9 minute read
FRESH IS BEST
LOCALLY-PRODUCED MAINSTREAM AND CRAFT BEER, IMPORTS, AND BREWED UNDER LICENCE PREMIUM INTERNATIONAL BRANDS ALL COMPETING FOR SPACE IN THE FRIDGE THESE DAYS, THERE ARE MORE OPTIONS FOR THE DISCERNING BEER DRINKER (AND RETAILER) THAN EVER, WRITES TAM ALLENBY.
Most beer drinkers would probably have had a disappointing experience with an imported beer. It’s no secret that – especially for hop-driven styles – too long in the warehouse, on the ship or truck, or time sitting on the shelf can reduce a beer’s quality in spades, with both hop aroma and flavour diminishing rapidly when exposed to heat, light or oxygen.
With this in mind, and with the huge upsurge in quality of locally produced products in recent years, is there still any point in ranging imported beer?
Richard Kelsey, Director of online and ‘bricks and mortar’ retail store Beer Cartel, says he has seen a “pretty dramatic shift” in the imported versus local beer landscape in the last three or four years, and particularly in the last 12 months.
“There is now so much quality beer being produced that Australian beer accounts for over 60 percent of craft beer sales we make, from the 1,000 different lines we stock,” he told National Liquor News. “If we were to go back two years, around 40 percent of all our sales would have been made up of Australian beer.
“In the past, where the quality of Australian craft beer wasn’t as good as what we are seeing on the market now, we would have said that Australian and imported brews were still relatively comparable. Now the quality of Australian product has increased, we will always recommend going with Australian product. This is particularly important for beers that are lower in alcohol or really hop-forward as these degrade more severely over time and drinking these fresh is important to really appreciate the beer.”
COLD STORAGE
Well aware of the effect that importation can have on quality, many beer importers employ cold storage throughout the shipping process to try and negate the decline; according to Phoenix Beers’ owner Leif Ryan, “if a beer is not pasteurised and relies on its hop characters, then we transport and store refrigerated”. However, the last part of the chain – in-store – is out of the importer’s control; a lack of space to be able to store beers refrigerated is a constant headache, as many retailers would no doubt attest.
“Luckily for us since our beers are from high quality brewers, they stand up to being stored ambient for a number of weeks without issue,” Ryan adds, pointing to Sierra Nevada as one brand that continues to grow in a very competitive and crowded Australian market.
Nonetheless, he still recognises that with more and more Aussie craft beers fighting for space on the shelf or in the fridge, imported craft beers on the whole aren’t exactly on the up.
The latest ALSA-IRI State of the Industry Report backs this up, finding that local producers are driving growth in the craft space in the off-premise and are outperforming the “limited array” of overseas brands. In terms of raw figures, Australian-produced craft beer grew by 12.6 per cent in 2017, versus 1.9 per cent for their imported counterparts.
However, while imported craft beer mightn’t be booming, there’s still plenty to be said for the quality of many imported beers – especially less hop-driven or higher ABV styles. Michael Lonard from Bidbeer, an importer that focuses on Belgian ales like Chimay and Duvel, says that with the rise of locally produced sours, saisons and other European styles, more and more consumers are seeking out the originals.
“Freshness in beer is important in certain styles,” Lonard notes. “Some specialty ales will improve in the bottle well past their obligatory ‘best before’ – so not always is it a case of ‘fresh is best’, as much as ‘education is best’. Plus, the irony is that IPAs were historically brewed purposely for export and long shelf life, but the Americans now brew a beer that is the polar opposite of that!”
Kelsey from Beer Cartel also professes a “soft spot” for Belgian beer, with co-founder Geoff Huens experiencing a “beer epiphany” in the country; he describes the quality of beer that it produces as “pretty amazing”.
“It’s the second most important overseas country for us and has so much beer heritage to it. For us it is largely driven by three Trappist breweries: Chimay, Westmalle and Rochefort,” says Kelsey.
Of course, many larger breweries are sidestepping this ‘freshness debate’ by brewing premium international brands, as well as ‘craftier’ beers, here in Australia under license. One of the latest to do so is Goose Island, with two of its beers (IPA and Midway Session IPA) being brewed by Carlton United Breweries/AB InBev at the Cascade brewery in Hobart.
“When we decided a year-and-a-half ago to bring Goose to Australia, we basically talked to the brewers in Chicago and they told us that if you want to have hop-forward beers like Goose IPA available in Australia, you’re going to have to brew it locally, to make sure it’s perfectly fresh,” says Adrien Mahieu, High End Director for AB InBev Australia.
HOP HOUSE 13 LANDS ON OUR SHORES
One of the latest imported beers to land in Australia is the Guinness Hop House 13 Lager, which, according to Lion’s Serge Costi, “hits the sweet spot between international beer and craft”.
“It was the biggest launch in the Great Britain beer market in the last two years, outgrowing all beers within the international beer segment, and is now almost a quarter the size of Guinness Draught after less than two years in market,” he explained to NLN.
Described as a premium crafted lager with “more character and more taste”, Hop House 13 was created by the brewing team at St James’s Gate in Dublin to appeal to drinkers looking for a more fl avoursome lager that was still easy drinking.
“Since launch in February it has exceeded our expectations and we have plans in place for the rest of the year to ensure we see the same success as our neighbours in Great Britain,” Costi added.
And of course, many of the leading international beers here under licence by the big players continue to perform well. Serge Costi, Portfolio Manager for Premium Brands at Lion, describes the overall health of the international beer market down under as “positive”.
“The international beer market in Australia continues to deliver growth, especially in International Premium as consumers choose to drink better more often,” he says – highlighting in his words the ongoing trend in the overall liquor market towards premiumisation.
