Brewing & Pubs. Notes from the first 100 days

While there was nothing in the formal Labour election manifesto, Labour had made it clear beforehand that there was an understanding of the issues faced by craft brewers and the hospitality industry. Starmer visited a micro-brewery in Camden Town, for example. Mind you, don’t they all these days?

However, nothing much has changed, things have continued to be difficult for pubs and brewers. The reasons are all well-known. The cost-of-living crisis continues to impact on trade and profits. Breweries and pubs still have issues with COVID debt and the level of business rates. Meanwhile, as Tim Martin regularly underlines, there remains a tax advantage to drinking at home with beer from the supermarket, as opposed to the socially controlled but more expensive environment of the pub.

The impact of Rachel Reeves’ Budget on 30^th October is as yet unknown, but CAMRA and others are campaigning to make sure it’s not a negative one.

Carlsberg has announced the closure of another iconic brewery – this time Banks’s in Wolverhampton. Around 100 jobs are at risk. Carlsberg claim that the closure is due to the loss of a contract to brew San Miguel lager, and a declining market for cask beer. Operations will now be focused on Burton.

Since the creation of Carlsberg-Marstons in 2020, Jennings, Wychwood and Ringwood breweries have been closed and Eagle (Bedford) sold.

Marstons exited brewing altogether in June 2024, and in its half-year results said it was focused on driving shareholder value. Those that just want a decent pint of beer don’t come into it.

Carlsberg claims it remains committed to cask beer at Burton, but in reality as CAMRA have noted it faces cost pressures, not least in the UK, and as the San Miguel contract issue underlines, global challenges too.

Carlsberg have said they are open to offers for Banks’s brewery (not the brand clearly) but their record on this is poor. They said the same about Ringwood in Hampshire, but reportedly failed to engage with a consortium that were prepared to make an offer.

It can be argued whether Banks’s is a craft brewer, but Fourpure in Bermondsey certainly was’ Will Hawkes in the September 2024 issue of London Beer City looked at the decision to close the state of the art-ish Fourpure tap room in Bermondsey and move brewing to Huddersfield.

Hawkes has worked with Fourpure and notes that they pioneered craft beer in supermarkets and found a niche when Camden were bought by ABI. I’ve never been a great fan of the beer and Hawkes notes that the owners ran the brewery as a business rather than because of a huge commitment to craft beer.

The Bermondsey brewery and tap room was closed in September, no doubt with some job losses, and the brewery was declared financially insolvent, probably a technical move. The beer will henceforth be produced at Magic Rock in Huddersfield

That said I’m not sure the original moment of craft beer has entirely gone. After all Kernel, whose latest tap room is not far from Fourpure, are marking their 15^th birthday. They are still recognisably the brewery they were in 2009, resisting takeovers and ill-advised mega expansions. Meanwhile Sheffield brewery Abbeydale have announced their transformation into a workers’ co-operative. Such endeavours in the UK have had a mixed outcome but it is a development to be watched with interest

By contrast Beavertown, now owned by Heineken, may produce decent enough beer and are certainly seen (along with Brewdog) by a wider drinking public as ‘craft beer’, but are really nothing to do with the original ideas and motivations of early craft. Mainly because that’s just how market capitalism works.

Heineken provided a further example when it announced that Brixton Brewery brewing operations which it owns would move from South London to Beavertown in North London.

Ten years ago craft was seen as locally based and rooted in the communities where it was brewed. Not if Big Beer is involved clearly.

The owners of Hawkshead who previously stopped the existing craft brewery using that name (it now operates independently as Lakes Brew Co) recently announced the final closure of the Hawkshead site. Brewing will move to a soft drinks production facility they own.

Cloudwater which perhaps tried to straddle both sides-worked with Brewdog but continued to produce some good beer doesn’t seem to me currently to be (based on an extensive sampling of their range in the Cock Tavern E8 recently) quite on the brewing zeitgeist benchmark.

There is though a case for arguing that there is now a second wave of craft and often the beers reflect lessons learnt from earlier waves. One thinks of the incomparable Elusive but much more recent arrivals such as Indy Rabble, Azvex and Dark Elements which represent a distinct upward tick in brewing quality.

Given the economic times survival can be difficult but the first wave of craft came after the 2008 financial crash.

Is the Government keeping an eye on and intervening in the market here? Before the election Chancellor Rachel Reeves referenced the work of Karl Polyani, who was a powerful advocate of a social market economy, close to E.P. Thompson’s idea of a moral economy. The key point here was not that the market should be replaced by, for example a planned economy, but regulated to ensure that it operated in the interests of the many – not instead of the few, but as well as them.

So far there is no sign of that happening, but it is very early days. Stories related to beer have focused on health concerns and alcohol related deaths. A smoking ban outside pubs may happen, but ideas to reduce hours probably not.

However, this is probably the only area where a new development has taken place. Alcohol health problems are an issue, but the socially controlled drinking environment of the pub is not the main cause. Much publicity on the matter invariably finds tagged on approving comments from groups such as the Institute of Alcohol Studies, the loose successor to historic temperance movements. They sense that Labour has in part a history of support for temperance, whereas they were probably wasting their time with a Tory Government.

With a Budget at the end of October, and a continuing cost-of-living crisis, it underlines the need for brewery workers to be unionised and for beer drinkers to organise and campaign. Times are tough for brewing, beer and drinkers but as the new wave of craft brewers underlines Big Beer doesn’t have all its own way.

We shall what Labour’s slogan of being pro-business and pro-worker means in this respect in the period ahead.