Hi, My Name's Zak, And I'm A Hypocrite

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been 1,716 weeks since my last confession, and in that time I've been guilty of the sins of lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, acedia, lust, envy, vanity and pride"

"You said lust twice, my child"

"I'm sorry father, I like lust"

I like to think that I'm as even handed with "ordinary" beer as I am "craft" beer. A nervous glance back through my recent posts (did I only post once in October? That's sloth and acedia for you) suggests that although I do post about rare and hard-to-find stuff, I also post about easy-to-find stuff too.

Coupled to that, a recent theme in my posts has been to support independent retailers - no particular reason, other than it's what I do for a living, and I think that independent retailers have a very clearly defined role in the beer market. Having said that, I'd be interested to hear what you think that role is.

However, I have to admit to having strayed from the path recently. I live a 3 minute walk from a Morrisons supermarket, and the other evening, having just driven home from a warehouse with around £100k of great beer in it, I discovered that I didn't have any beer that was appropriate to my mood. I didn't want any homebrew, any Fuller's Gales Prize Old Ale, any Stone Old Guardian, any Birra Del Borgo KeTo Reporter, any Hair Of The Dog Adam, any Hardknott Granite (Batch 1), any Williams Bros Fraoch 20, any Thomas Hardy Ale. What I wanted was a couple of bottles of BrewDog Punk IPA. And Mozzers sells it.

I confess, I went to a supermarket and bought some "craft" beer. I don't know how I feel about this. On one hand, I'm delighted that it's available to me (and other shoppers) so readily. On the other hand, I'm saddened that it's available to me (and other shoppers) so readily.

What do you think? Is the chase part of the fun? How hard should you have to look for "craft" beer? Is it any less "craft" for being in a supermarket?

Reject My Hand, And The Damage Is Done*

OK, so the link between the title and the subject is a bit tenuous, but it's one that elicits a real knee-jerk reaction in me every time. It's about the gap between the beer producer and the beer drinker, and specifically who fills that gap. At a point where the volumes consumed in the on-trade and off-trade are roughly equal, with trends suggesting that the off-trade will eclipse the on-trade in the next few years, who is connecting producers and consumers?

You'd be forgiven for believing that the supermarkets are king when it comes to beer. Certainly, nobody tries to compete with them when it comes to commodity beer. They have a stranglehold on that market, although interestingly, very few people talk about the time when Tesco delisted Carling due to a price rise, and then caved in and relisted it after a month of people saying "what do you mean you don't stock Carling?" (see here, for example). Whatever you may think about Molson-Coors, it takes some guts to tell a notoriously tough-dealing supermarket that you're not going to play ball with its pricing policy.

But I digress.

Who is connecting brewers and drinkers these days? The big book of BBPA stats that plopped onto my doormat the other day suggests half of it is the on-trade, and half off-trade (50.9% vs 49.1%, if you want to be picky). Now let's assume that 80% of the beers in the off trade are volume brands, that leaves 20% of the volume that might be said to be premium bottled beer. The more alert amongst you will already have noticed that this is only around 10% of the market, but crucially, this is where the growth and the value is at present.

But aside from that, why would you expect supermarkets to get this sort of thing right anyway? Surely if you're looking at a 10% market share (and if you're talking about 'craft' beer, my hunch is that you're looking at less than a 1% market share), this is the realm of the specialist, and when you talk about bottled beer, you're talking about specialist off licences. So when I see articles like this well-intentioned piece on the Guardian's "Word of Mouth" blog, which in turn references Mark's piece about Tesco's epic beer fail, it makes me want to slam my fingers in a drawer, because at no point does anyone say "of course, you'd be better off seeking out a local independent off-licence, which will have a better range and better-informed, more passionate staff". And while I rarely draw comparisons between beer and wine (which I think is like comparing meat and cheese - THEY ARE DIFFERENT THINGS!), I will say that it's almost taken for granted that you will get more interesting wine at an independent wine merchant than you ever will at a supermarket.

