On a visit to Beechworth a couple of years ago* the family managed to spend a little time looking over the very hands-on operation that is Bridge Road Brewers. Arrangements had been made to catch up with owner and brewer, Ben Kraus, and chat about beer in general and Bridge Road specifically.
“No worries, Prof, happy to give you some time,” said the ever cheery Ben. “Come round about 6am when we’re mashing in.”
“There’s a 6 o’clock in the morning now, is there?” I replied.
Here’s a brief rundown of the two hours spent with Ben that morning.
After twenty minutes or so at the computer replying to emails and sending off various orders, Ben made us both coffee and set to work preparing to brew. The mash was on its way when the ‘O’ ring on the pump used to transfer the wort to the kettle decided it had had its day and Ben set to it with wrench, vigour and a few rude words.
Retry. ‘O’ ring not properly seated. Repeat process.
Retry. ‘O’ ring slipping. Repeat process.
Retry. ‘O’ ring not properly seated. Try different ‘O’ ring. More rude words. ‘O’ ring gets the message. Brew transferred successfully.
“Mate, I guess you can’t just call a plumber at six in the morning. Eh?”
“Not when it was the plumber who I swapped the pump with for some beer. No, not really. Plus, you just learn a little bit about a lot of different trades when you run a brewery.”
And there’s the thing. As an independent brewer Ben is not just a beer maker. He is a Jack-of-all-trades and a finder & fixer. He is a craftsman but also a small business owner who relies on just himself to get a lot of the work done. He is a bookkeeper and a sales representative and he has to know a bit about tax and superannuation as well as the logistics of the business from sourcing the raw materials to distributing the finished product; which he has to bottle, label, pack and shift.
In addition he needs to have a good grasp of HR issues and employing, rostering, training and retaining good staff to ensure that his vision is projected on those many occasions when he is out-and-about at beer dinners, festivals, expos and other beer-related events requiring his attendance.
He’s not alone, either. A visit to Mountain Goat Brewery a few years back recalls images of the bloke-in-charge on the working end of a hose cleaning out brew vessels and mopping concrete floors. The scene is repeated over and over again in small to medium sized breweries around the country. From one-man operations to family businesses and small team concerns the story is identical. One minute you’re at the Board Room table, the next you’re in your gumboots and up to your knees in spent malt.
These scenes are illustrated here not to suggest that those who have their beers brewed under contract (in the many forms which that can take) are in any way ‘cheating the system’ or that they are making an inferior product. But ponder this; lots of considerations affect our retail decision making every day. The marketing graduates will tell you all about ‘the decision tree’, a series of subconscious calculations that kick in sometime between ‘needing beer’ and ‘paying for beer’ that ultimately impact on our purchasing.
In terms of purchasing beer, the following factors (in no particular order) are almost universal; price, needs, storage space, occasion, beer style, beer brand, beer label, brewer, emotion. Two or more or all of these help determine which brewer secures your custom at that specific time. Sometimes it’s as simple as a funky name or an eye-catching label. Sometimes it’s the need for hops or the anticipation of some nice stout drinking weather while at other times it’s a case of ‘that fit’s my budget today’.
What the beer companies gain in advantage is that they essentially bypass the initial – and most expensive – stage. Brewing and bottling the beer. What they don’t lose as an advantage is that their beers appear to be exactly the same as those made by brewery brewers. The average consumer sees no difference between a beer made by a brewer and a beer made for a beer seller. And, really, that’s not the worst thing that could happen. The more players there are in the market offering more choices in more outlets and venues the better the beer world is overall.
But it is the issues of labelling and branding that are at the core of this debate. As we have seen there is a fair degree of hard work, long hours and capital investment in brewing good beer in quantity with consistent quality. It takes a lot less to ‘buy’ beer from a contract brewery to simply label and sell as a brand. As long as the consumer can make a considered buying decision based on the facts at hand all is well with the world.
It is only when the contract brewer artificially adds prestige, provenance or any other measure of premium value to the brand that the waters become murky. If someone buys a product because they believe it represents a region or the intentions of its original creator or that it is simply the product of a certain ‘place’ when it is actually not, then something needs to be done. A common theme has been to name or shame, or otherwise unmask, those who are blatantly gaining a commercial and intrinsic advantage from the hard work of others.
An alternative and perhaps more palatable response may be to work from the other direction and highlight the beers that are made where they say they are by whom they say brews them. A simple ‘Brewer’s Own’ addition to the label or ‘Made At (insert brewery name here)’ tag to assist in differentiation may solve the basic problem of ‘implied provenance’ that seems to be at the core of the argument against the contract brewer. It doesn’t denigrate those that are not, but merely identifies those that are.
