Beer Necessities: Analysing the Craft Beer Explosion

August answered a lot of questions. The kind of probing, eternal questions that plague a sleepless night. Like: How would lab-grown meat actually taste? What would a 12-course tasting menu look like when compressed into a tin? And, do Dr. Oetker frozen pizzas taste better if you serve them in a restaurant? Answers: surprisingly okay; something resembling an edible version of a geological map; and no – just no. So now we know.

It was also, conveniently enough, the month of beer festivals. At least, that’s what an over-enthusiastic copywriter somewhere dubbed it, having noted the timely confluence of the Great British Beer Festival and the London Craft Beer Festival. However, exhaustive research (Google + beer festivals) reveals that every month is beer festival month. In fact, almost every day is. The calendar for CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) and non-CAMRA events lists well over 50 of them in September alone. At the time of writing, it's only 54 days and six hours until the start of the second Independent Manchester Beer Convention (IMBC), a new breed of “inclusive and modern” event. 

The implication here is that craft beer is no longer an old man’s game. Granted, that’s not news. We’ve got bottle-shops dedicated to the stuff and more than 1200 brewers now looking to get their beers on pumps and in the fridges. This explosion in microbreweries over the past few years sits in stark contrast to the fact that pubs are closing at a rate of over 25 per week. For a beer lover, it's a time of mixed emotions, and it begs the question: Is the beer scene going to collapse under its own weight like the head on some poorly-brewed beer?

The Americans have been asking themselves the same question recently. They saw it happen in the 90s. As Britain’s movement expands, these new brewers are going to be left with fewer and fewer pubs to supply; and those who don’t innovate and maintain standards will be left by the wayside. These are concerns echoed by Terry Langton, director of Liverpool Craft Beer Co.: "There aren’t too many microbreweries – there’s just not enough decent pubs and bars to take their beer." He continues: “The next two to three years will see the unimaginative dabblers in the microbrewing scene drop off.” 

What, then, can brewers do to brace themselves for the coming storm? Rob Hamilton, former brewer at Marble in Manchester, founded Blackjack Brewery last year. His answer is: turn your brewery into a bar. At least, temporarily. August saw Hamilton install a pop-up bar with Juke Joint Bars at the brewery and he is optimistic about the future: “Hopefully within a year we will be bottling, exporting and [I'll] have a brewery tap of my own!”

This can only be a good thing for the Northwest scene and the quality of the beer. After all, the acid test will be whether brewers, new and old, can maintain a certain standard to their brews. But that’s only part of the picture. John Hartley, of Juke Joint, believes there needs to be a more holistic approach in the industry: “It's all well and good if the standard of beer is high but the distributors and bar staff need to know how to store and handle the beer properly.” This approach extends to sustainability practices: transforming used beer pallets and kegs into tables and lamps, for instance.   

Training and ethically-minded brewing is one thing; but how will changing tastes matter? Jamie Hargreaves of Port Street Beer House in Manchester has pointed out the positively scientific-sounding ‘lupulin threshold shift.’ The phrase, coined by Russian River Brewing Company co-founder Vinnie Cilurzo, describes a phenomenon whereby people crave increasingly hoppier beers. "More people are being affected by the lupulin shift, which means they need more hoppy goodness and flavour in their beers,” he offers. Not everyone is convinced, though. Joseph Mountain, manager at The Gaslamp in Manchester, has fears that a reliance on heavily hopping beer, common in many a pale ale these days, can mask poor brewing technique. “This extremely prominent style,” he says, has led to a “parade of ultimately samey, late-hopped pale ales.”

This trend for brashly hopping beers is certainly an American influence. Langton describes the relationship between the UK and the US as "international tennis with beer styles” and it’s one that Hamilton thinks has longevity:

“The love of all things American has legs on it yet, as only a tiny percentage of breweries and beer makes it across here at the moment, and the rate of new openings is even more prolific than here,” he says. Those who prefer a ‘less is more’ approach in their beer can only hope that new waves of British brewers buck this trend.

Most things considered, the ‘craft beer bubble’ is unlikely to burst any time soon. After all, craft beer only represents 1.9% of total beer volumes in the UK, according to consultants CGA Strategy. There’s evidently plenty more craft-beer converts to be made. And it would be myopic to think that the market as a whole is somehow saturated – an idea easy for a city-dweller to subscribe to. The likes of such specialist beer houses as Port Street and The Gaslamp are still very much in the minority. As the ever-insightful Langton points out: "I can name 20 rubbish pubs and bars off the top of my head, but I struggle to name 20 great ones." Here’s hoping all these new brewers are also this country’s future landlords.