“I love cask me, flat brown beer is my nectar. You like fizzy cold beer and, quite frankly my unlearned friend, you are a prize cretin.”
“Sir, you eat shit for breakfast and drink warm piss for lunch. King Bjergsø of Copenhagen states clearly in his 2006 manifesto that all beer should be served at 5c to get the most out of its natural carbonation and 6,000 IBUs”
Ad infinitum
It won’t have escaped your attention that it is the CAMRA Great British Beer Festival this week. Certainly beery Twitter is alive with the #GBBF hashtag.
@MagicRockRich: Wonder if I could get a soda stream into gbbf
@HiggsBoson1: Has some tedious golden ale with a picture of a steam engine on the clip won 2012 @gbbf yet?
@thornbridgematt: If you’re headed for the @gbbf have a great time. Looks like there are some really great beers this year.
@jamesbwxm: Ok. Going to Craft.
I turned down a couple of opportunities to go due to a tight work schedule and a moderately uninspiring beer list. No Kernel, Magic Rock, Summer Wine, Lovibonds, Moor, Camden Town, Tiny Rebel and, of course, BrewDog.
Despite the foreign beer bars running draft keg lines, none of the UK brewers are allowed to dispense from keg due to CAMRA’s obsession with “Real Ale”. Never one to miss an opportunity, BrewDog noted that GBBF were excluding some of the best UK craft breweries as a result. Because we all know that craft beer only comes in keg and bottle. Well no, of course we don’t, nearly all those breweries produce as much cask beer as kegged, if not more.
For all the notable absences, there were plenty of positives. Brodies, Arbor, Bristol Beer Factory, Ilkley, Blue Monkey, Dark Star, Durham, Marble, Oakham, Otley, Ramsgate, Red Willow, Thornbridge and Windsor & Eaton all had at least one beer present. From the running Twitter commentaries, styles were pretty varied and there was plenty of high ABV doing the rounds. I was quite upset I didn’t go in the end.
It seems to me that BrewDog and CAMRA are two sides of a spiteful, unproductive beer coin. Both parties are as bad as each other, adamant that their truth is the one truth, creating friction amongst their followers at a time when the beer community needs to unite against corporate beery shiteness, falling numbers of pub goers and Draconian tax laws.
We all have a point of view, some are right and some are wrong. The right opinion is of course that good beer is good beer and shit beer is shit beer. All styles are equally valid and suggesting that warmer, less carbonated beer dispensed from cask is any better or worse than colder sparkling kegged or bottled beer is as ridiculous a notion as pitting red wine against Champagne. Certain styles are better suited to a certain form of dispense, but that is not an exclusivity argument.
I suspect this is the last year we will see GBBF with no UK beer on keg (for which BrewDog will no doubt take the credit). Whether they’ll complete a full u-turn and showcase BrewDog beers seems unlikely though. The thing that concerns me most is that the chance of BrewDog acknowledging cask seems a fair bit lower (as an entity I mean, I’ve no doubt many of their employees enjoy cask as much as the rest of us). As the self appointed spearhead of the UK craft movement I worry what influence they are likely to have on the young impressionable 20 something beer drinkers, the people with no kids and disposable income that are tasked with regenerating our dwindline pub industry.
Personally, I want to live in a world of Craft Beer Companies and Euston Taps. Pubs with fridges full to the brim of interesting bottles and the bar stacked with a myriad of keg lines and cask pumps. I want all the good beer, not just some of it.
For more self-righteous ramblings please follow me @bluegiantbeer
To be frank the rediculousness of it all is summed up in the notable list of absentee breweries you mention, how could you have the biggest fest in the UK without them.
Good post
Thanks Phil.
I’d be interested to know if there are any reasons for it. I think most have been present in recent years. Obviously Magic Rock were there in person rather than beer.
It’s all quite odd.
The Campaign for Real Ale should end their obsession with real ale? Hmmm…not sure about that one.
That wasn’t really my point.
I was hypothesising that CAMRA’s obsession with one type of beer (and a phrase they coined) is unproductive for the UK beer industry. I personally dislike the phrase “real ale” as much as I’m beginning to dislike “craft beer”
Why take the narrow line, and for UK beer only too?
Spot on. Like most arguments the extremes are unproductive and, in the end, rather dull. Most actual beer drinkers don’t feel the need to toe either their corporate line or one of an organisation that, although they’re members of, doesn’t define them. In the middle ground you get to enjoy so much more beer.
Yes absolutely.
Hopefully I was clear that I don’t think all beer drinkers are divided into two halves. As you say, the truth is that most of us are bored stiff of the argument.
Great commentary. My feelings exactly.
