as being ‘lager is the future’. And it remains so, especially if brewers master the various beers that make up the family of lager. And finally, given that Adnams’ No Alcohol Ghost Ship (see overleaf) is one of the most impressive of this genre, it is no surprise that Fitzgerald expects no and low to grow. ‘This is less a gut feel and more hard facts, it’s growing well now and has a long way to go to match more established markets like Spain and Germany.
LAGER THAN LIFE One intriguing aspect of this experimentation/indulgence is worth considering. You’re a major brewery with a largish estate of pubs, with your best-selling beer a well-loved session beer; you have also experimented with various IPAs, Belgian styles and lagers. The question has to be asked, how far do you go in this eclecticism? Craft beer fans can be discriminatory in their spending choices, so for them, a Pastry Mocha NEIPA (ok I made that up) brewed by a cool brewery will appeal more than one made by a company whose beers their grandad used to drink. So breweries of this ilk should tread wearily before doing the brewing equivalent of dad dancing.
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Elsewhere on the predictive front, new English hops will have a similar character to American ones, especially attractive to breweries keen on sustainability and carbon footprints. Let’s not forget malt either. One of the most impressive English style IPAs around is Cheshire Brewhouse’s Govinda, which has two expressions, both made with classic heritage malts. Then there is lager — I recall reading a report
‘I hope for rather than expect a resurgence in cask,’ he adds. ‘I think that maybe a longer term forecast as there are a few structural issues to deal with first.’
Brewing > The interview
with it and although most other breweries offerings disappeared Sole Star did pretty well for us and stuck around. We felt Sole Star was a little bit in no mans land in terms of alcohol, i.e. not being ‘low alcohol’ so we dropped the abv to 0.9% a few years ago. The brewers at BrewDog were very helpful with advising on what they were doing with Nanny State, just using a really low O.G. wort, underpitching, low fermentation temperature, lots of complex malts with low fermentability and lots of dry hopping. Again we got a beer that we were pretty happy with but couldn’t quite get it to a place where we’d mistake it for a standard beer. We then went back to looking at what we could do make a better alcoholfree beer, not just the flavour but also to give the drinker something they wanted to buy rather than something they put up with. Part of that was being able to enjoy the same flavours as something you already liked to drink but just with lower alcohol. That led us to the realisation that a normal fermentation is critical if we wanted it to be the same as an existing beer and therefore we needed to remove the alcohol. Does cask or keg make a difference to alcoholfree? We aren’t doing cask, but I believe there is a Belgian brewery doing a 0.5% beer in cask. We are filling kegs which we don’t sterilise or pasteurise, so we need to be more careful with the shelf life and also be aware of throughput in a pub. You have to remember that at < 0.5% we aren’t really dealing with beer anymore, neither legally or practically, we’ve taken out one of the critical features of beer that makes it microbiologically safe. But from a drinker’s perspective, there seems to be a huge benefit if it’s on keg: you still get a pint and it is served in the same way as any other keg beer; I guess there is an element of the ritual of getting a pint poured being as important as what it is.
FOMO low/no In a wide-reaching interview, Adnams’ Head Brewer Fergus Fitzgerald talks us through the thinking of Ghost Ship Alcohol Free and how he gets it so good.