It would be lovely to think that all brands made by every type of brewing model could sit equally on the shelf and stand or fall on the merits of its taste, flavour, enjoyment and the consumers’ emotional attachment to the brand. It just seems a shame to ignore the extra financial risk, hands-on methods of traditional brewing and hard slog made by those who brew their own beer.
Oh, and the time and effort and ‘O’ rings spent trying to keep all the pumps and what-not running smoothly.
*In the interests of full and frank disclosure, the purpose of the Beechworth holiday was to share the history and charm of the region with the family and not just to spend a large part of each of the four days at Bridge Road Brewers. We even saw some other sights around town, so there.
Whilst I agree that the beer label should indicate where the beer is made I don’t believe there is any value in the region it comes from, at least not in Australia. Whilst we have regions that are known for types of wine we don’t have regions known for beers. You could argue some regions are known for barley or hop growing but outside the growers and the beer nerds almost nobody will associate them.
If you are wanting to associate with a particular region as it is known for a particular aesthetic or for quality food in general then you are back to what you are accusing the contract brewer of anyway. The beer should be clearly labelled about where it’s made and, more importantly, what is in it.
You have put your finger on the lynch pin of the issue. I don’t think it necessarily matters at all to the quality of the beer where the beer is made. But it does matter to many buyers who select a beer for a whole host of emotional reasons, such as where it is made. To them it matters and many brewers are aware of this. This was the point that Ben makes in the podcast. If it doesn’t matter where the beer comes, why make location so wrapped up in the brand. If location does matter, brew it there – or be very clear on the label where it is made. The point at which it becomes cloudy is where brewers who do brew in a region contract one beer or a portion of their production out. I think in the interests of clarity these should be labelled too.
Labelling should clearly state who brewed it, where and when, and what its supposed to be, any brewer who doesnt advertise these things is a charletan,
Futhermore, we really only care about “craft beer” and lets face it, Vale dry aint no craft beer, it wont matter how open the labelling is, its micro-swill
Not sure who the ‘we’ is that only cares about craft beer, but I’d love to hear your definition of what ‘craft beer’ is.
Say what you want about a beer like Vale Dry if it’s not your cup of tea, but having used it at a tasting recently with a mixed group of 35 people ranging from craft novices through to all-grain homebrewers, the novices loved the Vale Dry, the more experienced loved things like Hargreaves Hill ESB and Murray’s Angry Man. Sure, don’t don’t drink it yourself – but to say that there is no place for it (or Fat Yak, Big Helga or Murray’s Whale Ale – not that you did, but others have) is like breaking off the bottom three rungs on the beer ladder after you’ve climbed up it.
If the complaint is that that one wants to be able to associate themselves with factors unrelated to brewing but doesn’t want others to then I have no sympathy. What next beer astrology?
Ahh, but you are a very rational mind! Read Seth Godin’s All Marketers Are Liars to understand…
I understand. I just believe it is ridiculous. How can you begin to try to make a rational argument over a completely irrational topic. Some people believe in astrology, amongst other things. Should we really entertain their arguments?
Region doesn’t really come in to it as such. Great beer comes out of Richmond (VIC) but it is not a reknowned hop or barley growing region! As discussed in the podcast, it’s when claims are made or implied as to the origin of a beer and the beer then trades off that assertion/assumption. The same with beers which claim to be brewed from long lost recipes of the early settlers of an area to give them some ‘street cred’ when they are clerly not as ‘promised’. These are areas that need to be addressed.
Saying where your beer comes from or how it’s made only works if you’re not going to lie about it like at least two contracts I could name already do. Imported from… Geelong? Broo’ed in your shed? Hm.
What has always puzzled me about contract brands is that the makers don’t take advantage of their situation to come up with interesting and out there beers. What’s the point of going this route if you’re going to make yet another lager or pale ale? This does not lead to more diversity in the market, especially in cases where you have a brewery making one beer and several contract owners simply slapping different labels on it.
If you’re going to contract, let your imagination take flight. I like what 8 Wired has done in NZ for example. Or Boatrocker hitting the shelves with a hopped up pils.
Most of this is so nonsensical, and such an appeal to emotion, that it is barely worth responding to. I believe it is a product of your environment (a place where all the contract brewed beers are rather dull).
The majority of Australians who have a problem with contract brewing will change their mind in the next couple of years. I’m sure that the inevitable rise of brewer-owned contract brewing companies will help that. In NZ we have Epic, 8 Wired, Golden Ticket, Pink elephant, Mussel Inn, Twisted Hop and ourselves (Yeastie Boys) who are all making the majority (or all) of their beer through another brewery. And debut releases are coming in the next month from then there is Parrot Dog, Revolution, Adlib Brewing. We are bathing in riches here. And the breweries, who previously brewed at as little as 30% of their capacity, are paying bills, making profit… expanding even.
