Part of my job at the moment is saying no to people. Not customers, not drinkers, but producers. Brewery numbers in the UK have topped out around 1000, a high point in our lifetime, even for old gits like Zythophile.
Almost a year on from writing this and this about cuckoo/gypsy brewers, I find myself swamped, besieged, inundated by enquiries from people who have brewed (or are about to brew) beer, and wondering if I would be interested in helping with the distribution of it. Some of it is pretty damn solid, and none of it is actually bad. Some of it is still words on a piece of paper, or images in a thought bubble brought to life by the excited passion of the recently converted.
I'm torn. It started out about nine months ago, saying no to perfectly decent beer purely because we had our next couple of months' listings figured out ahead of time. Then the supply from our favourite breweries started to run short, overcome as they were by demand from the newly-converted drinker. It got ridiculous, with large scale breweries (some of whom I mentioned in this article as people who we had been buying from since year dot) unable to fulfill orders.
Couple to this the fall-off in consumption of more traditional British ales, and it doesn't take much for someone with (say) a 20 barrel plant to suddenly find that they have spare capacity, as the demand for their trad brown starts to wane. What better way of keeping things ticking over than to contract for some eager brand visionary with a sack of hops under one arm, and a sack of money under the other.
So it's good business sense all round. Capacity is filled, drinkers are satisfied, cuckoos sing happily. A new generation of gypsy brewers starts the journey with a single step, following the trail that has been blazed for them by Mikkel. Indeed, so revered is Mikkeller now that it doesn't seem to be a brand - it's a brewery, a person, a story being told in water, malt, hops and yeast.
So why is it all starting to leave me a bit cold? Is it the fact of being sold to before there's a product to buy? Is it that I somehow perceive cuckoo brewing as not being fully committed? Do I perhaps smell a rat in the sense that people are seeing a market to exploit, and creating products to do just that, as Ed points out elegantly in his recent post?
That can't be it, as I have visited breweries who make a virtue of producing commercially accessible, consistent beers with a cutting edge leaning - not very romantic, but solid, tasty beers nonetheless. I feel that's better than the scattergun approach of many breweries who are learning their trade in public, missing the mark they were setting out to hit, but selling the beer anyway.
To paraphrase the KLF: 2013 - What The Fuck Is Going On?
That picture of me was taken at Sharp's Brewery in 2009. I look much older now. Much older.
Cuckoo brewers need to be unimpeachable when it comes to transparency or people (like me) will be suspicious. Who is doing the brewing, and where? Who designed the recipe? Where's the money coming from?
ReplyDeletePeople will say 'none of that matters if the beer tastes good' but, sorry, I'm illogical and emotional, and it doesn't work like that: I don't want to drink beer that feels like it's lying to me.
I agree, and in line with Ron's comments below, Pretty Things is a great example someone cuckoo brewing, with a great history behind them, and being quite transparent about the process of it all.
DeleteWith the rise of crowd sourcing, Kickstarter, Seeders etc, is there not space for these Cuckoo brewers to answer the questions of who are they, how and why are they brewing? Make a little video intro and have them all together on one website?
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone could doubt the commitment of Dann at Pretty Things. He may not own a brewery, but he does the brewing himself.
ReplyDeleteYou're right Ron, maybe also because Dann has actually worked as a brewer previously?
DeleteI quite like the first Monkees singles, they didn’t play on them and that doesn’t devalue them — however, if someone is selling beer with a hookline like ‘from the coast’ or something but getting it made in Brum then it’s a bit disingenuous. I think you’re right about exploitation — beer has the appearance of hipness at the moment especially in London with pop up this and that and ripe for exploitation, but on the other hand you cannot blame entrepreneurs from making money from beer, people have always done it — it’s not an exclusive club.
ReplyDeleteI'm not trying to blame anyone, Adrian - the beer business is a business, after all - but is there a line to be drawn somewhere? Maybe I'm just thinking out loud again, although isn't that what blogging is meant to be?
DeleteHow would you draw the line? Draw up a covenant? Tell people that they are not allowed to brew beer unless they have their own nest — I always thought blogging was more multi-faceted, from thinking out aloud to excreting the raw data of one’s mind to being the viral equivalent of the shouting man in the middle of a shopping mall with a pasty in his hand.
DeleteI think I'd like you and Bailey to duke it out to provide the answer, which I'm sure lies somewhere between your two points of view.
DeleteI'm not sure we disagree: I don't mind contract/cuckoo brewing, as long as it's honest.
DeleteThe problem with the Monkees (great analogy!) is that they initially allowed people to believe they'd played their own instruments by standing about banging away at them on telly. The Beach Boys (off the top of my head) were much more honest about the fact that they used studio musicians and so got less flack for it.
