Pull the Other One

Beer is back.  Beer drinkers are craving variety, and after years of slipping volumes the big brands are introducing speciality brews to meet exploding demand, says Ben McFarland

Beer is back. After years of slipping volumes, a desperate lack of innovation and all the fashion status of a drunken uncle dancing at a wedding, beer’s pint glass is now half-full, not half-empty.

One only has to wander down the beer aisle of a supermarket, take a peek at the killer chillers of more shrewd drinking establishments or open a broadsheet weekend supplement to see as much.

Glass-swirling, cork-sniffing wine writers are starting to sit up and take notice of beer. After being given the cold shoulder of drinks journalism for so long, beer’s relationship with plonk-besotted hacks is thankfully beginning to thaw with many prominent journalists swapping the grape for the grain in the last month or so. This is not PR puff though, there’s been genuine method that’s led to this “mwah-mwah” media madness. Over the last few years, the major brewers have undertaken a number of trade initiatives, both brand-led and generic, in an effort to undermine beer’s clichéd cloth-cap connotations. Coors Brewers, for example, has for some time now been working tirelessly to return some reverence to the market in the shape of its Beer Naturally campaign which has ably highlighted the health benefits of beer, its multi-layered synergies with posh nosh and the plethora of styles it has to offer.

Another initiative designed to make beer’s image less fusty and more funky is the Beautiful Beer Campaign, a generic scheme launched last year with the collective financial backing of several brewers, both regional and international, and overseen by the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA).

Wheat lightning
As commendable as these efforts are, and God knows their advent came not a moment too soon, those looking for a turning point, a moment when beer really rediscovered its mojo, need to cast their minds further back to 1994 and the arrival of Hoegaarden.

On paper, it seemed an absurd idea. A murky looking beer that doesn’t taste much like beer with a funny name served in an unusual hexagonal glass with a slice of lemon. What’s more, it broke the forbidden £3-a-pint barrier. But Interbrew’s decision to launch Hoegaarden proved as successful as it was audacious. For a beer market whose prior stab at “innovation” was the ill-fated influx of “dry” and “ice” beers, this was a brave move indeed. Yet, these days, Hoegaarden is verging on the mainstream and is the market leader in a wheat/white beer category that is careering towards maturity.

“The whole wheat beer thing has almost reached saturation point and bars and pubs are even getting away with having more than one on the bar,” says Adin Wiener, sales and marketing director of Specialist Brand Development, a boutique beer specialist that boasts the iconic Paulaner wheat beer in its stable.

Along with heritage-heavy rivals Erdinger and Schneider Weiss, Paulaner has gained a firm and fashionable footing in the UK on-trade but is facing stiff competition from the big brewers. Scottish Courage has expanded its Kronenbourg brand with the introduction of Kronenbourg Blanc, a quasi-authentic, premium-positioned white beer with origins in Strasbourg; Coors Brewers has been subtly pushing Gulpers Korenwolf, while grand plans are afoot at Heineken for Edelweiss.

InBev has even come back for a second bite of the cherry with Franziskaner, a duo of Bavarian beauties and Hoegaarden Grand Cru, a premium version of Hoegaarden. It’s all part of InBev’s strategy to champion a burgeoning speciality beer sector frothing over with potential. If November 24 turns out to have been the first day of our new lives as more mature, continental drinkers, then InBev is putting itself in a good position
to benefit.

The speciality beer sector has grown 175% in the last four years, 17 times faster than the rate of the UK beer market, with an especially good showing in the off-trade where it’s advanced 13.6% in value in the last year, compared to the overall beer market, up just 2.4%.

“We are now seeing the emergence of quality-conscious consumers who are more inclined to pay extra for quality and authenticity,” said Phil Rumbol, marketing director for InBev. “They span all age groups but the majority are 25-34 year-olds and are upmarket with a high disposable income. They are a growing population and are driving key changes in food and drink. This consumer trend is evident across many FMCG categories, not just beer, and is one of the factors driving the growth of speciality beer.”
Interbrew has re-affirmed its commitment to the speciality scene through a £1m investment in both the on- and off-trade that includes training, beer and food workshops, the use of quality glassware and a travelling speciality beer masterclass.

“Support activity this year has been very much focused on encouraging new consumers to try the brands and giving those who already drink speciality beers the perfect experience,” says Rumbol. “Speciality beers are all about quality and savouring and we are reflecting that in all aspects of our support for retailers, to continue the growth and interest in the category that we’ve seen over the last few years.”

As well as Hoegaarden and Leffe, InBev is pushing Belle-Vue Framboise and Belle-Vue Kriek, Franziskaner and the, relatively recent addition, Artois Bock. The launch of Artois Bock is a significant one. It not only adds a little shine to the halo above Stella Artois, a brand that is just about straddling the mainstream and premium markets, but it also provides a reassuring and accessible stepping stone to beer enlightenment for the huge swathes of lager drinkers out there.

Lager, lager
Amid all this talk of wheat beers, fruit beers and obscure beer styles, it’s easy to forget that lager is king in the UK. Lager may be dismissed by purists as the last bastion of the scoundrel, the amber-coloured opium of the masses, the fluid that fuels Friday night fisticuffs but deep down we still can’t get enough of the stuff. Two out of every three pints sold in the UK is lager. It’s been outselling ale since 1989 and there’s no sign of that changing.

Certainly, the premium beer sector is rising principally on the bubbles of lager. The Czech cartel of Budweiser Budvar, Staropramen and Pilsner Urquell are all performing well and are backed by heavy investment. Cobra has made the successful transition from the curry house to cool bar, Nastro Azzurro and Birra Moretti are flying the flag for Italy while Asian beers such as Tiger, Asahi and the sleekly marketed Kirin Ichiban are tapping into a nation currently going mental for all things oriental.