The simple fact is that Australian breweries need to make better beer and, even more importantly, market themselves better.
Two years ago, on our first anniversary, we won champion Stout/Porter and champion People’s Choice at BrewNZ. I asked Steve Nally how he felt about us getting accolades for a beer he’d brewed. His response was along the lines of “It’s great.. we get to brew more beer, and that’s what we are here to do.” *
Slainte mhath
Stu McKinlay
Yeastie Boys
* Steve Nally joined us on stage when we picked up the award for BrewNZ Champion Stout/Porter 2009 and that trophy now sits on the shelves at Steve’s Invercargill Brewery, where we believe it belongs.
Well put Stu and thanks for joining the conversation. I think you hit the nail on the head when you say we’ll ‘change our minds in a a couple of year’s time’. In many ways we are years behind the progress made, and acceptance of, craft brewing in NZ. In particular, we are still discussing ‘what craft be really is’ and the merits of contract brewing.
I guess there is also a feeling here that it is the brewer who owns his own gear who is taking the risk and brewing the equivalent of a Rex Attitude (is there really a Rex Attitude equivalent?!)
You are right – we don’t have contract/toll brewers making Braggotts and Kellerwiess’ and big Imperial stouts to the same extent as you do across the ditch. Whether your market is ahead of ours and willing to get on board or whether it’s our blokes not testing the limits, I don’t know.
The reality is that this conversation is on-going and the debate is real and robust. Hopefully your comments will add to the sum of information that people out there take with them when they next buy their beers and helps to clear the murky waters.
Cheers
Prof
(Wearer of boring old sensible pants!)
I’ve sat on my thoughts for this article for a few days. Sadly I wished the author had done this as well. The article I feel is poorly considered and written.
To me this is not an informative article but an ill considered rant covering a segment of the contract brewing market, beer marketing (including provenance) and labelling.
To consider contract brewing as less expensive and less risky than installing a brewery shows a lack of awareness of recent goings on in the trade. In the last 12 months a large contract brewer showed the inherent risk of a contract brewing model by going into administration with I believe over $3 mill of bad debt and about $12 mill burnt in 3 years. The last time I checked, thats a lot of money!
To claim beer sales are an easy proposition begs the question of whether the author has tried to sell beer? Believe me, it is a bloody hard gig whether your utilising contract arrangements or you have your own brewery.
I am a brewer who has an attachment to an area and am confused at the criticism of brewers ‘who add prestige, provenance or any other measure of premium value to the brand’. Following this premise, I take it that if you brew beer under contract you need to call your beer Garbage Tip Ale with a tasting note that states the beer is slop brewed with the shitiest ingredients and chook full of chemicals? This section of the article also shows a lack of research and basic knowledge of why brewers access contract facilities.
A bit of research and thought would have taken into account brewers who utilise contract for reasons such as;
• Inability to meet demand from own facility
• Lack of resources such as a packaging line
• Logistics and cost efficiencies – particularly for international brands
So if you are a brewer and have any of these problems I assume you must keep your cred and refuse to undertake contract operations?
Lastly, when I consider the idea of labelling beer and ‘implied provenance’, I have a problem with the article. This problem being ‘implied brewing’ and I have to ask the author if he is aware of the rise of the ‘implied brewer’? Whereby there are a number of brewers utilising contact facilities to brew their packaged beer brands to supply to major retailers. In this case the brewers, all well known and regarded, are not hand crafting the beers themselves yet are having someone else brew their beer and are not stating this on the labelling. I do not have a problem with this sort of arrangement, but I think it pales in significance to the contract brewer so despised in the article who makes no claim to producing the beer themselves. How would one label the beer in this instance, would it be ‘met the fella once who brewed the beer for us, but we’ll claim it as our own’? Seems a bit wordy to me …
Thanks for weighing in Scott. Looking at your response I think you may have taken one or two lines of Pete’s comments out of context of the wider discussion – that started in the podcast. It wasn’t a rant against contract brewing, more a discussion about whether beer drinkers who are being sold a beer as having very strong connections with a region are being duped if the beer’s only association with that region is it’s name and maybe a PO Box. I used to regularly receive emails from people in Jindabyne or who had been to Jindabyne asking for directions to the Snowy Mountains brewery – assuming there was one because the Snowy Mountains bottle listed the address as a Jindabyne PO Box and all of the beers were names after local features. People do make purchasing decisions based on these things and there are cynical marketers who capitalise on this. Does Bright Brewery make better beer because it is based in Bright? No. However, beer drinkers who are buying the beer because it comes from Bright are getting a more genuine experience than beer drinkers who bought Snowy Mountains Crackenback Ale because they thought it came from the Snowy Mountains. We could have a whole other discussion of the ‘genuine experience’ and whether people who buy a beer because of where it comes from rather than how it tastes need to think about their purchasing decisions a little harder, but we’ll save that one for later.
