The Joy Of Beck’s

Former newsreader Michael Buerk recently lived up to his name and dug himself an almighty hole on primetime television. Starring in the first of a series entitled Don’t Get Me Started. writes Ben McFarland

Buerk may have wished he hadn’t after embarking on a rather embarrassing tirade about the marginalisation of men in what he described as “today’s femocracy”.

Men, he argued, are nothing but sperm donors and walking wallets who are being edged out of the family, the workplace and wider society. Buerk, however, is not the only one who yearns for stubbly, knuckle-dragging, huntin’-and-gatherin’ men. Elder statesmen of the brewing community get dewy-eyed and nostalgic for these mythical men because back in the days when sweaty-bummed workers with a voracious thirst sank 10 pints of mild, selling beer was easy-peasy.

It’s not so easy now. Amid the rampant poncification of society, beer’s lost its way and now faces a similar identity crisis to that of Buerk’s traditional grizzly man.

For the battle of the sexes, read the battle of wine and beer – a battle that beer is plainly losing. In the same way that women have apparently taken over society, wine has gained the upper hand in the hearts, minds and wallets of the nation’s drinkers and is showing beer a clean set of very expensive high heels. According to a survey in Marketing magazine, the last year has seen consumers spend £1.97 billion on wine compared to £1.79bn on beer, while consumption of alcohol by British women has increased by 27% between 1998 and 2003. We’ve officially become a bunch of raging oenophiles, women are boozing as much as men and wine has finally usurped beer as the nation’s favourite tipple. But what is beer doing about this shift of power? Instead of throwing toys from the pram à la Buerk, it’s become a modern man who moisturises, wears sarongs and looks after the kids. Brewers have wisely adopted an “If you can’t beat them, join them” strategy and got firmly in touch with they’re more feminine, vinous side.

Trends that shaped wine’s meteoric growth are being enthusiastically echoed in the beer market. For example, clear parallels can be drawn between today’s beer scene and that of wine in the mid 80’s when New World varieties, with fancy production techniques and innovative marketing, were shaking up the Old World order.

In the last few years, distinctive and inventive beers from the States, Australia, Latin America and Eastern Europe have not only blazed a similar trail on the shelves and the back bars of our more forward-thinking retail establishments but also enlivened a hitherto stagnant domestic scene.

The promotion of the hop’s kinship with haute cuisine represents an unashamed attempt to hijack wine’s most fertile of territories. Grandiose, one-litre bottles accompanied by elaborate glasses and pairing notes have been launched and, as anyone who has sampled foie gras with a Belgian Kriek or a Harvest Ale with cheese will no doubt testify, they’re more than just a desperate marketing ploy.

Wine has long been the thinking man’s tipple, something that’s studied as much as sipped, yet the same cannot be said of the duncecap wearing beer. Enter the Beer Academy – beer’s version of the Wine and Spirit Education Trust. It admirably enlightens both the trade and consumers about the joys of beer, adding a much-needed educational dimension. The courses are engaging, informative and a must for anyone in the drinks trade.

Meanwhile, disillusioned with the inadequate information that currently adorns bottles of beer, descriptions that fail to illuminate on the actual taste, the Beer Academy is calling on the trade to copy the numeric scheme that’s long been used with wine. Instead of bland, ineffectual statements such as hoppy or malty (you’d never describe wines as merely “grapey” would you?) brewers are being urged to use a Beer Flavour Scale that awards beers with a rating according to their “eyebrow-raising” intensity of flavour.

The so-called “Theatre of Dispense” is another area where beer has played a supporting role to wine. Any brewer worth his malt would give his right arm in return for wine’s pomp and ceremony. The intense appraisal of the bottle label, the meticulous decanting into the finest glassware and the laborious sample sip is a ritual that compares rather favourably with the crude sloshing of beer into a tankard. So no surprise then that brewers have introduced big, branded, newfangled fonts which pour beer faster, colder and more consistently than ever before. Or that dainty wine-style glassware is being heavily promoted as an alternative to the bulky old fashioned pint glass (among female drinkers, size does indeed matter).

If this utopian vision of a British continental-style café culture ever becomes a reality, beer needs to copy wine and appeal not just to women but also to men, the vast majority of whom simply don’t fulfil the clichéd stereotype of an evolutionary throwback.

Buerk may have something to say about the perceived feminisation of the testosterone-fuelled beer world and the notion of drinking it from girly glassware but, frankly, I think he’s said enough don’t you? 

Ben Mcfarland is the Guild of Beer Writers Beer Writer of the Year 2004