So why is everyone acting so surprised that it's any different for beer? Sure, I have a vested interest. I declare it over there, on the right - a shop, a mail-order service, and a wholesaling business. It's what I do, and I'm currently doing it to the detriment of what I vainly refer to as "my career as a writer", because it's something that I believe passionately in. The simple fact is, there's an amazing network of great beer off-licences in the UK that simply don't get the respect they deserve. From relative newcomers like Eddy at The Beer Boutique in Putney and Anthony at Alexander Wines in Coventry, to stalwarts like Muree at The Offie in Leicester and Krishan at Stirchley Wines in Birmingham, Drink of Fulham, Trafalgar Wines in Brighton - the list could go on (and maybe it should - shall we start a list?). Sure I supply those guys with some of their beer, but that's not why I'm writing this. I'm writing this because unless those businesses get the support they need, they won't be around for ever.

So don't be surprised that the supermarkets don't get it right. By and large, they don't sell the best of anything - that is still the domain of the specialist. The interesting stuff happens in that tiny 1% of the market - that's the bit we're all interested in. Support the specialists. Use them or lose them, folks. To return to the title of the post: "Reach for my hand, and the race is won. Reject my hand, and the damage is done"

*with apologies to Morrissey

My Words, Thrown Back In My Face.

I've swapped a few emails recently with Stan Hieronymous. He's reviewing a few books for 'All About Beer' magazine, including '500 Beers'. I'd been fairly frank in my discussion of a few things relating to the book, and he's extracted a few bits of the emails for inclusion in the article. One of these is the sentence "Beer's future rests on cultivating those curious amateurs, and, in the UK at least, home drinkers". When I saw it, I thought that it would likely provoke some interesting discussion.

A week rarely passes without being asked "is this an ale or a bitter?" or "is this a lager or a beer?". There's clearly still a lot of work to do at ground level in terms of education, and it's pretty clear where this education will happen. I'd argue that it's the job of specialist retailers to answer those questions, and educate people to the differences. the offering of even a great pub or bar is outstripped by the offering of even an average beer off-licence. The beer-curious could always look up information on the web, of course, but there's no substitute for spending 10 minutes with someone who really knows their stuff.

And what of my assertion that beer's future lies in cultivating home drinkers? Well, I certainly believe it, and although cask ale is best enjoyed in a pub (and let's not forget, it's the only on-trade beer sector in growth at present), and must surely be about to reclaim it's place as one of the UK's great foodie treasures, the offering on a good bar is limited. But as people learn more about beer, their curiosity will grow and their heads will be turned to the pleasures of bottled beer.

Here's the final paragraph of my column for the next issue of Off Licence News. I was hoping it might raise some interesting points for discussion:

"I think (and sincerely hope) that beer is about to undergo the same renaissance (or, given that it wasn't actually a rebirth, we might have to call it a 'naissance') that wine had in the 1980s. This decade was the one that really created wine as the thing to drink, at home and in public. It resulted in the creation of the wine bar in the UK, and shoved beer from the national consciousness. And crucially, this was a pleasure that you could enjoy at home. The last couple of decades has, for various reasons, seen a growth in home drinking and entertaining, and I think that coupled with the rise of interest in provenance and quality of food, the same is going to happen to drink. It's not going to happen to cocktails - they rely on the theatre of the serve - it's going to happen to our forgotten national treasure: Beer"

[Note: This post has had a re-write overnight - I hope the spirit of the original is still in place]

WHEN BREWERS GO BAD!!!!

This is a train of thought sparked by the large amount of sediment in the two bottles of Thornbridge Halcyon that I drank this week, although it's not specifically about that beer or brewery. For the record, I think it's a great beer, and after having been lucky enough to have a couple of pints at the Sheffield Tap last night, think that Thornbridge are one of the most most focused, exciting and technically proficient breweries in the UK today.

My question is pretty straightforward: How do people feel about brewers releasing new beers that turn out to be slightly flawed in some way? I made my feelings clear about Gadd's Reserved a few months ago, and would point out that Eddie Gadd correctly (but still quite magnanimously in my book) offered to replace any beers that people weren't happy with. Also, I'm sure that it was awesome when it was bottled, but perhaps it wasn't stable enough for the long haul (or even the medium haul).

This year's Halcyon is a great beer, but speaking to brewer Kelly Ryan, it's clear that they didn't actively engineer or desire the loose sediment that has occurred. And there are a few brewers currently making small batch trial beers (3 or 4 brewer's barrels at a time) which are just that - trial beers. And every now and again, something will happen so that a batch of a signature brew isn't quite what it should be. Should they be selling them? As a retailer, it's easy to sell the first case or two of a new beer, but the real test is repeat sales - are people coming back and buying it again, or is it a bit underwhelming? And if it is underwhelming, should it even be on sale in the first place?

