Much to be excited about

Much has changed in the beer industry since Editor Dominic Roskrow last wrote about it three years ago... But, he argues, not all the change has been bad

What a remarkable few weeks it’s been since we published the first issues of Beers of the World. Never in my entire career have I experienced a more joyous and welcoming response to a newspaper or magazine.

From an editorial point of view the most exciting aspect is that we can honestly say ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet.’

Increasingly we’ll be able to wander down stranger and weirder beer routes, and from that first issue we’ve been contacted by a range of beer writers from across the world with great story ideas.

Perhaps the strangest part of returning back to beer journalism after a spell away has been the way that everything within it seems to have changed and yet much of it has stayed the same. And this has been most acute in the way beer is sold to drinkers.

In Britain, for instance, the battle to build mammoth pub estates was well underway when I moved on three years ago. Today those pub companies have as many pubs each as the big national brewers did before the Government of 15 years ago set about putting restrictions on them to end what was effectively a beer monopoly.

As we approached our launch date a work contact told me gravely that because of the big pub companies the pub had become the enemy of the beer drinker. Observing from the sidelines, he seemed to have a point.

No change there then: big companies interested in mass consumption at the expense of diversity and personal choice.

But on closer inspection there’s more to it than that. Indeed, the strangest thing has happened. For while there are bars in virtually every city in the world where choice is limited to a few very unappealing global brands, that’s not the end of the story.

I’ve been amazed at how independent retailers are importing exciting beers and how independent bars have appeared in the strangest of places. A great example is Beer Circus, a bar in Croydon, South London, that is trading amidst just about every youthfocused High Street chain you could think of.

While the big pub companies compete both with each other and against the supermarket and off-licence sector, an unofficial alliance seems to have been created among the purveyors of good beer. They work in tandem: someone who has tasted an interesting beer from the supermarket or independent retailer is more likely to try it in a pub should he come across it on draught.

In other words, pub retailers are competing with supermarkets and offlicences on mass and standard products. They’re trying to encourage groups to come down to the pub rather than to stay at home with some take-home tinnies.

But in the premium sector those same supermarkets are stimulating trial and introducing a new generation to exciting beers from across the world. More than that, a whole range of individual beer-loving businessmen and women have taken the plunge in an attempt to fill the specialist beer niche and are promoting exciting beer.

Over the next few issues we hope to seek out those sort of people and their outlets.

Happy reading. I’m sure, looking at the broad range of features we’ve covered here, that there will be plenty to keep you interested as you down your favourite beer.

Cheers

By Dominic Roskrow

Section : From the Editor

Page number : 5