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Why did you and Adnams decide to make an alcohol free beer? It probably started when we brewed a beer called Sole Star at 2.7% several years back, when the lower duty rate at 2.8% came in. Lots of other breweries did likewise. We were really happy
Which system have you used to eliminate the alcohol? We went with reverse osmosis. We looked at vacuum distillation but decided early on that even at the lower temperature it would still be too high on something like Ghost Ship as we found that higher hopping levels are increasingly affected by heat. So having already decided that a normal fermentation
The interview < Brewing
Was there much investment in this system? Circa £500k. The kit we went with is pretty expensive, but we felt it offered the best flavour and if the low and no alcohol is going to succeed it has to do it based on the quality, we don’t have the budget to market like the multinational brewers. Why did you decide that Ghost Ship would be the beer you started with? And are there plans to launch any more? As Ghost Ship was and is our best-selling beer we decided that was the beer we should do first, also there weren’t many pale ale style beers at 0.5% at the time. We will look at some others, but we need to increase capacity first as its running flat out on Ghost Ship 0.5% at the moment. Did you feel a sense of innovation when brewing it? Did you enjoy the challenge? We’ve changed the brewery so much in the last five years that it just
We realised that a normal fermentation is critical if we wanted it to be the same as an existing beer
felt like a continuation of the rebuilding of Adnams. Two years ago we couldn’t condition, filter or keg beer on site, we knew before we finished the cellar project that we wanted to add the dealcoholiser in as well. Dan Gooderham, my lead brewer and the rest of the brewing team, really took to the challenge, running lots of trials and babysitting the process during its 24-hour cycles. We started with a standard Ghost Ship recipe and then as we went through the trials modified the recipe many times as well as changing the de-alcoholising process. We’re used to making a change in a recipe and seeing that change giving you sometimes unexpected results, adding the complexity of the reverse osmosis in as well makes that more challenging and to be honest we are still learning every time we make a change. Do some beers or styles lend themselves to alcohol-free? Weissbier seems pretty robust to most dealcoholising processes, lager can be ok if treated gently, and isn’t overly hopped. What’s the one thing you wish you’d told yourself before you started on this project? I took us longer than we thought to get as close as we wanted before launching, so I’d allow a bit more time. The main thing I wish I knew is how the review into low and no alcohol descriptors would turn out. We had hoped and expected that the UK would adopt the rule common in most of the rest of the world, including the rest of the EU, that <0.5% is alcohol-free, we didn’t. So although beers produced from outside the UK can be called alcohol-free at <0.5%, beers made in the UK at <0.5% are either called de-alcoholised or low alcohol, to be called alcohol-free it needs to be less than 0.05%, which we could make but it would use a lot more water and reduce the quality of the beer for no discernible benefit. I wish I didn’t feel I needed to understand the EU rules of mutual recognition or how much alcohol is in a banana milkshake, or the fact that some burger buns wouldn’t even classify as low alcohol in the UK let alone alcohol-free, but on the plus side I can now bore myself to sleep.
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was essential to being able to mimic the flavour in Ghost Ship we were left with reverse osmosis which is carried out at essentially zero Celsius. It was much gentler on the hop character and left the malt character intact.
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Brewing > Feature
Feature < Brewing
Mix master and the art of iteration Ben Rymer of Minibrew, an all-in-one brewing machine designed for brewers to experiment, looks at how the ‘version’ is always the most essential mix. Here, Ben delves into the roots of dub to demonstrate how the latest version is just part of the set.
Technology had enabled the Upsetter to tweak endlessly. With that realisation came the natural
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Pieter Morlion
When Black Ark Studios burnt to the ground in Jamaica in 1979, a dynasty came to a close. The studio, where Lee Perry – ‘the Upsetter’ – produced all the reggae greats such as Bob Marley, The Congos, Max Romeo, and an endless array of breathtaking talent, went up in a puff of smoke. Black Ark had a more profound legacy than the records that came out of the heady mix of simple technology and the mind of a genius. Mr Perry had used his time to pioneer dub, alongside Osborne ‘King Tubby’ Ruddock and a select few of Jamaica’s finest studio producer greats. Where previously the producer was a name in the middle of a 7-inch single, known only to the trainspotter, the rise of dub gave birth to the producer as an artist in his own right. Suddenly the collector would look at this name first, no need to listen. What was responsible for this sea change? It was the idea of embracing different versions.
Brewing > Feature
step to release multiple vocalists, and then came the dub version. An experimental form where the producer had time and space to play endlessly. From that came the dub, an almost freeform, live take. And thus was born the 12-inch single. For years the reggae sound system would play backto-back singles, with the dub on the B-side, the 12-inch was merely an extension.
on the N64. And yet it could be the SNES version. Or maybe the Gamecube. It’s not the end result that ever defines these things or the features. It’s when you played it. Who with. Where.
