Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog - The Shake Out, 1983-84

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We’re intending to spend a bit more time pondering the health of the UK beer industry in 2016 but, for perspective, here’s a bit of history around the first micro-brewery*‘shake out’ which happened back in the 1980s.

Brian Glover wrote for CAMRA’s*What’s Brewing newspaper for many years*providing a running commentary on the rise of the microbrewery which would eventually form the basis of his essential 1988*New Beer Guide. In 1982 he produced a multi-page report on the microbrewery boom cheering on the then 100 or so new breweries that had flowered since the mid-1970s. The tone was triumphant with only one closure to report, though a profile of Bourne Valley Brewery run by James Lynch (former CAMRA chair turned brewer) and John Featherby highlighted some challenges:
Back at the brewery, they are drawing in their horns to weather the recession.*‘We have just withdrawn from supplying London (and the West Country) on a regular basis,’ said John Featherby.*‘We are restricting our trading area… to cut our transport costs.’
Featherby also admitted that the brewery hadn’t made any money in its three years of trading and said,*‘In fact, we would not set up a brewery now. We could not afford to.’
Then, throughout 1983, there were rumblings, such as an article that appeared in*What’s Brewing in April that year headlined THE GREAT BEER CRASH. It reported on the collapse of a London-based distributor, Roger Berman’s B&W, taking with it the associated micro-brewery, Union. In December, Brian Glover was observing that Devon’s micro-brewery scene was thriving with five then operating in the county.
But it could soon turn sour if they crowd each other out…*‘It’s certainly getting tight in the free trade around here,’ admitted Paul Bigrig [of the Mill Brewery],*‘especially with the appearance of Summerskills and Bates.’ Already Swimbridge Brewery in North Devon has gone under this year.
Then, in February 1984, in another special supplement, Glover called it: SMALL BEER CRASH.
The expected*‘shakeout’ of new small breweries has finally arrived with 12 having closed since July [1983]… All were free trade brewers, most struggling to sell their beer without the protection of their own pubs… The only surprise is that so many survived for so long, given the harsh recession, stiff competition and dearth of genuine freehouses…
The most famous of the failed breweries was Penrhos, founded by Richard Boston and Monty Python star Terry Jones in 1977 and run by Martin Griffiths. (His computer brain didn’t work out.) Griffiths reckoned he and Jones had lost £70,000 (going on for a quarter of a million quid*in today’s money) over the course of the brewery’s life.
Another brewer, Geoff Patton of Swimbridge in Devon, cited aggressive discounting by larger breweries. The owners of Swannells in Hertfordshire acknowledged that poor quality control and marketing had contributed to its failure. Tisbury fell when its sister pub chain, on which it relied for the bulk of its sales, went into receivership.
Brian Glover said, in conclusion, ‘The small brewery boom… looks to be over.’ His*final prediction?
The future, it would seem, lies in the consolidation of the surviving free trade brewers; an expanding number of [brew pubs] — and increasing involvement in small-scale brewing by the major brewers… A few new independent free trade brewers will appear in the next couple of years. But sadly, they will almost certainly be outweighed by the number that give up the unequal struggle.
As it happened, the paltry c.100 micro-breweries of 1984 have become c.1,500 in 2016, which just*goes to show how difficult it can be to predict anything.
The Shake Out, 1983-84 originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog


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