Anyone can conceive and sell a beer, made however they like, but they'd better not make me guess where it's brewed and under what circumstances, or I won't buy it.
FIGHT!
DeleteI see it like Acid house in the late 1980's (are you old enough to remember)? When Acid house music first started it was underground, it grew very quickly and as tradtional nightclubs couldn't cater for these all nighters they squatted old buildings. The music evolved and by the early nineties everyone wanted in on the act, even bands like U2 started having acid mixes. It eventually waned, but not before leaving its mark.
ReplyDeleteYes, right now beer is uber urbane, tremendously trendy and brewers with sculpted facial hair smoking roll ups and riding fixies are the new DJ's. It could just be a trend but one that will make its mark. Already we have U2 making acid remixes or rather tradtional breweries trying their hand at something a bit different.
That's a great analogy!
DeleteI'm going to comment from the perspective of someone who's just set up a new nano-brewery having crowdsourced funding via Kickstarter.
ReplyDeleteI thought about Cuckoo brewing, but it really wasn't an option for me. When I lived in the West Country, nobody had spare capacity, and once I moved to West Wales nobody had spare capacity. I was in the territory of breweries who were already looking to expand to meet their own demand, or who had hit a ceiling and were happy where they were. So going it alone was the only option. This meant work, and expense, but ultimately I own and control the whole show, and I'm not exposed to the risk that someone wants their spare room back. On the downside, I plowed money into plant, while I've watched cuckoo brewers plow similar amounts of cash into casks/kegs/bottling - this keeps me smaller in terms of distribution, but gives me different benefits.
To be honest, they are just different business models, but it seems that somewhere in the discussion there's a blurring of the line between cuckoo brewing (as in doing it yourself) and contracting out (as in having someone else do all the work for you). In the business they are all fair game, as is the consumers right to choose who to buy from.
But, the rash of people who lack skills or knowledge and are 'pre-selling' beer, doesn't help those who have proven track records and a proper story behind their brand, or those who have waited until they have beer to sell before approaching potential outlets. I'll note here that I have not approached Zak, and were I to I'd be sending samples his way for him to consider whether he wanted to sell it or not. Beer is real, and it needs to be sold on the basis of being a real and tangible product that someone can asess for themselves.
Ali, congratulations on getting it off the ground, and all the best with how it progresses.
DeleteCuckoo brews are essentially collaborations. If you're using an established brewers equipment, water supply, maybe even some ingredients from their store and man-hours from their staff, then it's a collaboration and the host brewery should be credited as such.
ReplyDeleteLet's just be honest about this and drop the secrecy. Tell people where your shit is brewed and nobody will think the beer is a glassful of lies and deception.
I think there's a continuum from "proper" cuckoo being (see Dave below) all the way to flat out contracting, where you just order 10 barrels of bang-on-trend IPA without even speccing the beer yourself. I find one more acceptable than the other, but then I'm just a foolish old romantic.
DeleteI think there's an easy distinction between genuine brewers who rent plant, and people playing around/cashing in - whose license is it? Ok, interest declared, I'm a cuckoo brewer, but we hold our own license do our own duty returns, buy our own ingredients, and do the work. I think of it as a different type of financing - rather than borrowing/raising money to buy kit, we lease it as and when we need it, I look at it the same way as deciding to rent or buy a house, either way you make it your home. Most brewdays we don't even see our hosts, so certainly not a collaboration...
ReplyDeleteAs opposed to getting someone else to brew it or brewing it under heavy supervision and with someone else's stuff...
We are of course totally open, our website and Pumpclips state where our beers are brewed...
I'm a former brewer with a large brewery, still have a dream to step out on my own and take full ownership of my recipes and process. I found this blog and comments most interesting. When I was brewing full time I brewed genuine collabs, contract brewed (didn't agree with the principle of it at the time as I had no personal recognition of brewing it even though I had developed/upscaled the recipe from a small batch and had done all the graft/calcs, never even met the brewer!) and I had also contract brewed alongside brewers (actually didn't mind that, although not a collab, I gained interesting knowledge from them, us brewers all have our own slant on things and I always learnt something new from the experience).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I just wanted to say I am now thinking of becoming a cuckoo brewer myself, I don't have the funds or the means at the moment to go alone, I'm lucky to be on great terms with all the brewers I have worked with and I guess with some careful planning, I'll finally get my own brewery up and running using this method. I know many breweries that have done it this way - Wiper and True for example.
Thanks for some of the great comments, food for thought. I think the key thing is to be open and honest about it, state the location of the brewery and RECOGNISE on the label/website/info the brewer of that premises who helped out and showed you all the quirks and peculiarities of their kit!