The simple response is, no one is saying that brewing and selling beer of any description is easy, but that if you are going to sell a beer based on having Cascade hops in it – then it should have Cascade hops in it. If you’re selling it as being of a region than that perhaps should be true too. If it’s not, the beer drinker should be able to access that easily – such as reading it on the bottle – so that they can make informed decisions about what they are buying.
Beyond that, I think you have seized on this article as being anti-contract, which just isn’t the case at all. In fact, the whole discussion (and RBN3’s discussion with Cam Hines) was about the difficulties involved in brewing and how useful contract operations are in assisting to make brewing work.
Ed
OK my 2 cents now, I think the article is what it is, a perspective of the challenges of making selling beer, no matter what part you have in its creation, hands on or supervisory. Basically its hard work. I actually enjoyed the article, but think it omitted an important point, that is handing over the “hands on” aspects of the brewing may be actually more difficult for some than brewing the bloody beer! It also fails to note the reaction of some craft brewers to the idea of contract brewing. Its a bit like you’ve offended their Mum, or kicked their dog. I find that a bit weird, surely more good beer, leads to more people drinking good beer, leads to the craft beer sector doing better? Maybe I’m just a bit naive.
Every beer, or product has a story, this of course combined with the value proposition of that product set its value. Contract brewed beers may lack that location aspect of the story but that doesn’t make them any lesser beers.
Bad beer is bad beer. Plenty of people make bad beer (OK dull beer), both by contract and in their own brew house. I’m all for good and interesting beer, bugger where it’s made.
This discussion has been making waves over this side of the Tasman, and today I was asked to comment on RadioNZ, as part of a general story on craft beer.
I think any comparison with wine labelling is invalid. Wine buyers want to know where the grapes are grown because it affects the flavours, aromas and quality of the product. Coincidentally, they are also told where the wine is made, because grape juice is bulky and so wine is typically made where the grapes are grown.
Beer isn’t really influenced by the region it is made. It is feasible to label it with the regions where the ingredients are grown, but it is much more relevent to tell me the style (honestly and accurately) and tell me who made it.
And that raises the second argument. It seems that brewers in Australia get some marketing advantage by associating their product with a specific region. This just doesn’t happen in craft beer in New Zealand, and I don’t know why our cultures are so different.
I think of all NZ craft beers as being of equal interest and relevance. They are different quality and I have my favourites, but that’s not influenced by geography. I don’t think NZ craft beer fans are prepared to pay more to get a beer from a certain region, and that seems to be a fundamental difference between NZ and Australia. I won’t speculate on the reasons why.
Sure, customers should not be mislead, and if regional branding does create value then it must be accurate. But don’t let regaional labelling stop you from finding and enjoying good quality beer, no matter what the label says.
After all, part of the fun of being a craft beer fan (for me anyway) is ignoring labels and ads, and making up my own mind. Big brewers hate that!
Cheers
Martin Craig
Writing from the UK and the first comment is that it is a step in the right direction that this debate could actually happen in Australia; 30 years ago there werent’t many craft breweries in the country let alone any that could contract brew for someone else.
In the UK the view would probably be that where the beer is brewed is vitally important because of the water. Water from a stream in Cornwall would be different to a river in London and this would affect the flavour of a beer brewed from it.
There are a large number of people here who will go out of their way to try a beer from a new brewery and are then disappointed to find it has been brewed at a brewery that has been operating for many years. There is also the problem of ‘rebadging’, where the contract brew is in fact the same as another beer with a different label.
The UK also has a a huge problem where a large brewery takes over a smaller one, closes it down and then brews the beers at a different location but still markets these as though they are the originals. Greene King (Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk)is a prime example: they took over and closed the Hardy & Hansons brewery (Nottingham),brew the H & H beers in Bury but sell these as though they are still Nottingham beers. This isn’t quite contract brewing but it has the same charcteristics and raises the question as to whether this is deliberate deceit for marketing purposes.
Some people won’t drink contract brews or order these for beer festivals to make a point. Do the brewers care? Probably not. Are the contract brews worth drinking? Well, if we all liked the same thing there would only be one beer brewed; the big brewers would probably like that!