Never at any point within reggae culture had anyone thought to release the most commercial version. Record pressing was focused on the local systems. Dubplates, the acetate disc, became prevalent, with exclusive versions cut for particular DJs; one-off vocal takes, with shout-outs to the system in battle. If anything, reggae cultures idea that the perfect version was a one-off single pressing. Versions of
There is no best version. Tina Turner was a liar. How could there be? Nobody who creates would ever declare a particular expression the best. It’s simply not part of the process. These meanings always come from other people. The marketing department loves to declare it’s the best yet. Guaranteed the engineers, programmers and artists loathe this sentence. Lee Perry’s reverberations move endlessly through the musical landscape. He didn’t plan this; there wasn’t a release schedule. What started as a collection of rudimentary equipment in a shed in his garden in Kingston, Jamaica became the Black
It’s not the end result that ever defines these things or the features. It’s when you played it. Who with. Where.
the same track weren’t released for profit; they were merely an expression of the producer and vocalists synergy. In fact, when a certain Chris Blackwell appeared from the UK and whisked Mr Marley away to the UK to record his widely selling commercial hit records, Lee Perry called him ‘the white devil’.
Ark Studio through the mind of a genius. Today the 82-year-old version of Lee Perry is playing in Brixton in 2019. Mr Perry never stopped to think about his best version; he would undoubtedly scoff at the concept. He may have helped invent the version, but he never stops refining.
The advent of software development leads to versioning in a different build. Multiple versions will exist in the life cycle of a program, and eventually, somebody within the business department will deem the software ready for release. This is often followed by an immediate fix the day after as multiple errors are found. There is never really a perfect version of the software. The idea of something being the best version is ascribed to it afterwards by the spotters. The creators will never really want to finish the process. There can always be improvements, whether it’s a heavier bass or a more agile build. The version has become a dream for the marketers. Wider screen, faster processor, vinyl-only remix, any excuse to sell you the same thing twice. There are however a few exceptions. Mario Kart
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Babatuel
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Ingredients > Feature
How you should be choosing your malt The Brewers Association has said that craft malt should be ‘distinctive and flavourful’. Crisp Malt Sales Manager Colin Johnston explains how brewers should use all their senses to pick malts. You get to chat to a lot of brewers when your background is brewing, your passion is beer - and you work for a malt company. You get to meet the people whose beers you’ve been savouring and admiring ever since you were (almost) old enough to drink. And you get to offer advice to those bravely starting up breweries having never monitored a mash in their lives. Sometimes, your encounters leave a lasting impression. It was like that with Brooklyn Brewmaster, Garrett Oliver. His words at a tasting
In the UK, we’re blessed with some of the finest barley-growing land in the world. North Norfolk in particular reigns supreme, with its textbook terroir a combination of light soil structure, sunny maritime weather and gentle sea breezes. The region’s malt meets all the BA craft malt specifications. All the measures are available in your certificate of analysis. It’s no coincidence that Crisp has been malting in North Norfolk since 1884. The region’s terroir is perfect for growing malting barley. It is here where most of the country’s Maris Otter is grown, and where Chevallier Heritage Malt has been so successfully revived. But what of the BA’s other requirement; that craft malt should be distinctive and flavourful? How is this
To truly gauge the flavour contribution to the beer, we advocate the ‘hot steep method’ that we use to assess all our malts for flavour consistency I was at chimed perfectly with my belief. He said outstanding craft beers are made by people who have a singular vision about the end product; a passion for flavour; and a commitment to ingredients they are fiercely proud of using.
assured by maltsters – and how do brewers make their own assessments? USE ALL YOUR SENSES Well at Crisp we’re long-time advocates of organoleptic activity – that is, using the senses. Maltsters look at, touch, break, smell and taste grain samples from beginning to the end of the malting process. Brewers can apply and develop their beer sensory capabilities to cover malt examination and tasting.
