Positive trends prevailing

There have been positive signs about trends in beer creeping into various columns I’ve written over the past few months, and I found many of those signs coalescing into a positive picture when Aspall’s invited me to a series of presentations about the cider market a couple of weeks ago. What analysts CGA Strategy and Nielsen had to say was particularly fascinating.

Good news tends not to get reported as much as bad news. A few years ago I was being contacted by TV and radio stations about ‘the death of the British pub’ every time those awful statistics about pub closures continued to rise, topping 50 a week in 2009.

We haven’t heard as much about that running total recently, and I think this might have something to do with the fact that, despite the grim economic times we are living in, the weekly totally has fallen sharply to just 14.

That’s still 14 too many. But CGA predicts that in a few years’ time, the number of new pubs opening will begin to exceed the number shutting up shop.

These new openings are, of course, a different breed of pub from those which are closing: they’re more premium, more expensive, a bit flashier.

They’re also very likely to have a good range of drinks — not just cask ale (although any new premium outlet opening now without a good cask ale offering does not understand the market it’s operating in) but all across the bar.

And this leads on to another stat-istic that could be read negatively, but is good news for at least some of those working in the trade.

A common bad news story is that the un-justifiable difference in price be-tween on-trade and supermarket booze is causing people to stay at home and pre-load.

True, and there is nothing good to say about pre-loading — except that, after they have pre-loaded, these people still go out to the pub.

And according to CGA, when they get there, they want to spend the money they have saved on those cheap tinnies on premium drinks: so-called world beers, cool cocktails, and overpriced — sorry, high-margin — wine.
This all helped me make sense of some of the things I’ve discussed in recent columns: real ale and beer generally are slowly but surely making their way into mainstream media, and the collective consciousness.

Premium cider is like a gold rush. People no longer laugh at me when I tell them I’m a beer writer. Instead, they ask me why real ale is so cool these days, and which ones they should try.

New pubs such as Craft Beer Co and the Euston, Sheffield and York Taps are taking the concept of the craft-beer pub to a broad audience, and that is so good for our industry that I simply have no patience for anyone who’d rather nit-pick the definition of what craft beer actually is than celebrate the fact that good beer is going mainstream.

I’m not trying to deny the serious problems that still exist, and I don’t want to make light of the struggle many licensees face to make a living. All the problems are there and they still need addressing.

But there is room for some optimism too.

Next summer we get the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, Euro 2012 and the Olympics in quick succession. I’ve not been around forever, but I can’t remember a time when there were so many reasons for both Brits and an anticipated huge influx of tourists to head to the pub.
I write these words through the pain of a hangover, because last night I won an award for scripting the SIBA Proud of Beer video, which launched in March. Inevitably, when the film was launched I received a lot of criticism and negativity from people who are sometimes incapable of seeing the good in anything.

But I think the message in that film is starting to get through. Increasingly, more people are acting as if they are proud of beer, and proud of the pubs that serve it.

I hope you have a good Christmas business-wise, as well as personally.

And as I always like to suggest at this time of year: please, just once, drink irresponsibly.