Beer is on a roll. I arrived at the Celtic Beer Festival on a balmy Cornish Saturday in late November to find a queue of expectant drinkers that stretched almost as far as the railway station where trains were emptying even more eager imbibers on to the street.
When the doors opened, the vast cellars in St Austell Brewery’s spacious, grey stone buildings were soon heaving with people keen to sample more than 160 beers from brewers throughout the county. It was the 16th annual festival organised by St Austell and 3,000 people were expected to attend the latest one.
What was notable and encouraging was the large number of young people — male and female — at the festival.
It would surprise those sections of the media always quick to portray beer drinking as an occupation enjoyed solely by derelicts that sleep under park benches that nobody got drunk or started a fight.
Those attending the festival sipped, sampled, discussed the merits of the various brews and talked with impressive knowledge about the flavours created by different malts and hops.
Sea-change
There are a number of reasons for this sea change in the appreciation of beer. One is the evergrowing number of breweries producing beer of the highest quality and with an abundance of choice. The evening before the festival, fellow beer writer Adrian Tierney-Jones and I attended a reception at St Austell attended by other Cornish brewers.
We were there to talk about our book Britain’s Beer Revolution and proof of the validity of the title was there in the brewery’s cellar.
There are now more than 30 breweries in Cornwall. St Austell itself will brew 100,000 barrels this year while Sharp’s and Skinner’s have become a major presence both locally and nationally. The growth of breweries in Cornwall and every county and region of the UK is down to consumer demand — not the fake demand created by slick advertising for global brands but beers boosted by independent brewers’ word-of-mouth promotions.
The rise and rise of craft brewing is all the more remarkable when you consider the blanket ban on serious coverage of beer in most of the media.
For some sections of press and broadcasting, beer is only mentioned in the context of social problems. You can always rely on BBC television to roll out the old stock shot of a pint of beer being pulled in a pub when there’s yet another report on drinking and health, even though beer is the least harmful of all forms of alcohol.
New media
But as Adrian Tierney-Jones points out at the events we have held to promote our book, the new phenomenon of social media has come to the rescue of beer.
Forget mainstream newspapers and TV: today vast number of beer lovers garner their information and pass on their thoughts thanks to blogs, websites, Facebook, Twitter and other outlets too numerous to mention.
The airwaves are awash with people talking about new beers, new breweries, sharing their tasting notes and discussing the ingredients used. Modern forms of communication are not static or one-way but are enlivened by the ability immediately to take part in a debate about the merits or otherwise of particular beers. Following the St Austell festival, the Protz/Tierney-Jones bandwagon rolled on to the BBC Food Show in Birmingham.
We staged four talks and tastings in the CAMRA Theatre, an arena that offers further evidence of the increasing interest in craft beer. I’ve been involved in the Campaign for Real Ale’s initiative at the Food Show since its inception more than a decade ago.
In the early days, if we got a dozen people at each talk, we were doing well. Now most are sold out, 50 people packing the theatre to sample and discuss a range of beers. On several occasions, disappointed people have been turned away in the forlorn hope that some ticket holders failed to turn up.
Changes
The audiences have changed. Once they were almost exclusively male. Now they are often 50:50 male and female. It’s one glass ceiling that women have broken through with a resounding crash. For most of the 20th century, beer was promoted as a man’s drink.
Women were ignored and pubs were determinedly unfriendly to them. But women are now welcome in pubs. They enjoy beer and talk about it with fervour and even passion. Some of them are brewing beer and growing numbers of them are writing about it.
They are a key part of the revolution. It’s an exciting and inspirational time to be writing and talking about beer. And — as the song says — things can only get better.
Twitter: @RogerProtzBeer