WHAT SHOULD ‘CRAFT MALT’ BE? A recent article published by the technical committee of the Brewers’ Association in the USA outlined the ideal ‘craft malt’. It specified: • • • •
TASTY TREATS Delegates at the Craft Brewers Conference in the US chew their way through countless handfuls of Maris Otter, Chevallier Heritage malt, Caramalt – and a panoply of malted and unmalted cereals. The crunch test allows them to work out taste characteristics and is a good way of telling if the malt is fresh, well modified (friable) and free from any obvious
low free amino nitrogen (around 150) for optimal fermentation lower total protein/ nitrogen (less than 1.65%) to promote stability and clarity lower diastatic power (around 60) to allow for ideal mashing conditions lower Kolbach index or soluble nitrogen ratio as we know it (35-42).
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Feature < Ingredients
Get touching, smelling, breaking, tasting – and steeping – to better understand your core ingredient
off-flavours. Over time you can develop your skills to be able to identify trueness-to-type as well as subtle differences between similar-looking malts. A careful visual inspection tells you whether whole malt is consistently sized, kernels unbroken and husks intact. You can check whether it’s free from dust, stones and stalks and get an idea of whether it’s been treated well in malting, packaging and transportation.
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STEEP OF FAITH But to truly gauge the flavour contribution to the beer, we advocate following the ‘hot steep method’ that we use to assess all our malts for flavour consistency. It was developed by Briess and the American Society of Brewing Chemists and can be found online. It involves grinding a small malt sample and combining with 65-degree hot water for 15 minutes for the malt to saccharify and the flavour compounds to be released. By filtering this mash, the wort can be tasted and an assessment made. You can also do mini mashes of your malt mill with different contributions of speciality malt to understand how they combine and affect each other.
DISCOVER MALT For years brewers have been stuffing their heads into bags of hops and waxing lyrical about the aromas and qualities of their consignments. Gradually, I’m witnessing more brewers interrogating their malt intake with similar levels of care. Commoditisation of malt and bland beers go hand in hand. Equally, utter respect for, and an insatiable curiosity about, all ingredients are the pathway to outstanding, flavoursome beers. It’s not a question of a one-off decision. As with hops, every batch of malt that crosses the threshold of your brewery doors should be a source of anticipation, interest and excitement. Not all barleys are created equal, and neither are all malts. Get touching, smelling, breaking, tasting – and steeping – to better understand your core ingredient and explore the wonderful world of malt flavour. It is far wider than most people imagine.
Ingredients > Feature
to ask these questions to make sure that as much as possible, our own business reflects the ideals of craft and supports it into the future. It is something all suppliers should be asking themselves. One of the cornerstones of craft brewing is localisation: a brewery’s ability to bring beer styles from all over the world and make it available to the local community. It plays a massive part in the building of a brewery’s sales from its inception and continues to be part of a brand’s customer foundation as it grows beyond its own postcode. It is an essential part of the culture and tone of the craft community. ON THE GROUND People buy from people. It is said many times, but in our experience, it holds truer than ever in the craft brewing world. At Simply Hops, for example, we are making sure that across the UK, Europe and Scandinavia, we have people on the ground working with local heroes to help get the best understanding of customers’ needs. We’ve recently started working with Get Er Brewed in Northern Ireland for precisely this reason. In Ireland more than anywhere, craft brewers are struggling to build a strong local base. Looking at the Irish craft market gives us an excellent insight as to why localisation is so important.
The lesson of Ireland’s craft leash
Reliable numbers are never easy to get hold of. In the US, craft beer is often said to make up around 15–16% of the market. In the UK it’s been estimated at approximately 5% but still growing. In the rest of Europe, it can vary from country to country, but the overall picture is towards growth and the taking of a larger share of the market. In the whole of Ireland however, estimates are that craft beer accounts for around 3% of the total market, and growth is slow.
The Irish and Northern Irish market provides valuable lessons about how suppliers should be supporting their customers and the importance of localisation. Dan Christmas, marketing manager at Simply Hops, reports from the Emerald Isle.
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What does it mean to be upheld and protected within craft brewing? Not only for it to continue, but to grow and flourish? We’ve been considering it a lot at Simply Hops. The genie is out of the bottle now, and hopefully, craft will be around forever. We have
Nonetheless, when you speak to the people involved in the independent craft brewing industry across Ireland, you still witness all of the passion and dedication you get elsewhere. They see themselves as part of a more significant community and work in the same collaborative way that is expected among craft brewers. Their beer is just as thoughtfully crafted and offers the same quality and excitement to their customers. So why is the market not responding in the same way as many other places? Jonathan and Deborah Mitchell run Get Er Brewed, based in Randalstown in Northern Ireland.
