Peter Day schreef als Global business correspondent van de BBC het artikel dat eind voroig jaar op de BBC-website verscheen: How the craft beer revolution started
Big things are happening in the world of beer. Two giant brewing groups, Anheuser-Busch InBev and SABMiller, are in the process of merging.
They will produce a global monolith distributing almost one third of all the beer drunk in the world.
Out of one single group will stream many of the best-known international brands, including Budweiser, Stella Artois, Corona, Becks, and dozens of others.
(www.bbc.com/news/business-35120401)
De fusie tussen SABMiller en AB/InBev was de aanleiding voor zijn stuk.
With beer sales seem to be falling off in the rich world, this merger seems to be a developing world story. InBev is strong in South America, while SAB used to stand for South African Breweries.
Brewing groups have been taking each other over for decades, of course. The conventional idea is that mergers bring economies of scale - bigger, better breweries, more efficient distribution and marketing, tighter management.
Beer and individuality
But how do you manage a group that produces one third of the world's beer? Oh, it happens in lots of other industries, say the accountants, pointing to industries such as aircraft, cars and oil, where a multitude of brands steam out of a handful of companies.
(www.bbc.com/news/business-35120401)
Nederland heeft wat dat betreft geluk met een merk als Heineken. Een nationale megabrouwerij. Dat heeft Denemarken ook, maar de V.S., Zuid-Afrika en zelfs België missen dat.
Giphart zei in het programma ook dat Nederland voorop loopt in de Craft Beer Revolution. Grappig, want dat zegt Peter Day ook, maar dan over de Britse Craft Beer revolution:
In Britain there has been a recent explosion of it. There are now said to be 1,500 small breweries in the UK, more per head than anywhere else in the world.
Cult of Camra
To find out why it happened here you probably have to go back 50 years, back to another era of local brews and breweries. Then came a first wave of efficiency-led beer company mergers, and the rise of imported continental lagers that were lighter and fizzier than traditional British beer.
In reaction to the growing uniformity of beer sold in Britain, a group of enthusiastic drinkers got together in 1971 to form Camra, the Campaign for Real Ale. And this small group of enthusiasts had enormous impact. They were successful probably because they were single-minded in their antipathy to one thing - fizzy mass produced beer.
Camra raised consciousness about a deeply historic heritage that was under threat by the efficiency drives led by the bean counters who rose to management prominence in British companies in the 1960s and 70s.
The other thing that Camra did was that it chimed with the revolution in taste that was breaking out all over the UK. Brits were travelling abroad, trying out foreign food and drink, growing impatient with the general standards of what was foisted on them at home.
The beer hunter
Then add to the beer story the remarkable talents of one man, the late British beer writer Michael Jackson. When he left his job as the launch editor of the influential advertising newspaper Campaign, he started writing about beer.
He produced The World Guide to Beer, celebrating the differences of beer all over the world...As "The Beerhunter", Michael Jackson did the same thing on TV, widening the appreciation of the tastes of beer. (www.bbc.com/news/business-35120401)
Dus de oorsprong van de craft beer revolutie zit al tig jaar achter ons en is gelegen in onvrede over de massa-pils (nog niet eens de megabrouwbedrijven, maar de eentonigheid van het bieraanbod) en de bewustwording van de bierdiversiteit door CAMRA en Michael Jackson.
Mr Jackson's writing also fed the revival of beer in the US. Hundreds of local entrepreneurs, fed up with icy suds produced in the vast US beer factories, started microbreweries and brewpubs all across America.....In one of his favourite pubs on the River Thames at Chiswick some years ago, Mr Jackson told me he was treated like a king by immigration officials when he visited the USA.
And then, sadly mostly after his death in 2007, the reinvention of beer flashed all the way back across the Atlantic, back to Britain. (www.bbc.com/news/business-35120401)
Dus Engeland liep niet voorop in de craft beer revolution, maar speelt nu wel mee.
It started in kitchens and garages. People who learnt how to brew their own beer got ambitious. They found premises such as railway arches, and scraped the money together to buy the brewing equipment.
It was mostly intensely local. It was driven by individual experimenting. The craft brewing revolution was under way.....They say they would prefer to be proud of what they make, share the experience with employees who are also friends, keep ticking over, and add to the great diversity of beer now available in their particular parish.