Unlikely to happen though, from both sides.
Brewdog make this belligerence part of their brand and no doubt will justify it by suggesting it leads to greater sales. (disclosure- I’m a Brewdog investor)
CAMRA is hard to change. To vote on anything you have to go to the AGM, sometimes in a far-flung corner of the country. Attendance must be what, a couple of thousand? So 2000 vote on stuff in an org boasting 140,000 members. But those 2000 are not representatives of their local chapter or sect. So to have your voice heard you MUST personally attend.
That they both don’t just grow up and focus on their customers’ needs for a unified approach is something of a shame.
Totally agree and I am a BD investor also!
Sheriff Mitchell wrote a couple of great posts about attending his local CAMRA meet. It was very enlightening.
To call yourself a Brewdog investor is suggesting that those pretend shares they released were anything but IOU’s, which is essentially what they were. You lent them money, but those shares cannot go up in value at all. To be honest they are more of a discount card that you pay for rather than shares, so more accurately you have joined the brewdog membership club. Investing is too noble a word for that scam.
I don’t think that’s the case Luke.
The shares are as real as any other plc that is not traded on a stock exchange. I can show you the accounts if you like.
They are not actively traded but if someone wanted to pay me more than face value for them, I would be entitled to sell them. So yes, they could go up in value.
Your point about it being an IOU is valid but applies to any company raising capital with a share issue. It’s just an alternative to corporate debt. The ethos behind it is essentially good. It allows the customer to voice opinion via the AGM and to have some involvement in the direction of the company. All be it small, relative to the size of your share holding.
But yes, it was never an “investment” decision. It was just a bit of fun really. But I am technically an investor and there isn’t really a more appropriate term.
The more appropriate term is “mug”.
A little harsh!!
Your statement “those shares cannot go up in value at all” is factually incorrect.
That I choose to take some form of dividend in the interim (before trading begins) in the form of cheap bar tabs and free bottles of beer is my choice as an investor, and actually starts me off with a tangible >10% appreciation in value of my shares, before any share dealing occurs.
I think you need to do a little more research before insulting my skill as an investor.
Nicely written. I always like trying a cask beer next to the carbonated standard version. It’s fun to see the different methods in action/taste. Although the cask scene is still newer in America, it is slowly growing as people develop a taste for it. Now if more breweries would participate.
Thanks!!
Very interesting to hear the opposite perspective where cask is in the minority. I absolutely agree that different dispense methods lead to different nuances in the beer and it is interesting to try all ways. Then you can work out which method you prefer, which is likely to be different for different beers.
Some brewers will presumably prefer one method over another as it may better reflect their intentions for the beer!
I recently spoke to a lady who works in finance and actually worked on the Brewdog ‘share’ issue. She was as dismissive of the ‘share’ package as I was, and agreed with me that they are not real shares. I don’t understand finance much but from what I do understand, these are not real shares and are not likely to ever increase in value. If you think the opposite, that’s fine. If you want a more likely investment then look no further than gold.
Anyway. on a different note. Why should CAMRA form an official opinion on keg beer ? CAMRA’s remit is the promotion of cask ale, not anything else. CAMRA do not have a policy on keg beer because it is not part of their campaign, apart from opposing the spread of keg beer to the detriment of cask ale. Frankly I doubt whether Brewdog will ever have any significant presence at the GBBF, as they have managed to rub up so many people the wrong way. Not just CAMRA types, but many in the industry as well. Many people who are making craft beer in this country do not want to be tarred with the same brush as Brewdog, and I’m sure that there are lots who are just waiting for them to crash and burn or sell out to a major.
They are real shares. Trust me, I work for an accountancy firm and have spent 13 years training in finance. The point is, they’re not actively traded on a stock exchange therefore you can’t just cash them in if you want to. That’s how non traded plc shares work. The idea being, that if the company eventually floats on a stock exchange, the shares may be worth considerably more. They have all the normal benefits you would expect from a share, i.e. attendance at AGMs and entitlement to dividend payments if the company choose to make them (given they’ve made one year of profit, it’s hardly surprising they’re not paying dividends yet). At the very least, I am prepared to bet you a fair amount of cash that I could sell them on ebay for more than I paid for them.
CAMRA do have an opinion on keg, that it is detrimental to real ale. Which is nonsense, providing my preposition holds, that everybody should just accept good beer to be good beer. CAMRA set up their campaign to preserve cask ale back in the 70s when it was becoming obsolete and that is an outdated modus operandi. CAMRA’s remit should be to get people going to pubs again and to support the UK brewing industry, whether it’s keg, cask, bottle or taxidermied yack hide. Indeed it is, as their campaigns now include promoting small brewing and pub businesses, reforming licensing laws, reducing tax on beer, and stopping continued consolidation among local British brewers. It’s far more than just promoting cask ale, so I am afraid you are wrong on that point.