Feature < Ingredients
Irish brewers are doing all they can, but what the Irish market shows us is that connection to your local market is critical for a prosperous future
“It also gives the brewery a financial boost as they are able to shift some of their volume through a short supply chain and protect their margin.” Deborah adds, “It’s all about real interactions no matter who your customer is. We have built our business on face-to-face communication. We have become our own brand that naturally incorporates all of the values we uphold in our business. The same holds true for the breweries.” Jonathan continues, “Licensing makes running something like a tap-room or pop-up event very time consuming or expensive. The costs of the licenses in Ireland can be eye-watering, which makes setting up a tap-room a non-starter. It makes doing these kinds of things difficult and certainly means that anything spontaneous is out of the question. The result is that brewers can lose a potent marketing tool. With so much passion and energy in Irish craft brewing you can almost feel the market straining against its restraints. It’s ready to go!” Mal McKay is energetic and smiles easily. It gives away his love of what he does. He also sees his local market as key to his future success. Mal has just finished building his new brewery on his family’s farm (former home of the poet Seamus Heaney) and is about to begin brewing his craft beers sold under the Heaney brand. As soon as he starts speaking to us, it’s clear that he plans to overcome any obstacles in his way. His opening sentence is possibly tongue-in-cheek, but you get the sense he means it. “Anybody that hasn’t heard of us yet soon will. “This has all come about from a love of beer, and me and friends homebrewing to make clones of the beers we love. It just went a bit too far one night when I said to my wife I wanted to put a brewery in at the farm. ‘Wise up,’ she said, which I did for a while. Then I went a bit mental and decided to do it anyway. “To begin with, we’re going to focus on some good everyday, everyman beers. I think a good brewery needs to be able to offer a good core range. I have some great ideas for some big recipes down the line though. The biggest threat to me here is getting the local consumer to understand that they should be buying proper beer. We should be supporting local brewers whenever possible, and that means drinkers, 21
They have grown from supplying home-brew and wine kits to now being a major distributor to the craft breweries across Ireland, working with Simply Hops, Crisp Malt and Lallemand Yeasts. They have been concentrating recently on ensuring they are able to provide the best quality ingredients to their customers. They are ambitious, but the lack of growth in the market is seen as both unnecessary and frustrating. Jonathan says, “I love Irish craft brewing. The brewers I meet daily are really killing it when it comes to passion, quality and innovation. There are some things we need to catch up on here in Ireland though, that will see the craft beer market bloom. When I go to the mainland UK, and throughout Europe, I see breweries bringing in locals to their taprooms and bars. The locals love having something that is new, exciting and most importantly ‘theirs’ right on their doorstep. They are able to interact with the brewers and staff in a way they never can with large scale breweries. It creates both passion and loyalty in the consumer, making them the perfect ambassador for the breweries as they spread the craft word to their friends.
Brewing > Feature
the publicans, the staff in the pubs, the hotels, the restaurants and the independent off-sales. They keep saying there’s no demand for the craft beer. But how can there be a demand for it in your pub if you don’t have it in your pub? I guarantee if you put it in your pub, people will buy it.” O Brother Brewing in Kilcoole in Ireland is busy. The radio is loud, the keg filler is being operated at full-tilt and space is very much at a premium. It’s a similar scene that you get from many craft breweries: fast-paced and hard-working, designed to turn out premium beer. Barry O’Neill, one of the three founding brothers nonetheless finds time to speak to us about his view of the future. “We set up in the back-end of 2014. We used to work part-time in our uncle’s off-licence. We got a reputation for turning up to parties with weird and exotic beers from all over the place, and it started a love of beer. We became passionate homebrewers then outgrew our dad’s garage so made the leap from very diverse careers to brewers. “We spent about three years getting the brewery together before we eventually got going here in Kilcoole. We wanted to brew what we feel is lacking in the Irish market, which is big hoppy beers in the American style. We wanted to put Irish beers on the map. In 2011, when we first started looking at this, there were very few breweries that were not playing it safe. Now though, there are loads of Irish brewers doing really great things. “With regards to the future we are looking at the growth of the market, or rather the lack of it. I think it’s going to be hard yards to keep making in-roads in the market now. I feel this especially when we hear our consumers saying ‘I got the new craft beer from brewery X’ and I know that that particular brewery brews our entire annual production eight times every day.
