Stonch lives in London, where he runs a pub.Real ale to disappear from Britain's pubs
"The future of real ales is in danger following the acquisition of Britain's last major brewery". That's how the Bromley Times has responded to a CAMRA press release about the S&N takeover. Presumably the likes of Greene King, Marstons, Wells & Youngs and Fullers are minor enterprises, then.
I appreciate how difficult it must be to predict what some worker bee of the journalistic world will write. However, sending out relentlessly pessimistic messages is bound to result in guff like this. I just don't think it's a good strategy when there's much to celebrate. As highlighted in Pete Brown's report last year, the multinational brewers (like S&N) have been withdrawing from the cask ale market for years, reducing overall volumes. However, regional and microbrewers are picking up the slack, resulting in greater quality and choice.
7 comments:
Last time I was there, Bromley was full of Irish-theme and chav-hideout pubs, none of which could offer a decent pint. You could have Stella or Guinness or... Stella or Guinness.
There was an Abbey in The Glades for those Bromley-ites who had fond memories sur le continent after shopping to bulk-buy Stella from Calais.
I'm sure this desperate news will stab at the heart of Bromley's attempts to grow some business diversity. Or whatever...
I wonder if the point is that the new brewery owners with concentrate on bog standard lagers and not even distribute real ales to their pubs.
This could go two ways of course. The small brewers go out of business as the mutlinationals will not distribute their product to their pub estate as it could damage sales of their product
OR
As they brew little of their own bitters anyway, they choose to get more people through the doors by distributing more small local brews to their estate.
The latter would appear to make more business sense as it could improve the offer available in the pub estate. However, breweries often seem to be quite bad at the pub business and running their pub estates...
As a Bromley resident (unfortunately) I can confirm that the place is teeming with crap Irish/Australian theme pubs and is a veritable ale desert. There are a couple of Young's pubs in the borough, two Fullers establishments next door to each other on the High Street and one or two Shepherd Neame houses. Other than that there is the tiny Red Lion, which is owned by Greene King but the landlord fights to stock Harveys and a guest ale or two. That's it. Your chances of seeing something brewed within ten miles are almost zilch.
Any ascertions on the state of the ale industry cannot be based on the 'scene' (or lack of) in Bromley. Quite frankly, if we see the end of bland, mass produced national brands, this can only leave room for flavoursome, interesting, local brewers to fill the void.
The Bromley Times should stick to reporting on the things it knows best - Burberry, Stella and Friday night streetfighting.
Load of toss - it's not in much danger while I've still got a liver.
I think at the moment, if you look at the macro brewers foisting their handful of branded products onto the masses things ain't too great. And yet at the quality end of the market, choice is amazing and available in many a surprising place.
The problem with many of the macro brewers is they have seen beer as a brand no different to any other and those that are part of the senior management teams have no knowledge or intrest in beer or brewing, its just a branded product. And the brand is far more important then the product itself.
And yet the quality market seems to be improving at a rate though it will be interesting how this plays out in the next 2-3 years with the hop crisis and rising malt and costs coming into play.
I take it that journo is looking to work on the Daily Express with that level of investigation. hehehe
Ricolas, most breweries don't own any pubs - my numbers are probably out of date, but Greede King own about 2,500. The big pub chains don't make beer, just manipulate the market by dealing with conglomerate brewers to maximise yield from every pint of shite beer they dispense.
Indie brewers can use a beer distribution network, but they need to get on the supply lists of the pubcos to get to point of sale - sometimes that means making little profit - those are the shackles preventing equal access to the UK market.
Ghastly
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