Though it has to make money, the craft world is not so driven by it as normal businesses might think. Craftspeople like what they do with their hands and their brains, and that is a very important part of how they do it....Nevertheless, some highly successful early-start artisan brewers have already sold themselves to the big groups - Sharps Brewery in Rock in Cornwall, founded 1994, is one of them.
It's now part of the giant MolsonCoors,...Meantime Brewing Company of Greenwich this year sold itself to SABMiller. They did it in order to expand production to fulfil demand, say the founders.
But now there's an upset, typical perhaps of what happens when a small independent business is bought by a big one. Just seven months after SABMiller took over Meantime, it has just said it may sell the craft brewer in order to meet the requirements of the European regulators over the big new proposed merger. Meantime itself expresses no public concern, and says that it's business as usual.
(www.bbc.com/news/business-35120401)
Big things are happening in the world of beer. Two giant brewing groups, Anheuser-Busch InBev and SABMiller, are in the process of merging.
They will produce a global monolith distributing almost one third of all the beer drunk in the world.
Out of one single group will stream many of the best-known international brands, including Budweiser, Stella Artois, Corona, Becks, and dozens of others.
(www.bbc.com/news/business-35120401)
De fusie tussen SABMiller en AB/InBev was de aanleiding voor zijn stuk.
With beer sales seem to be falling off in the rich world, this merger seems to be a developing world story. InBev is strong in South America, while SAB used to stand for South African Breweries.
Brewing groups have been taking each other over for decades, of course. The conventional idea is that mergers bring economies of scale - bigger, better breweries, more efficient distribution and marketing, tighter management.
Beer and individuality
But how do you manage a group that produces one third of the world's beer? Oh, it happens in lots of other industries, say the accountants, pointing to industries such as aircraft, cars and oil, where a multitude of brands steam out of a handful of companies.
(www.bbc.com/news/business-35120401)
Het klopt dat bier meer is dan een instrument voor winstmaximalisatie. Het heeft een lokale component. SAB stond voor Zuid-Afrikaanse brouwers, Anheuser-Busch en Miller waren Noord-Amerikaans, terwijl AmBev Zuid-Amerikaans was, en Interbrew stond voor Belgisch bier. Door de fusies wordt de marktwaarde dan wel versterkt, het vervaagt die lokale binding.
Nederland heeft wat dat betreft geluk met een merk als Heineken. Een nationale megabrouwerij. Dat heeft Denemarken ook, maar de V.S., Zuid-Afrika en zelfs België missen dat.
But beer is about more than availability and alcohol content. Beer is about individuality, heritage, tradition, exploration, and taste and smell captured there in the glass.
At least that's what the so-called craft brewers tell me.
"Craft", "artisan", "micro" and "nano" are cult adjectives that arouse wariness, like stone-baked and handmade. But even if you are nervous about the use of the words, something is happening in craft brewing. (www.bbc.com/news/business-35120401)
Daar zit de clou. Kleine brouwerijen zijn misschien niet zo efficiënt, ze hebben wel een lokale binding, een authenticiteit, of zoals Ronald Giphart het zei bij het VARA-TVprogramma Groen licht je proeft in het speciaalbier van een kleine brouwerij dan proef je een persoonlijkheid.
Giphart zei in het programma ook dat Nederland voorop loopt in de Craft Beer Revolution. Grappig, want dat zegt Peter Day ook, maar dan over de Britse Craft Beer revolution:
In Britain there has been a recent explosion of it. There are now said to be 1,500 small breweries in the UK, more per head than anywhere else in the world.
Cult of Camra
To find out why it happened here you probably have to go back 50 years, back to another era of local brews and breweries. Then came a first wave of efficiency-led beer company mergers, and the rise of imported continental lagers that were lighter and fizzier than traditional British beer.
In reaction to the growing uniformity of beer sold in Britain, a group of enthusiastic drinkers got together in 1971 to form Camra, the Campaign for Real Ale. And this small group of enthusiasts had enormous impact. They were successful probably because they were single-minded in their antipathy to one thing - fizzy mass produced beer.
Camra raised consciousness about a deeply historic heritage that was under threat by the efficiency drives led by the bean counters who rose to management prominence in British companies in the 1960s and 70s.
The other thing that Camra did was that it chimed with the revolution in taste that was breaking out all over the UK. Brits were travelling abroad, trying out foreign food and drink, growing impatient with the general standards of what was foisted on them at home.