Mahieu would agree with Costi’s overall sentiment, stating that the international beer market is “doing very well” in Australia and around the world, and that three of his brands – Corona (which is still imported), Budweiser and Stella Artois – “are really driving this category globally”.
“Australia is actually the biggest Corona market in the world outside of Mexico and we’re quite proud that Corona for so many years now is the most loved beer brand in Australia,” Mahieu told National Liquor News. “One exciting thing this year is that we just launched – exclusively in Australia – the biggest innovation for Corona in recent years with Corona Ligera, a 3.2% ABV mid-strength targeting the daytime occasion.”
Budweiser is set for a big year, as the only beer sponsor for the FIFA World Cup, while Stella is also performing very well in Australia through its targeting of the “premium meal occasion”.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN
Bernd Patzold, Manager of Beach Avenue Wholesalers – Australia’s largest family owned importer of beer, wine, spirits and ciders – has a different take on the matter. When asked about the practice of the multinationals brewing international brands here in Australia under licence, Patzold is unequivocal.
“I think it’s cheating,” he told National Liquor News. “Some of the big guys who brew international brands here might say their beers are better when they’re brewed here than the real ones, but they’re certainly not. I believe that it’s cheating of the highest calibre because we have the originals, and it’s hindering small importers like us.
“We’re dealing well with the handful of customers that we have, but many others don’t even know us, because we have to compete against the big boys that are squeezing our prices. That’s in addition to the parallel importers as well who are squeezing our prices quite dramatically too, because they don’t have any marketing they just go direct and sell it.”
Beer Importers & Distributors Chimay portfolio.
According to Patzold, it’s not the rising Aussie craft market that’s competing with the imports. “The imported beer market is still pretty strong and it’s not a hindrance for Australian craft beer and vice versa, quite the opposite,” he says.
“The imported beer market is damaged because the big boys – Woolies, Aldi, Coles – import cheap beer from Europe themselves and sell it cheap.
“You can get an Uberbrau from Coles, from Germany, for $35 a carton – you can’t even get VB for that price. And this makes it very hard for people like us with the market share being taken away from us, which is crazy. They cut the middleman out, number one; number two, they’re not going for quality. They’re destroying it, like they’re going to destroy craft beer.”
At Beach Avenue Wholesalers, the strongest performing beers are also those that bring with them a sense of authenticity and quality: Budvar Budejovicky, the original ‘budweiser’; Schofferhofer, and Erdinger – three prestigious old world brands.
“People like quality,” surmises Patzold. “Why is craft beer booming in the beer market? Simple, because a lot of them are very good quality. But people also care about authenticity.”
While there’s no easy answer in the freshness vs. authenticity debate – with the relative importance of either also being subjective, and open to interpretation by the individual consumer – what is imperative is that a locally brewed ‘international’ beer truly does taste like the original.
“With licensed craft beers likely to grow further, the big challenge for these brewers is to ensure that the beer really is an accurate reflection of the beer from its local market,” says Kelsey. “If it isn’t I think they are better off labelling the beer as something else as those who have tried the original will become disappointed.”
A FOURTH OPTION? THE CURIOUS CASE OF BREWDOG
Let’s assume for a second that most of the beers in your store come to life in one of three ways: either they’re brewed locally by an independent (or formerly independent) craft brewer; they’re physically shipped across the sea from their country and brewery of origin, or they’re brewed here by one of the bigger multinational brewers as mainstream or ‘premium international’ beers.
However, with the news that large Scottish independent brewery BrewDog will open an outpost in Brisbane in the not too distant future, has a fourth option emerged? Is it possible that other large international and independent breweries will open their own down under? According to the company’s Director in Australia Zarah Prior, the decision to build a brewery down under has long been a plan for BrewDog, driven by a commitment to remain “uncompromising” about the quality of its beer.
Zarah Prior Director, BrewDog.
“Australia has long been on the hit list for BrewDog,” Prior told National Liquor News. “It’s home to some of the most discerning beer drinkers in the world. What’s more, the pioneers of craft beer here have long been pushing the boundaries of what beer can be, punching well above their weight when compared against the more developed markets of America and the UK… From the get-go BrewDog has been striving to shorten the distance between ourselves and the people who drink our beer.
“I’d be surprised if one of the larger brewing conglomerates followed our lead,” she added. “With that said, should there be the opportunity to buy out an existing brewery that may be something they’d consider should the numbers stack up. We decided against doing that so we could have complete control of our production equipment and systems.”
With the DA still to be approved by Brisbane City Council, Prior wouldn’t put an exact date on when the first Australian-brewed BrewDog beer will roll out. What’s certain, however, is that many in the beer industry will be watching BrewDog’s Australian experiment with interest.
ROOM FOR EVERYONE
Despite the differing viewpoints on the matter, many that National Liquor News spoke with agreed that there is room in the market for both imported/ international and local craft beer, as long as freshness of the product is a primary consideration. “We (Beer Cartel) are massive supporters of Australian craft and want to do everything to see it succeed,” surmises Kelsey. “But we also realise that consumers want to be constantly challenged and wowed, so we have a focus on offering the best constantly evolving range of international craft beers as possible.
“Having a broad range of excellent international craft beer also helps to keep local brewers on their toes. If the quality of the local product is below that of its international equivalent then local sales will reduce, so by having an international range helps provide brewers with a yardstick against which they can be measured.”
And in the words of Phoenix’s Leif Ryan: “In the end it all comes down to flavour. Whether it’s imported or made here, we just want something that tastes great.”
It’s hard to argue with that. NLN
