Pooling resources

The man was built like a small mountain - suitably so, as he confronted me in Penrith in the northern Lake District. The business card he gave me announced he was Chris Webber of the Whitehaven Brewing Company.

"There you are - I'm the latest new small brewer in Cumbria and I'll be on stream in a couple of weeks," he revealed.

New Chris may be; small he is not. I stand 6ft 3in in my good old cottons, but a mere foothill beneath his Scafell Pike.

And in common with all the best beer containers, he is wider in the middle than at the extremities. Gazing in admiration at his splendid girth, I said: "Good luck - and don't drink it all yourself."

He rumbled in reply: "I've got to taste it to make sure the punters will like it."

Then he was off, back to his new brewing kit on Croasdale Farm near Ennerdale, one of the most attractive spots in that area of outstanding natural beauty.

I met Chris at the close of a one-day conference convened by Distinctly Cumbrian, part of the Cumbria Rural Development Agency. With the addition of Chris Webber's company, Cumbria now has 24 breweries, ranging from mighty Jennings in Cockermouth to the celebrated Hesket Newmarket pub brewery owned and run as a co-operative by the villagers.

Distinctly Cumbrian development officer Nigel Bamford had convened a meeting of local brewers to see how he could help them and how they could help themselves by working closely together.

The first speaker was Nick Young of Cumbrian Contract Bottling, which is grant-aided by Distinctly Cumbrian and offers modern facilities for bottling beer.

As the next speaker I was able to draw on my experience of many visits to the region and its host of small breweries, most of which have concentrated on cask beer for some years. It gives them a badge of distinction in an area that relies for much of its income on the tourist trade and where national brewers busily supply lager and smooth-flow keg ale.

But the beer scene is changing fast. Within a few years, packaged beer for the off-trade will account for 50% of sales.

A few weeks ago I discovered while visiting my old friends at the Nethergate brewery in Suffolk that another tyro of the cask-beer sector is installing a bottling line and will produce, in bottle-fermented form, every beer it produces, seasonal as well as regular.

I told the meeting that the British small brewing sector can gain strength from the success of their brethren in the United States, where craft brewers have notched up double-digit growth for three years running and now account for more than 10% of total beer sales.

Britain has the biggest number of microbreweries per head of population of any country in the world. Their share of the beer market will continue to grow as the regional sector declines and consumers turn their backs on the national brands. It is now an accepted fact that the big national lager brands are in decline and that an increasing number of people are looking for beers with flavour rather than chill and fizz.

My advice to the Cumbrian brewers - and to anyone else willing to listen - is to chart a distinctive course to ensure that they stand out from the crowd, whether they use cask or bottle. Golden ales may be the big ticket in town at present, but craft brewers should beware of ignoring traditional milds and bitters.

They should also remember that the British are the world's biggest stout consumers and that home-grown versions of porter and stout, as opposed to the Irish versions, have a big following.

Philip Lee, who was the final speaker, is a former sales and marketing director with Jennings, and now an adviser for Business Link. He stressed that small breweries needed to pool resources through bulk-buying of grain and hops and joint deliveries to cut costs and fuel.

All in all, it was an invigorating and informative meeting.

And any day now, my right hand will recover from being crushed by Cumbria's new "small brewer", Chris Webber.

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