However, it’s the hotter-than-a-jalapeño Latin American beers that are raising most eyebrows. Corona Extra, brewed in Mexico and distributed by Charles Wells, is selling faster than Speedy Gonzalez with on-trade distribution doubled and a sales increase last year of more than 100%. The wheels of Corona’s success have also been oiled by a consumer that seems to have neither forgotten nor forgiven the faddish lime in the bottle trend that plagued the 1980s.

Interbrew threw its sombrero into the ring recently with the high-profile launch of bottled Brahma, Brazil’s leading lager, while rival Coors Brewers is now riding into town with Sol, the iconic Mexican lager previously distributed by the late lamented Ubevco.

Ale of the Andes

Another Latin American beer making plenty of lager-sipping amigos, mainly in top-end urban bars, is Cusqueña. The “brew from Peru”, made from pure mountain water from 18,000 feet up in the Andes, is the brainchild of former travellers Kieron Barton and Gareth Whittle, AKA Chilli Marketing. “South America seems to be in the papers, magazines or on TV on a weekly basis,” says Barton. “With its rhythm and vibrant culture Latin America has that natural escape appeal to consumers in the UK with that sense of wanderlust. The phenomenal success of the Mexican brands Corona and Sol has also shifted younger people’s palates towards lighter tasting lagers which South America’s brewing style fits perfectly.”

Such is both the demand for lighter beers and the dominance of the yellow fizzy stuff that many regional ale brewers have adopted an “if you can’t beat’em, join’em” strategy. Not only do they brew lagers under licence (Asahi at Shepherd Neame, Red Stripe at Charles Wells and Warsteiner at Daniel Thwaites) but they’ve also unleashed a dazzling array of top-fermenting blonde beers to attract modern drinkers.

Blonde highlights include Fuller’s Discovery, Beer to Dine For by Greene King and Deuchars IPA from Scotland, to name but a few. What’s more, the Great British Beer Festival has seen the prestigious medal of “Champion Beer of Britain” pinned to the chest of a beer with a golden hue for five consecutive years now. These are indeed salivating and thigh-rubbing times for ale aficionados. Choice is booming with a record-breaking 81 new breweries recorded in 2005.

According to CAMRA, this newfound stability in the regional sector has been fuelled in part by the government’s introduction of Progressive Beer Duty which enables micros and small regional breweries that produce up to 30,000 barrels to pay less duty.
With around 500 micros, 35 family-owned breweries and several bigger regional producers, there is now greater choice than at any time since the Campaign for Real Ale was founded back  in 1971.

Foreign legion
Things are looking similarly upbeat on the import scene with an unprecedented choice of colours, tastes and styles on offer. Five years ago, the number of imported beers shaking their thing in the UK hovered around the 200 mark. Within four years, this foreign legion of brands had expanded to more than 500 and that number is rising all the time.
The premium beer market has become a remarkably broad and multi-denominated church where idiosyncratic Belgian beers, assertive German lagers, robust Czech pilsners, leftfield liquids from a thriving US craft brewing scene and beers from places like Mauritius, Estonia, Corsica and the Ukraine can now be sampled.

With the big boys concentrating on lager-fuelled plans for world-domination, the “boutique beer” gauntlet has been eagerly picked-up by a handful of small specialist beer importers.
The aforementioned Specialist Brand Development is one such enterprise. In addition to Paulaner, the SBD range boasts Fruli, a selection of female-friendly fruit beers from Belgium; two microbrews from the Sleeman’s brewery in Canada and Cruzcampo from Spain.

“Distribution is king in this country and many of the channels are owned by the brewers but in the last year or so, the big retailers have begun showing interest in alternative premium beers,” says SBD’s Wiener. “The budget flight phenomenon has broadened people’s drinking horizons. People are drinking Helles beers in Munich instead of Skol on the Costa Del Sol.”

Discovery beers
James Clay, a Leeds-based operation that supplies top-end on-trade outlets and supermarkets, is another leading purveyor of what some in the trade have dubbed “discovery beers”. Priority brands include Duvel and Liefmans from Belgium, Erdinger and Schneider Weiss from Germany and Brooklyn Lager and Anchor Steam from the US.

“We’ve been doing this for 15 years and at last there seems to be momentum to the whole sector,” says Nigel Stevenson, sales and marketing director for James Clay. “There’s always been underlying recognition of beers that are a little different but in the last couple of years, people are actively demanding them and discovering that beer has a lot more to offer than just the big brands.”

James Clay supplies its on-trade clients with branded glassware, tasting notes and staff training. “It’s important that people understand what they’re buying and understand why they’re paying more for these beers,” Stevenson adds. “The knowledge and interest is certainly improving. Parallels can be drawn between what’s currently happening in beer and the impact of new world wines a decade or so ago.”

Pierhead Purchasing, a leading UK specialist beer importer that currently sources over 60 unique beers from around the globe, pinpoints emerging trends in the restaurant sector before bringing in complementary beers. Michael Cook, Pierhead’s director, says, “We look out for any trends really. When we started much of our business was supplying ethnic restaurants with ethnic beers but now pubs, bars and supermarkets are all looking for something that distinguishes their business from those down the road.”

The Pierhead stable’s selection of exotic brews includes Hue lager from Vietnam, China’s oldest premium lager Shanghai, Hite from Korea, Casablanca from Morocco, Bintang from Indonesia, Lion from Sri Lanka, Jenlain from France and the rapid-selling Tyskie from Poland.

“Everyone is going crazy for Polish beers at the moment – it’s extraordinary and can’t just be plumbers and au-pairs!” adds Cook. “I think what’s leading the whole imported beer craze is simply that people want something different. They want to be stimulated in everything they do and that includes drinking beer.”  db January 2005