The beer hunter
Then add to the beer story the remarkable talents of one man, the late British beer writer Michael Jackson. When he left his job as the launch editor of the influential advertising newspaper Campaign, he started writing about beer.
He produced The World Guide to Beer, celebrating the differences of beer all over the world...As "The Beerhunter", Michael Jackson did the same thing on TV, widening the appreciation of the tastes of beer. (www.bbc.com/news/business-35120401)
Dus de oorsprong van de craft beer revolutie zit al tig jaar achter ons en is gelegen in onvrede over de massa-pils (nog niet eens de megabrouwbedrijven, maar de eentonigheid van het bieraanbod) en de bewustwording van de bierdiversiteit door CAMRA en Michael Jackson.
Mr Jackson's writing also fed the revival of beer in the US. Hundreds of local entrepreneurs, fed up with icy suds produced in the vast US beer factories, started microbreweries and brewpubs all across America.....In one of his favourite pubs on the River Thames at Chiswick some years ago, Mr Jackson told me he was treated like a king by immigration officials when he visited the USA.
And then, sadly mostly after his death in 2007, the reinvention of beer flashed all the way back across the Atlantic, back to Britain. (www.bbc.com/news/business-35120401)
Dus Engeland liep niet voorop in de craft beer revolution, maar speelt nu wel mee.
It started in kitchens and garages. People who learnt how to brew their own beer got ambitious. They found premises such as railway arches, and scraped the money together to buy the brewing equipment.
It was mostly intensely local. It was driven by individual experimenting. The craft brewing revolution was under way.....They say they would prefer to be proud of what they make, share the experience with employees who are also friends, keep ticking over, and add to the great diversity of beer now available in their particular parish.
Though it has to make money, the craft world is not so driven by it as normal businesses might think. Craftspeople like what they do with their hands and their brains, and that is a very important part of how they do it....Nevertheless, some highly successful early-start artisan brewers have already sold themselves to the big groups - Sharps Brewery in Rock in Cornwall, founded 1994, is one of them.
It's now part of the giant MolsonCoors,...Meantime Brewing Company of Greenwich this year sold itself to SABMiller. They did it in order to expand production to fulfil demand, say the founders.
But now there's an upset, typical perhaps of what happens when a small independent business is bought by a big one. Just seven months after SABMiller took over Meantime, it has just said it may sell the craft brewer in order to meet the requirements of the European regulators over the big new proposed merger. Meantime itself expresses no public concern, and says that it's business as usual.
(www.bbc.com/news/business-35120401)
Met het ontstaan van een hele hoop kleine vissen die groter groeien komen er een hoop spelers bij die straks moeten fuseren om groter te groeien. Daarbij zal wederom een lokale binding verloren gaan.
But despite the feeling that the real ale, and now the craft ale movements, have been driven by a growing consumer suspicion of big corporate behaviour, lots of keen craft beer drinkers don't know much about what, why, and how, their tipple is made. It doesn't matter.
It's the taste that counts. But how much craft beer will be damaged by becoming big, we will have to wait and see. (www.bbc.com/news/business-35120401)
Tja, dat is waar. Het maakt eigenlijk niet uit, want het gaat om de kwaliteit van het product. Het artikel beantwoord echter niet echt de vraag in de titel. Want hoe is het allemaal zo gestart?
CAMRA was ontevreden, Michael Jackson schrijft een boek en maakt een TV-serie (en vergeet zijn website niet) en de bewustwording ontstaat. Brouwers groeien door tot (pico, nano, micro)brouwerij en verder. Anderen volgen. Het begon (?) in Amerika en ging van daaruit verder. Volgens mij is het nu onderhand overal. Je kan de brouwers verdelen in twee groepen de traditionale (lokaal bier (alt, kölsch, saison, IRS e.d.; en niet te vergeten herfstbock in Nederland), pils, blond, dubbel, tripel, IPA, witbier) en de hippe brouwers (kuyt, gösse, DIPA, IPL, IIRS, grapefruit IPA, citroengras, barrel aged, brett etc...)
Die laatste groep was er 50 jaar geleden nog niet. Volgens mij kwam de groep traditionele brouwers pas echt op in de jaren tachtig/negentig. De afgelopen 10, 15 (of oei alweer 16!) jaar (dus zo net na de eeuwwisseling) kwamen hier de hippe brouwers op. Al kan ik niet helemaal plaatsen wanneer ik de eerste Nederlandse IPA of hip speciaalbier heb gezien...