As I said in my post, I also doubt BD will ever have a presence at GBBF, they’ve long since burned their bridges. But keg will. I also completely agree that pretty much all other brewers don’t want BD’s reputation hanging over them. But transferring your opposition to BrewDog onto other keg producers is not at all constructive. You must be able to see that?!
A completely BrewDog-centric attitude or a completely cask-centric attitude are both detrimental to our beer industry, fact!
In what way was “the lady in finance” dismissive?
In what way explicitly do you feel these are not real shares?
What does “gold is a more likely investment than brew dog shares” actually even mean?
When you answer these questions you can then apologise for insulting those of us serious enough about our money to have studied the commercial proposition in detail (enough to understand it) and then actually have the balls to put our money on the line.
Come on tiger, step up and explain your “wisdom” so we know you’re not a some kind of troll.
Neil.
Just to be clear Neil, Luke runs a very lovely pub in Bristol selling very excellent beer. He is definitely not a troll (although he obviously is pretty anti-BD), so let’s keep this friendly!
I’d like to apologise for suggesting you’re a troll – that was uncalled-for. Apologies. I saw no real name and no explicit justification or qualification for your statements and made a rash assumption.
You must understand that I invest money to live on, not to get rich. I use my judgement and experience to choose worthy investments at a risk I am willing to take. I do not invest one penny of my limited money rashly or without much research.
Telling me I’m wrong without making explicit the justification for those statements is like telling a farmer that their crops are ludicrously stupid but that you know nothing about farming.
Again, apologies for my strong reaction.
Neil.
@BlueGiant
All the beer sold (on draught at least) on the foreign bar confroms to CAMRAs definition of real ale, ie. it undergoes secondary fermentation in the containers and served without the use of extraneous gases. air compressor is used for some of the czech/german stuff, all the other foreign beers are dispensed under gravity. Its not about method of dispense at all.
Brewdog were supposed to be at GBBF last year but they didn’t pay their deposit in time and chose to use their cancelled stand as PR stunt. I think it was pretty lax of them to not pay on time and disappointed they weren’t there.
As for lack of specific breweries there are over 1000 in the UK and not all of them can feature. Just because a small group of us favour a particulat group of breweries doesn’t mean we should make a song and dance about it if they don’t feature. I could be equally annoyed about the relative lack of Northern Ireland beers again this year. Generally they try to feature different beers from one year to the next. I would suggest Tiny Rebel and Kernel may not have had the capacity to supply enough beer for the festival, I’m not privvy to the beer ordering but there was bottled Kernel available last year.
There are other festivals available for keg beers and craft breweries, that’s not GBBF and its not CAMRA.
Covering the very valid points in order:
I have since learnt that my keg comment was incorrect. I didn’t research properly and obviously having not attended I relied on what someone else told me. But the question remains as to whether or not you think CAMRA should stick so rigidly to that definition. To revisit the point I made above, I personally believe that CAMRA’s remit (and responsibility if you like) goes far further than the promotion of real ale which was essentially a 1970s manifesto. Surely it’s much more important to keep our amazing pub trade alive? I think that being that specific about beer that they “endorse/promote” is to the serious detriment of their other more important responsibility of promoting small UK breweries and UK pubs.
I completely realise that last year’s BrewDog absence was spun on their part. My point was slightly poorly worded. What I meant is that BrewDog have burnt all their bridges and I can’t ever see them being allowed at a CAMRA festival and not just because they only produce keg and bottle (as far as I’m aware). Between you and me, the whole Diageo fiasco sniffs of a set up too. I’m as anti their marketing as the next guy but I do like their beer.
I tried to explain that my initial decision to not go based on the absence of a few fairly high profile “craft” breweries was actually somewhat misguided. There were obviously hundred of good beers available and, as I said, I was disappointed I didn’t go. I actually made that point as a pro GBBF one because the absence of those breweries was nothing to do with the keg point, as claimed on that BrewDog blog I linked. Perhaps I didn’t make that point well enough.
As regards the last point. I totally understand that but the whole purpose of the post was to question why that was the case, from both sides of the argument. My conclusion obviously being that CAMRA saying they’re only going to endorse beer that’s gone through a secondary fermentation process with no CO2 added is as harmful to the UK beer industry as joe hipster and his merry men saying they’d never be seen dead drinking a cask ale.
I completely agree with you. The cask vs. keg thing is completely unnecessary.
