Recently,
a scandal rocked the beer world. The
Scottish brewery, BrewDog, won the Bar
Operator of the Year award at The British Institute of InnKeeping (BII)
Scottish Awards on Sunday May 6, 2012.
At least, they should have. See, the judges said so, but sponsor Diageo decided to ignore the judges and hand the award to someone else. Essentially, Diageo used their leverage to
“persuade” BII presenters into doing their bidding. This did not go over well
with BrewDow, the BII, beer lovers and the judges.
Diageo is
a large international conglomeration of wines, spirits, and beer. Notably,
their British Isles beer influence comes in the form of brands such as
Guinness, Smithwick’s, and Harp.
BrewDog, on the other hand, is a small nascent Scottish brewery that
has, and pronounces, a reputation of going against the grain. In their own
words, they are a “beacon of non-conformity in a (sic) increasingly corporate
desert”. The only thing these two
companies have in common is that they make beer.
So why
did Diageo refuse to award BrewDog as per the judges’ ruling? Apparently, only
the Diageo representative at the BII Awards knows the answer, because Diageo corporate
headquarters released a statement/apology saying the actions of said
representative does not reflect in any way Diageo values. Still, this plays
into the waiting hands of BrewDog. What better way to highlight their “against
the grain” attitude than tangible evidence that it is affected the “grain”? And BrewDog knows this, and has fired off
several tweets, blogs, etc berating the Diageo action and apology. So much so, that Diageo has pleaded with
BrewDog to cease the ‘witch hunt’ of the involved representative. There is no indication that BrewDog will heed
this plea. Why should they?
But what’s
the big deal, really? On the surface, it seems that it is just fun and games and
BrewDog sees as an opportunity to promote themselves, play the victim. Yet, below the surface, there are interesting
factors. For instance, craft brew in the British Isles has changed in the last 40
years. The small English pubs that
produce their own beer are virtually non-existent. Those breweries mentioned
above (Guinness, et al) are not in the hands of the original owners. Real Ale almost disappeared, but thanks to
Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) this tasty beer ‘style’ has come back. But its return, and specifically CAMRA’s strict adherence to
Real Ale, has been called into question by BrewDog.
While
BrewDog has nothing against Real Ale, they would like to see more options in
the U.K. other than Diageo and Real Ale. BrewDog makes very different kinds of
beer than those two. While it used to be
a struggle between macro-beer and CAMRA, BrewDog enters to challenge both…or at
least co-exist with them. This latest
issue at the BII is a rather obvious uppercut to BrewDog’s platform…but the
punch missed.
Another
issue is the market. While craft beer
still only makes up roughly 6% of the total beer sales, it is growing. And if
you have 94% of the market, why not gobble up the remainder? If craft beer
sales continue to grow, then that number can reach 10% maybe even 15% in a few
short years. That is enough for the big
brewers (Diageo, AB-InBev, SABMiller, Heineken, Tsingtao, Carlsberg) to take
notice and alter or implement some new plans. One can see this in the new labels
(and their varieties) Anheuser-Busch and Coors are putting out: Blue Moon, Bud
Light Lime, Shock Top, Wild Blue, Batch 19, Colorado Native, etc). They want a piece of the craft beer pie, and if they can't make the bee, they'll buy it (see: Goose Island).
Sadly, they see craft beer and beer in general, as a line item and not a
passion. Craft beer is growing because
craft brewers make interesting and delicious beers. Not because they add flavors and syrup to an
already bad beer. BrewDog knows this. So, too, does Diageo. A bigger fight may
be on the horizon.
