Craft beer: it got corrupted, now it’s being reclaimed

I’ll have a craft beer, you might say, when your colleague proposes another round at the pub. Coming right up. But… what actually is a craft beer? 

Well, once upon a time (the 1970s) it reliably meant “made in an independent brewery”. Later on it got hipsterified, and in the 2000s and 2010s a choice of craft beer became synonymous with “very expensive” and “comes in a wanky can”. Craft beer can also indicate double strength (DIPA, anyone?), triple strength (that’s a TIPA) or chocolate oat flavoured stout. Nowadays though, it refers to an astonishing number of beers meaning your kindly colleague could end up confounded at the bar.

This is down to the astounding success of the ‘craft beer’ label. Instead of marketing themselves as low price, craft beer sold itself through advocating quality and diversity (Bianca Road Brew Company sells a ‘Razzle Dazzle’ described as a raspberry and peach lemonade table sour – yes this is a beer – at 3.5 per cent ABV).

However, as a taste for craft beer has spilled over into popular palettes – thanks to hipsters getting binned in areas like Bermondsey’s Beer Mile, where Bianca’s brewery lives, and the east of Bristol – bigger conglomerates eyed their success with jealousy. First, they tried making their own craft beers. But then they found a better strategy. They started buying microbreweries up. Recent economic circumstances has only consolidated this trend with larger brewers better able to wither the “perfect storm” of high taxes, narrow routes to market and bulky energy bills which has led to a crisis in British brewing. 

A sea of craft beer

So now craft beer is everywhere: you might expect your work friend to come back with a cool pint of Camden Hells, which calls itself a craft beer, though it’s actually owned by the world’s largest brewer, Anheuser-Busch InBev (bought in 2015). 

A survey by Yougov has shown that consumers are confused. In a survey commissioned by the Society of Independent Brewers and Associates (Siba), people were shown to be more likely to believe that Neck Oil – ultimately owned by Heinekin – was independent than other genuinely standalone breweries. This is a problem for artisanal breweries who feel their label of craft beer has been coopted by conglomerates.

With this in mind, smaller barrel-brewers are renaming their tipples “indie beers”. Craft beer isn’t necessarily better than a bottle of Peroni but the campaign aims to distinguish those beers that are genuinely made in independent breweries from those that aren’t. Cheers to that.