I'd love to know your thoughts.

What's Beer Worth? Poll Results

As you can see if you cast your eyes to the left [poll info now at the foot of this post], the poll over bottled beer mark-ups by independent retailers has closed, with an even spread of results between all four answers. If Pete Brown were here, he could tell me what these statistics mean, but I'll have to draw my own conclusions.

It would be a reasonable conclusion, from the stats, to say that nobody has a clue what retailers actually pay for the beers that they sell. Alternatively, 12 really clued-up retailers took part in the poll, and outside of them, no-one has any idea of what a £2 beer costs the retailer. But exactly half of the respondents thought that the retailers are making big mark-ups.

Without going into too much detail, usual mark-ups on decent quality bottled beer yields 30-40% gross profit (GP). This means that if you buy a beer for £1, selling it for £2 yields around 40% GP (see footnote). Buying it for about £1.20 and selling for £2 gives about 30% GP.

Not all of the beer that gets sold at retail conforms to this. There are some staples that seem to hold their lower price (and lower margin) wherever they are sold - well, except for supermarkets, obviously. Supermarkets work on tiny mark-ups and massive volumes, often driving a hard bargain with the supplier to get a better GP.

There is a school of thought that supermarkets are evil, and shaft the breweries royally to get the best prices. This might be so, but the breweries know what they sign up for when they get into bed with the big boys. I don't feel sorry for any breweries who do this - I'm just baffled as to why they want to devalue their product in such a way.

To answer a specific query from Cooking Lager in a previous post, the prices a supermarket charge have no influence on our pricing structure. We charge a couple of quid for quite a few ordinary brown beers that you can often pick up in the supermarket for about the price that we pay wholesale. What I can say is that 99% of our beer is priced in what see as a fair manner, with very few mark-ups exceeding (or not reaching) the margins mentioned above.

Anyway, the poll results are only half the story - I'm sure you're brimming with questions about this one.

And the picture has nothing to do with the post - it's just one that I'm really proud of of which I am really proud.

If an off-trade retailer is selling a bottle of beer for £2, roughly how much did they pay for it?

50p - 75p 11 (25%)

75p - £1 11 (25%)

£1 - £1.25 12 (27%)

£1.25 - £1.50 10 (22%)


Votes so far: 44
Poll closed

(FOOTNOTE: GP is calculated by looking at what proportion of the selling price is profit, after VAT has been accounted for. It's impossible to make 100% mark-up. I think when most people (either consumers or traders) talk about 100% mark-up, they mean selling it for double what you paid. As you can see in paragraph two, selling for twice the amount you paid actuall yields about 40% GP)

What's Beer Worth?

Just a quick poll, aimed at take-home beer sold in bottle in the off-trade. It's meant to focus on independent retailers rather supermarkets, who can afford to make much smaller mark-ups.

Put simply, how much money does a retailer make for each averagely-priced bottle of beer they sell? You might prefer to answer with a comment rather than just clicking the poll. If you want to give %GP, you'll have to do that, I'm afraid.

Is price related to value? Does more expensive beer taste better, or just different?

And in the tradition of blog polls, what glaring omission have I made from the poll and the follow-up questions?

"Emerging Trends in World Beers"

I'm writing a short feature for Off Licence News about trends for world beers in 2010, and the short term beyond. Working in retail, I know very clearly what they are, and who will be buying them.

But I'm curious as to what you may think. If you had to identify a couple of trends in world beers in the take-home market, what would they be? What's going to become more mainstream in 2010? And how will the beer geeks stay cutting edge - they don't want to drink the same as everyone else, so what will they move on to?

(For the avoidance of doubt, let's be clear that "world beers" basically means imported, non-domestically produced beers)

Get Back to Work

Today is my first day of work since December 23rd 2009. By all accounts, the shop is devoid of stock, and we're about to get hit with a load of snow, so my work today is going to be (a) keeping warm and (b) ordering enough stock to make the shop look like a shop again.

Priorities are: restocking with local beers; finding what Sierra Nevada beers are available; how well has BrewDog done over the New Year; and planning our works outing on the 11th January. I'm hoping that it coincides with the cask of De Molen's Blood, Sweat & Tears Bruichladdich Cask Finish going on at The Grove Inn in Huddersfield. Now that would be a party to remember (or at least try to remember)