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“We have to educate the consumer about the difference between a brewery like this, where we have four people grinding it out every day because they love what they do. It makes it hard for us to get into the bars and pubs and to get taps for the people to try out beer. If we can get more locals involved with us, it helps us get that message out.”
Finally, we spoke to Bill Laukitis, Head Brewer at Rye River Brewing Company in Kildare just outside of Dublin. Rye River could not be described as a small brewery by any means, with an output that far exceeds that of many of the other breweries we spoke to. They are just opening a new taproom and have excellent distribution through a number of sales channels across different brands. You would expect then that Bill’s viewpoint might be slightly different. But he is clearly an independent brewer who has a love of craft within him. He speaks proudly of ‘his’ Irish brewhouse and the beer they make. “This is the first brewhouse manufactured in Ireland for over 100 years. We wanted to bring this type of engineering back to Ireland, so we linked up with a local engineering company, and the kit is working pretty well. We’re on course to brew 28 times on the 25HL system this week. We’re pretty proud of the beers we make here: 25 core beers and 30 unique special recipe beers last year. It keeps us very busy.” “Craft brewing is a community and back where I grew up in the States it’s a lot easier for
Feature < Brewing
a brewery to open up its doors and let everybody in; somewhere to share their beers and get to know each other. I think making it easier for breweries to do that would help a lot in the future. It would also help with tourism. A lot of people visit Ireland to try beer. There is a famous beer or two that people come for, but it would be great if it were just as easy for them to visit the great craft breweries in the country.â&#x20AC;?
Jonathan caption goes here
Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s quite clear then that all of the ingredients for the growth of the craft market are there. The passion and skill are poised waiting. Irish brewers are doing all they can, but what the Irish market shows us is that connection to your local market is critical for a prosperous future. It is that interaction combined with the brewing and the beer that grows the market, and at Simply Hops, we are hoping to see all of the brewers across Europe build ever stronger support bases. Legislation and licensing changes are a big part of this. Our support as a supplier is as well, and we plan to do all we can to help.
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Marketing > Feature
Feature < Marketing
The making of a brand
Meet Richard Norgate, the in-house designer at Magic Rock. The brewery has just undergone a rebrand. Richard talks us through the reason for the changes, why cans are a great medium and why an in-house designer can be an advantage. Creativity can come from anywhere. A craft beer shelf can be a sensory overload. There’s so much colour and pattern happening. Going to the states early on and seeing what a craft beer bar looked like over there, the convention is to have elaborate, extravagant and massive tap handles, and I remember one with a tiny tap handle and that was the one that stood out to us. It wasn’t shouting its head off, it was the one that spoke to me. You could say the same of Kernel’s labels – they’re instantly recognisable because no one is doing that.
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The can is such a beautiful medium. There’s a big flat area to wrap around. There’s a lot of information that’s legal for grocery, but if you can free it up to give the illustration a bit more space hopefully it’s more approachable or engaging.
Marketing > Feature
We never put a logo that big anywhere. We allow the illustrative style to have its own space. We wanted people to go out and look for the can. The logo was tucked away on the back with the information. I felt we were confident enough not to do it. We’ve kept true to that.