I have been at 3 stages in my life, beerwise:
One where I was just starting drinking and thought real ale was foul because I thought it was warm and an old man’s drink.
One where I discovered that real ale was awesome and thought all keg beer was evil and tasted of nothingness (please note, I was not a CAMRA member at the time and had barely even heard of them).
And the one where I’m at now. I have discovered good beer on both cask and keg as well as bottles and cans and I just cannot deal with this bullsh*t (excuse the language). I just like beer. Obviously, Stephen, you follow me on twitter and you know that I love a good beer and I love talking about it but I also like cheap, fizzy lager and I’m not ashamed of it even though I get the perception that people think I’m a joke of a self-proclaimed beer geek because of it. Granted, I won’t drink that kind of thing when I’m out because even in a McSpoons’ establishment, you can find a good ale but I just like having ‘filler’ beers if you like, in the fridge. Just as something I like to drink and as I don’t really want to drink all of my expensive ales all at once. I just like beer. I do find myself drinking cask more than keg craft because that’s what’s available.
I just can’t wait for the Norwich Tap House to open so we finally have a massive range of Keg craft beer from around the world available in Norwich and I can spend time flicking between that Keg Craft Beer Haven and the Cask Ale Haven that is The Fat Cat.
It’s all beer though, really. Let’s just have a pint and a cuddle and forget about it.
Cheers, mate. Bloody awesome post. Sorry for rambling!
Cheers Nate. It’s great to see I seem to have struck a chord with quite a few people.
Because a few mates know I do this beer malarkey they’ve started asking me “what should I drink?”. The only answer you can really give is “well, I like this, but you should drink whatever you like”. If you become snobbish then you will alienate people and appear exclusive. The point of my post was that BrewDog and CAMRA are equally guilty of this. As are people that criticise you for drinking Carling.
The danger is that BrewDog engage the younger drinker (the one who has money in his pocket and no babies to look after) and CAMRA refuse to (or at least appear not to make any effort to). Whether you like it or not, any campaigning group needs young members to carry on the crusade. Just ask any political party.
I genuinely haven’t heard a reason why you wouldn’t accept all beer styles as valid.
Great post.
I suspect the answer is a beer festival – or festivals – that can run alongside GBBF rather than asking GBBF to change.
I’ve been having this argument with CAMRA for six years now. When I suggested GBBF should change I got shouted down as a ‘PR smoothie’. When I suggested that there was room for more than one kind of beer festival, and that someone else should run something that included cask beer but also everything else, those same critics from CAMRA enthusiastically agreed with me.
CAMRA is duty-bound to support cask ale. They think there is nothing they can do to change that (though I dispute this). But they would – in theory at least – welcome something different alongside GBBF – I’m sure they’d be happier if there was a separate festival to cope with the foreign beers that are threatening to eclipse British cask ale, and there was an end to the ludicrous, meaningless, destructive arguments about dispense they seem to have every year with the people who are passionate about supplying those beers.
Happily I’m hearing several different rumours of such events being organised now around the UK.
Thanks Pete, that means a great deal.
From the conversations I’ve had it seems to me that CAMRA don’t seem to understand the responsibility they have as the figurehead of British Beer. The attitude that “we’ll support this, someone else can support that” seems rather bizarre. The refusal to move with the times could be seriously detrimental to the industry. Also, the seeming antipathy towards engaging younger members and giving them a greater voice is quite selfish.
Like you say, other events are being organised and I think it will be positive if this takes some focus away from CAMRA as I feel it is becoming less and less representative of the people that are passionate about good beer in this country.
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The top bloke looks all right. He drinks Banks’s, after all.
Keg craft beer is reliable great. Each pint has the consistency needed for a commercial (yes, making money) product. Cask beer can be great if you get it from the right cellar on exactly the right day. I have drunk down The Harp in London’s West End (CAMRA’s pub of the year so many years running or something) and it has some wonderful cask beers and many, many beers that only a niche market would drink. Walk over to The Clockhouse, sorry newly re-banded Craft Beer Co., in Leather Lane. Every pint is wonderful. The key difference is also the crowd. The Harp attracts men with big bellies, most of whole of at least 50 year old and a few women, mainly office workers and nearly all drinking wine. Now look at The Craft Beer Co., lots of men and women under 40yo (highly influential market and the key demographic for a profitable pub) drinking a range of UK, US and continental beers.
If you want to sell beer to a market that is under 50yo and included females, cask real ale is not the product. We have been trying for 30 years and that audience just doesn’t like flat, warm, weak beer – especially when 90% of the time its not served at its optimum because cask beer never can be consistent in the way that key beer can.
And simply I hate warm, flat beer. And so does the majority of the world.