Nothing had changed that much when I started drinking in the early 1970's. Sure, some of the larger breweries (I'm thinking Watney's) made parodies of classic British styles, but they weren't substantially different in many respects from the better examples.Lager changed that. Initially, most British lager was produced in custom-built breweries (Red Tower and Wrexham are examples). Some other forward-thinking brewers added a special lager brewhouse to their existing plants (Tennent's, Barclay Perkins). Before 1960, lager was very much a niche market and most breweries didn't brew one.
The ever-increasing popularity of lager in the 1960's and 1970's prompted more to enter the lager market. Not just the big boys, but smaller, cask-ale breweries like Young's. Like other new styles before it, lager was gradually introduced into the standard range of many breweries. Though, of course, not all had facilities to brew a genuine bottom-fermented beer and produced a pseudo-lager using a top-fermenting yeast.
If things had progressed as, like, say with Porter, eventually lager would have come one of the mainstays of every brewery. But it didn't. Though the market share of lager has continued to rise, the proportion of smaller breweries brewing it has fallen. Why should this be?Britain is moving towards a two-tier structure. Large breweries making mostly lager, small brewers concentrating on cask, top-fermenting beer. There are still breweries large and small that produce both, but the trend is definitely towards concentration on one or the other.
The investment needed to bottom-ferment is one obvious reason why small brewers would be wary of lager. It's also where the big boys spend most of their advertising quids. And, especially now none are British-owned any more, the big brewers have lost interest in cask beer. How long before they give up on it all together? Only a handfull of the hundreds of new breweries in Britain bottom-ferments and I can only think of one that specialises in it. (Taddington Brewery with Moravka)
You can see a similar split between big bottom-fermenting, small top-fermenting in other countries, too. In Belgium many smaller breweries have abandoned their Pils, presumably unable to compete with Stella, Maes and Jupiler, and concentrated on top-ferementing beers. Some of the larger independents - Moortgat, for example - still brew Pils, but it surely isn't their biggest earner. More and more, just a handful of breweries are involved in the Pils market.
In Holland, the process was different, but the result the same. By the 1960's, those who hadn't converted to bottom-fermentation had been driven out of business. The few small independent breweries remaining were as much Pils monoliths as Heineken, Grolsch and Oranjeboom. When new breweries started to appear in the 1980's, these were almost universally top-fermenting only (the exception being Christoffel). The industry now consists of, on the one hand, a few very large Pils producers and, on the other, a few dozen small, top-fermenting breweries.The same situation is developing across Europe, sometimes following the British/Belgian model, sometimes the Dutch one. France, Denmark, Italy, Sweden, Norway all have beer industries polarised this way. Only central Europe - Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland - is an exception, with even most small newcomers bottom-fermenting.
Two beer markets almost totally independent of each other, that's what's emerging. Good? Bad? No idea. However, I can't see the movement in this direction stopping, rather accelerating.
"Only a handfull of the hundreds of new breweries in Britain bottom-ferments and I can only think of one that specialises in it. (Taddington Brewery with Moravka)"
ReplyDeleteBunker, a brewpub in Covent Garden, pretty much only does bottom fermented, lagered beers. I think the yeast strain for one of their brews (Soho Red) might be a top fermenter but it's a small part of their output anyway. I think there's a brewpub in Glasgow called West Brewing or something who are similar. The three ZeroDegrees brewpubs (Blackheath, Bristol, Reading) mainly do lagers.
OK, so there are half a dozen. How many new breweries only top-ferment? About 500 is my guess.
ReplyDeleteand there’s the Cotswold Brewing Company as well, who, like Taddington, are a stand-alone brewery.
ReplyDeleteInteresting stuff. I'm no economist. I'm not even remotely interested in economics. But I do find this particular economic conundrum entirely fascinating. I think the big boys are beginning to see the "mature" markets such as the UK and Belgium as increasingly marginal. Their main focus these days is the developing countries. There is much more scope for influencing/controlling the market and reaping fat rewards there. And although the markets you mention have arrived at roughly the same point by different routes, I am not sure they will all develop in the same way. The differences in the journey have led to significant distinctions in terms of pricing and distibution models. God knows where it will all end.
ReplyDeleteIn the US; the "big boys" are not growing; compared to the gowth in micro-, etc...However, when you look at industrial brewers and say; tobacco companies, both seem to be growing in developing markets (read China). I think the trend in the "developed" world is toward a different sort of consumer. But, look at trendy urabans in Hong Kong and they are drinking Cornona, Heineken, Stella and Bud. I think its a different drink (among many, but not all) in London, Amsterdam, New York and Berlin
ReplyDeletechris_o, one of the reason for all the consolidation amongst the big lager brewers is the shrinking market for their products in the western world. Beer consumption hit record levels in western Europe in the 1980's. It could well never be that high again. Will it continue to contract indefinitely? I doubt it.
ReplyDeletejdlark, I expect to see places like China also move towards quality beer, though maybe not for a decade or two. Longterm, I believe the multinationals will run out of new markets to swamp. The they'll really start eating each other. The big breweries, I mean.