Working in-house allows you to react quickly to ideas without the level of complexity in an agency
There have been three phases to Magic Rock’s design. Firstly, the original pump clips, then the first cans we had at the current brewery, and where we are now.
out more detail. My two tone green was Cannonball, and two tone blue was High Wire, there was no thick black like now. I think the new design feels familiar because the shapes I’m drawing are similar to what I began with, it’s just now much tighter in terms of the crop. We started to play with illustrations on a bigger scale on our delivery vans. It was more illustrative, like making a pattern. I really liked it with less of a theme with characters, a bit more abstract, creating patterns out of the illustrations. It worked really well, and we started doing it for the launch of our small pack. People like me and Nick Dwyer of Beavertown work in-house. I’m not saying it’s not consistent with other breweries, but I suppose our styles are individual to us and the brands we’re working for have ownership of that. It becomes quite consistent because of that. It’s the same, shared vision, developing organically.
We started out with a loose circus theme. The names of the beers were Big Top, High Wire, Cannonball. It gave me a bit of direction. When I started, I did make it more circus-like, but we felt it was a bit twee. Circus should be just the theme.
Working in-house allows you to react quickly to ideas, without the level of complexity in an agency. It’s exciting not to just design the stuff, but to think about the brand development, to develop ideas. Cycling has been a bit of a theme because me and Rich enjoy it. We’ve asked people in the company to work on things that are their passions too. For example, one of the guys is a keen climber and we’re doing a beer for Climbers Against Cancer. We’ve been able to do a beer and design a label for a small batch. That sort of thing would be more difficult for an agency.
When we got into cans, there was such a high minimum volume, at least 100,000, so there was a certain amount of pressure to get it right. We settled on the idea that each can would have its own colour, relating to the original pump clips, but on a bigger scale. They just looked like coloured cans from a distance. Me and Richard Burhouse liked the idea that once you had it in your hand you can pick
There are cons to an in-house designer however. There’s the danger it can become a bit stagnant. The development of the style at Magic Rock has kept it fresh for me, rather than just churning out design after design. By training I’m a graphic designer. I’ve worked in studios to briefs on layouts, advertising, type, logos and branding. My illustrative work was always secondary. And before it all I had a background in pattern and repeats.
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The Magic Rock style has become so recognisably ingrained in the brand.
Feature < Selling
2. It’s nice to deal with good people. It’s generally not about offers, deals or even price, it’s just the quality of the beer and the personalities behind the brewery are a big factor. How easy are people to deal with? How enthusiastic are they? 3. Breweries need to have good marketing. Social media is massive, especially Instagram. Without that people wouldn’t know half the beers that breweries released. It does half of our job for us. 4. Have a core range. It’s definitely good to have a core range of beers. A pale, a lager and an IPA in an ideal world will tick most boxes. 5. Use the right format for the beer. At the presentation point, if you have a hugely hoppy modern, New England-style IPA in a 500ml bottle, that’s a little incongruous and we’d struggle to sell it to the right customers. We love cans, and I think every other shop would say the same thing. They’re an excellent platform for art and attractive for customers too: easy to chill for example. But there’s a time and a place for bottles, for darker beers and classic beers such as lagers.
Tim Peyton, Retail Manager at Real Ale, manages shops in Twickenham and Maida Vale. With a retail experience, he shares his top tips for breweries selling beers to shops. 1. Have striking artwork. Villages Brewery in Deptford is making really solid beers. The labels are very modern but not shouty; the labels really stand out without slapping you in the face. I would say most people buy loud arty stuff based on the label, but from a retailers perspective, I find it quite refreshing when a brewery isn’t doing that. However, loud cans are a proven formula, and it does work.
7. The more information, the better. What hops are used, or malts. A lot of breweries are giving that information, but it would nice if even more would do it. Customers are seeking it out. 8. Steady on the specials. Innovation is great, and one-off specials are great, but when a brewery is pumping out so many, I think it loses its impact a bit. I believe that some breweries need to tone down the frequency of specials. If a beer is good, it should be given the space to exist. 9. Make great beer. If the beers are good, We’ll recommend it wherever it comes from.
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9 essential retail tips
6. Breweries need to offer a story. If the breweries have a great story, then it’s a selling point and if breweries are able to articulate that at the point of sale that will make them stand out. It’s very rare that they’ll personally tell us how a beer came about, and it would help.
