How the world is turning – to British real ale!
By: JimOldfield
March 19th, 2012
Focus on the 33rd Burton Beer Festival
Before Roger Protz could take the stage to officially open the 33rd Burton Beer Festival, he had to break-off from advising a clutch of would-be Spanish brewers on the finer points of English ale.
This was nothing new, as Britain’s best-known beer writer told the crowd. He was, in fact, right off a plane from Naples where he had discovered English-style cask-ale was being drunk faster than its Italian brewers could brew it.
In this amazing ale revolution, where the number of real ale breweries have now soared to over 1,000 in the UK alone, it appears there is an unquenchable thirst world-wide for our native ale.
Now the Good Beer Guide editor was back in the home of beer – the traditional British brewing capital of Burton-Upon-Trent – for the 33rd time in 18 months, he joked.
And he found time to chat exclusively with Hand-Pumped about his take on the beer boom, the end of lager corporation domination, and how micro-brewers can capitalise on its revival.
Roger is greeted by a Spanish brewer.
Said Roger: “For a long time now, there has been a cynical attitude within the lager industry that all they have to do is make funny or slick adverts and people will buy their product regardless of the quality.
“But I think people have started to get tired of simply drinking the advertising.
“There’s an ad on now by a very well known brand that’s clever and funny, but no one’s drinking the stuff any more.
“With money being tighter, and people going out less and less, when people do go out, they want something memorable – which lager just isn’t. And that’s partly where the micro-breweries come in.
“There’s this trendy expression ‘provenance’ which has come to the fore with food and drink. People want to know where it comes from.
“Many lager giants brew with inferior ingredients. Micro-brewers, on the other hand, are using all natural ingredients – English barley and hops – and the beer tastes better.
“Look at American Budweiser. It’s brewed with rice. What the heck is rice doing in beer?
“British breweries are labelling their beers very well; people can see what they are drinking – and here they drink with their eyes… although I don’t think a cloudy pint is undrinkable. After all, Young’s beer was almost cloudy in the 1960s and 70s – here people won’t drink cloudy beer and at the moment, every cloudy pint, is a victory for the lager set.”
Figures released by CAMRA last year revealed around 100 micro-breweries had opened up in the UK during the previous 12 months, taking the total over 900.
Hand-pumped’s Alex Vessey gets an exclusive
interview with the real ale guru.
But numbers bandied around at the Burton festival now put that figure at around 1,050.
With breweries now opening every week, is brewing a licence to print money – and can anyone jump aboard the cask-wagon?
Roger doesn’t think so. “You have to be able to brew quality beers to survive. It’s a very competitive market now. But there are more breweries opening than closing at the moment.
“Anyone starting their own micro-brewery has a lot to think about. They will need brewing skills; they will have to have a marketing strategy; they will need to find outlets for their beer within the limited and competitive freehold market; and they must have an acute business sense.
“Where some are making the break-though now, is in food-matching – and I think there is a great untapped potential here. In Italy, there is a pub near Naples which brews English-style ale, which has brought in a chef to cook dishes which match the drinks – not the other way round.”
And he added: “IPA is making a great comeback in curry houses. It’s the perfect drink to set off a curry.
“And now, there is the growth of ‘proper lager’ – made in the same vein as real ale, using natural ingredients and lager yeast. Freedom Brewery here in nearby Abbott’s Bromley is making a success of this.
“All in all, we’ve got a lot of reasons to be cheerful about the prospects of real ale”, he smiled.
We’ll all drink to that!
