Taking the long view

The Society of Independent Brewers has been enjoying a growing profile of late. Roger Protz meets new chairman Peter Amor

Peter Amor has just turned 60 and is the proud owner of his bus pass and senior railcard. He will need them: as the new chairman of the Society of Independent Brewers (Siba), he plans to spend the first three months in office touring the country and visiting as many of Siba's 400 members as he can.

He may leave a turbulent wake behind him. Peter Amor is a man who speaks his mind. Siba is now a major presence in the brewing industry, but he feels it cannot rest on the laurels of its great successes in recent years - progressive beer duty (PBD) and a direct delivery service that has got beers from small craft breweries into some of the giant pub companies'

outlets.

"I'm dedicated to quality," he says. "It's desperately important. I'm aware of the criticism of people like Stephen Oliver of Marston's who raised hackles at Siba's annual conference last year when he described some micros as 'cupboard comedian brewers'.

"As a result of PBD, 160 new breweries have come on stream in the past two years. But some of them know nothing about brewing. We need training courses for them.

I'm a scientist and I shall tell them to buy

microscopes!

"We also need to map out accession

strategies for them so they don't go out of business when the current owners retire or decide to call it a day."

Amor is a flamboyant character, well known for his exotic headwear. He was born in Ilford, Essex, and studied botany at Ilford County High School.

"I loved the subject and did a lot of work on yeast. So the choice of career was either the Forestry Commission or brewing."

Lure of the black stuff

He chose not to go to university and was offered jobs by Truman's brewery in East London and Guinness at Park Royal.

"Truman's said they would pay me £420 a year while Guinness offered £619. Twelve pounds a week was a lot of money in those days so I went to Park Royal. Guinness was amazingly hierarchical in the 1960s. The under-brewers were all public schoolboys, while the brewers all had university backgrounds. I was only the second under-brewer from a grammar school to be employed there."

Amor moved on from brewing to work in the Park Royal training department and from there he joined the transport department that planned the movement of Guinness tankers and drays around the country.

"I loved the work, but I got fed up with London," he says. "There was a job going as transport manager with Bulmer's, so I moved to Hereford."

It coincided with a turbulent period of his life that saw him get divorced and lose his driving licence. Without a licence he couldn't work and lost his job with Bulmer's.

An old friend, Peter Shepherd, a former Whitbread brewer, had opened a modest 10-barrel brewery in Retford, Nottinghamshire, and Amor joined him. Eventually, he bought Shepherd out and in 1984 moved the kit back to Herefordshire where he launched the Wye Valley Brewery at the back of the Nag's Head pub in Canon Pyon.

Roll out the Barrels

From there, he moved to the outbuildings of a rundown pub in Hereford called the Lamb. He asked the pub's owners, Whitbread, if he could both lease the pub and brew.

Whitbread said yes, the Lamb changed its name to Barrels and a legend was born. The Barrels is a pub that is packed to the rafters every day and sells a range of cask beers from both Wye Valley and other micros.

"Brewing also got busy," Amor says.

"The Monopolies Commission Report in 1989 into the affairs of the national brewers turned many drinkers towards the smaller

producers."

He bought a second pub in Hereford, ran - unsuccessfully - a restaurant, got divorced again and five years ago, with the support of his bank, bought the old Symonds Cider factory at Stoke Lacy and moved Wye Valley there with custom-built new brewing kit.

He has taken a back seat now. His son Vernon runs the business, there are five reps on the road, and the success of such beers as Butty Bach and the Dorothy Goodbody

range, fronted by a mythical young blonde, have boosted production to close to 300 barrels a week.

"Taking a back seat" means for Amor devoting more time to Siba. He joined in 1995, but resigned when an annual meeting in

Harrogate decided by a majority of one to support the Labour Party.

Carola Brown of Ballard's Brewery and one of Siba's founders encouraged him to rejoin.

He has been vice-chairman for a year and has now taken over as the top man from Keith Bott of Titanic.

"We have a council meeting in June where we will discuss our strategy and aims," Amor says. "We have seven Siba regions and I want them to get more involved in running the

organisation.

"There have been ructions over Fuller's joining. I welcome Fuller's - it's good news - but I don't want smaller brewers to feel they're being swamped. Some 72% of Siba members brew less than 30 barrels a week and they must remain. We must maintain PBD for them. It's been used as it was intended: not to make beer cheaper, but to invest in infrastructure and staff."

Eye on the future

"But it's no good having PBD without access to market," he adds. "The direct delivery scheme [which means delivering beer to pubco depots instead of individual pubs] is vital for our members to get their beer to drinkers."

Siba, Amor says, will continue to lobby MPs as he thinks a review of PBD is inevitable and must be safeguarded.

Action is needed to stop the inflated prices for pubs, he adds. "It's a real worry. Perfectly good pubs get offers from pubcos they can't refuse, then the rents soar and they go out of business.

"We need to support pubs because cask beer is unique to the pub. We must also defend drinking. I'm worried the anti-alcohol lobby will try to follow the anti-smoking ban with a crackdown on drinking. But drinking is different to smoking: two cigarettes a day will do you no good whereas two beers won't harm you and may even be beneficial."

Above all, he would like a period of stability in the industry. "We've had nothing but change for 20 years," he says. "We'd like a Government that leaves us alone and lets the trade settle down.

"Brewing is an easy target and it's too easy to kill the fatted calf."