Owning > Feature
Good beer Paul Jones, owner of Cloudwater Brewing Co, asks what obligations brewery owners have to foster the deep-rooted culture of beer. I feel privileged to own and run a brewery in the gritty, yet warm and friendly, north of England. We have a rich heritage that stems from working-class values, progressive political movements, industrial innovation, and some of the finest expressions of modern art known to man. At once proud and humble, we work, laugh, and play hard, keep our feet on the ground, and talk straight. So let me tell you how things look from my perspective, at this very moment in time. As a brewery owner and director, most of my time is spent focused on people. The people who I cherish
social lubricants and relaxation aids in the world. As brewers, we must take care to preserve and build upon not only the finest brewing and production lessons from our history and traditions, but also the most positive and constructive, community-building aspirations from which beer can become healthful and rewarding. Whilst beer’s historical social context was deeply rooted in face-to-face drinking in community pubs, today’s social context is both enriched and forever changed by the rise of the destination taproom, and the potential for breweries to enjoy a global reach via the platform provided by digital communications. We have also witnessed the emergence of influencers, commentators, and writers vying for input and
We must all ask ourselves what culture are we trying to promote, and what future are we hoping to seed working with, all 40 of them, who put their minds and bodies to the fullest use in designing, brewing, packaging, distributing, and selling our beer, each set about their work with immense strength and determination, yet each are as vulnerable and flawed as I find myself. And the people for whom we work to make satisfying, delicious beer that plays its part in helping them relax, and unwind, whilst they take a break from the daily and sometimes intense pressures of modern life.
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Beer culture today is rapidly evolving. Its origins lie in hundreds of years of public houses, acting at times as socioeconomic melting pots, spaces for political discussion, and most recently as community hubs. With laughs and cheer, heart-to-heart discussions, and a chance to meet dear old friends and make new acquaintances, public houses transform beer from a mildly toxic alcoholic beverage to one of the finest
expression, to some of whom we owe our thanks for their regular donation of free time to bring people in and for shining a light on all the positives in beer. But the spaces within which beer culture exists are no longer just cosy pubs or rowdy dive bars. They’re sometimes bubbles and echo chambers, enthusiastmoderated groups and online communities, each with some common, and some unique agendas. We must all ask ourselves what culture are we trying to promote, and what future are we hoping to seed; not just with the type of beers we brew, but how we talk about beer’s place and function in our own lives, and in the those of our customers. Does our work in or around beer help our fellow beer lover relax? Are we promoting, both internally and externally, healthful and positive relationships with each other, and with alcohol? Are we inspiring far, far more than we are ever disappointing to the community around
Feature < Owning
Beer is perfectly positioned to once again be a catalyst for social cohesion, the bridge to deeper understanding of our shared humanity
us? How we directly contribute to building upon our early enthusiasm and deep-rooted love for a culture that makes beer, pubs, bars, taprooms, bottle shops and online communities deeply positive, humancentric, and relaxing will set us apart and build more loyalty and encourage more consumers to consider beer over other beverages far more than how craft we are, how hazy our latest DDH IPA is, or how much we rally against global industrial creep into independent beer.
people seem to polarise through political standoffs, reductive hot-takes, smear and wilfully narrow views that seem to deny the fullness of each person’s humanity, views, and achievements, beer - especially the best of beer culture as it happens face-to-face, and with our efforts in harmony - is perfectly positioned to once again be a catalyst for social cohesion rather than the match that lights a fire, the bridge to deeper understanding of our shared humanity rather than an impasse over binary or reductive positions. I believe beer is thriving today not because it once offered our ancestors safe drinking water and has evolved over the years to now delight us with tradition-honouring precision or forwardthinking innovation, but because beer has deep within it a culture centred around community and bringing people together, and the potential to seed the change, progression and open-hearted togetherness we all need.
If beer isn’t fun, if it isn’t lowering our social inhibitions, if it doesn’t help us unwind and relax, if it doesn’t bring us closer to the people around us, it ceases to be a force for good.
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Beer can be a lens through which we bare our souls over a pint, and through which we both reveal and seek deeper layers of humanity. Rubbing shoulders with a cross-section of society in a pub requires good grace and good manners, and encourages better behaviour than we can stoop to online. As the world’s
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