By Greig McGill
Beer and brewing is a funny old world. Everything old is constantly new again, as we rediscover old beer styles, brewing methods, and even semi-forgotten scientific knowledge (hop-creep, anyone?) it changes the landscape of the present and shapes what we brew and drink in the future.
I’m going to take some time to talk about where I think we’re heading as a hobby, and an industry, and muse a little about what I believe we can, should, or might wish to do to work towards or against these predictions. The worst thing in life is to be born on a tide of decisions made by other people, and it’s always good to not necessarily be a leader, but not be a follower either - perhaps a player of your own tune? If it’s not apparent from this slightly-more-florid-than-usual prose, this won’t be an article in my usual style, full of processes, tips, or breaking down of complex concepts, but more an extended spot of navel gazing. Plenty of idle speculation follows. Please take it with all the grains of salt you can muster…
To think about the future, we must always look at the past, and how it has informed the present. Commercial brewing and home brewing have historically been one and the same thing until relatively recently. Beer was produced mostly at home, but often shared, and eventually used in trade or as outright payment for services. Farms and religious orders were the first “commercial breweries”, and the earliest evidence of a full transition from brewing as an adjunct to other activities and brewing as a purely (or predominantly) money making exercise was the record of beer taxes being paid by monasteries and commercial brewing concerns in the early 11th century. But well up until the Industrial Revolution, plenty of beer was being brewed in the home.
The nature of home brewing means that the motivation for brewing that beer was simply to meet the tastes of the people brewing it and those they shared it with. Unlike the commercial entities who both tried to meet the tastes of the public in order to gain market share, and then to shape those tastes via marketing in order to convince the public they wanted something cheaper to produce leaving more profit for the brewing business. These divergent goals grew the divide between the goals of the commercial brewing industry and those brewing for their own pleasure and tastes.
Still, these paths could, and did, reconverge occasionally. Markets are not always complacent. Sometimes revolution is fomented, and sometimes it is fermented! The American craft beer revolution of the early 1980s was ironically driven by a lot of travel to the UK and various parts of Europe, such as Belgium and Germany, where traditional types of beer lived. These beers did not conform to the bland flavour-scape created by an industry that had roared back to near omnipotence after the almost-annihilation that was the failed experiment of Prohibition. CAMRA in the UK had been phenomenally successful at reviving and promoting “Real” ale - in another ironic twist, now often denigrated as “brown boring beer - and the Monasteries and secular breweries of Belgium were creating yeast-driven creations of infinite splendour and diversity of flavour. While the Germans were, largely, creating a thousand slight variations on a few tightly defined styles, there were pockets of the country such as the region of Bavaria, and the cities of Köln, and Düsseldorf where historical styles flourished and were drastically different from the rest of the country. Many a visiting American went home from a trip to the Old World dreaming of the diversity and flavour of these “new old” beers, and a few of those started breweries. Most of those breweries were simply “home brewing at scale”, and thus the home brewing world once more collided and intertwined with the commercial world.
Of course, fast forward to today, and while the spirit of many of those home-brew-esque breweries remains, many more have been successful and grown to the point where they no longer resemble home breweries, and are playing the age old game of trying to win over the masses with a similar product to those already out there, for fear of losing customers by being different. Combined with the market-shrinking effects of a global pandemic, which has been followed by a recession, and also a seeming change in consumer behaviour, and it seems to be a smaller and less diverse market than it once was.
But, and here’s where we get to the predictions, out of the bland commercial beerscape of endless hazy IPAs that taste the same, and a million themes on the American Light Lager or NZ Draught… here comes diversity, roaring back. OK. Roaring? Maybe not. Perhaps sneaking in as a thief in the night is a better metaphor. On a recent trip to the USA, I was pleased to note the shrinking dominance of the IPA in favour of many variations upon the classic lager. But not just “pale, bland, and fizzy” - no - interesting and intense flavour packages like the tmavé pivo dark lager style from the Czech Republic. My old mate Martin Bridges used a brilliant jazz analogy when writing about lagers back in 2022. He’s bang on with every point, and I think the market has finally realised his genius as I do! Are IPAs going away? Hell no. And nor should they. No matter how much I love a lager, I would never want to see the glory of the hop diminished in any way. But… we all crave variety.I think commercial brewers here in New Zealand will take a little longer to dip their toes in the lagering vessel. I think we’re a small country, with a (depressingly) conformist streak, and we don’t like to venture too far from “what our mates are drinking”. As a result of that, I think it’s going to take us a little longer to pop the hazy bubble than our American counterparts with their slightly more individualist nature, and their larger market which rewards risk takers a little more than ours does. Let’s not forget that even with those advantages, the mighty USA has still been a thrall to the all-powerful hazy IPA for the better part of ten years now. But. It will happen, and perhaps it will happen in a slightly more unexpected way than it has in the USA.
Another trend I foresee is the increased consolidation of the larger players - you will see fewer and fewer brands on the supermarket shelves - but at the same time, in the corners and the suburbs, good beer will not die out. It will thrive - if it can survive. Right now, fewer people than ever are going out to drink their beer. Beer is best drunk fresh, where it is brewed. OK, I might have a dog in this race, but I believed this before I launched Brewaucracy. I think many people also realise this, and would rather go out in the company of their fellow humans, drink a few pints of fresh local beer, and have a great time, than sit at home and watch TV with a six-pack of something from their liquor store. Beer is, and has always been, a social beverage. It will continue to be so, even when rising taxes and costs of production drive the price higher.That said, rising taxes and costs of production are not nothing. A keg of 5% beer which might wholesale for around $350 will cost $89.41 in tax and levies alone. And the cost to produce that keg might be well north of $100 per keg. That leaves around $150 for the brewer per keg of beer. Work that out for the average 10bbl/12hL brewery - they’re not making a lot of money. My prediction (or hope) here is that the consumer finally realises this and stops complaining at the bar about the price of a pint and starts yelling at their MP and the various “think of the children” hand-wringers about reducing the punitive tax levels on alcohol.
So, with the above in mind… I see homebrewing undergoing a resurgence. I think that once we’re out the other side (fingers crossed) of the cost of living crisis, and people are able to afford hobbies once more, investigating interesting styles, brewing what you want to drink, and yes, even that classic Kiwi attitude of “I just wanna brew cheap piss, mate” will kick in once more, and the glorious hobby that is homebrewing will have another day in the sun!
Remember where you were when you read this. You know I’m right! Unless I’m not, in which case… look over there! A new hazy IPA release!