Choice overload is killing the beer market

After the excitement of last Friday's day trip to Manchester, this week ended on a much quieter note. As hinted at, in a couple of previous posts, I've been playing catch up in the garden and am pleased to report that with the planting out of the sweetcorn and the sunflowers, carefully nurtured from seed, my outstanding outdoor tasks are more or less complete. There’s obviously routine maintenance to be carried out, but by and large everything in the garden is under control.

I've been catching up too with a few of the beers I brought back from last month’s visit to Yorkshire. When all lined up, there were eight in total, all of them brewed locally in the county, and some from breweries that many of you will recognise. All of them were purchased Asda, and what's more there are two lots of “four beers for the price of three.” They obviously like their Asda in that part of West Yorkshire, as after visiting the chain’s large store in Shipley, we discovered an even larger superstore in Keighley.

I'd called in at the store to top up the car, with cut price diesel for the journey home, but it seemed rude not to take a look inside the store, and as well as the beers, I managed to pick up couple of summer T-shirts. Again, these were on offer, this time priced at £5 each, or two for £8. That's my summer wardrobe sorted, as these garments will go with the others I've been accumulating, in readiness for this autumn’s Mediterranean cruise.

More about that another time as what I want to do here, is ask if two of Asda's Yorkshire stores can not only offer a good deal on bottled beers, but promote local ones as well, why can't their outlets here in Kent do the same? I say this because on Friday, Eileen and I called in at Asda at King’s Hill, near West Malling ostensibly to stock up on boring stuff such as household cleaners and washing liquid (Mrs PBT's reckons Asda are the cheapest supermarket for these items). Whilst there I took a look at the beers, and guess what, I didn't see any locally brewed beers. The same applies to the company’s Tunbridge Wells outlet.

I'm not sure why this anomaly should come about, although I'm probably not wrong in thinking price plays an important role here. So whether Kent breweries are slower that their Yorkshire counterparts, when it comes to offering discounts, or whether the decision to buy local is left up to individual stores, isn’t clear. All very strange but come to think of it I haven't seen any local beers recently in Waitrose either. At one time their Tonbridge store was a regular stockist of both Westerham and Whitstable beers, but now, in common with most of the other local supermarkets it's national brands or nothing in the PBA (Premium Bottled Ales) sector. There’s also a load of garish looking cans filled with hazy, “citrus bombs” from the likes of Beavertown, Tiny Rebel, Northern Monk, and Brew Dog.

The canned craft sector is another mystery, and thinking back to visit I made earlier in the year, with West Kent CAMRA to the brand spanking new By the Horns brewery, at Salfords near Redhill, I still haven't seen any of that brewery’s cans on sale locally. This is despite the new plant churning out umpteen varieties of different beers, all packed in gaudy-looking can, by the caseload. I said at the time, and I shall say it again, “Where is all this beer going?” More to the point where is it being sold? Export perhaps, because beers from By the Horns have been conspicuous by their absence in local supermarkets and off-licenses.

It’s my opinion that the brewing industry has definitely reached the stage where capacity is way in excess of actual demand, and somewhat ironically, we're back to the situation that existed in the final quarter of the last century. This was when a number of large, red brick, Victorian brew houses, many dominating the towns where they were located, were operating at a level way below their actual capacity, as the demand for traditional top fermented ales, began to plummet. Driving this change was a change in public tastes, as drinkers switched to lager. The latter were often brewed in gleaming, modern looking, energy efficient plants, close to the motorway network, leaving many of these lovely old Victorian breweries as surplus to requirements.

When I think back of some of the breweries I visited, over the past half century, places such as Wethered’s at Marlow, Morland at Abingdon, Fremlin’s at Faversham, Caledonian in Edinburgh, Hall & Woodhouse at Blandford, Dorset, and even Young’s of Wandsworth. All of these breweries were massive undertakings, and I would lay money on them all operating well below their potential capacity. With the explosion in numbers of new small, independent brewers, in the first quarter of the new century, we are seeing the exact same issue of overcapacity, and this has led to a significant squeeze on the remaining family-owned brewers. 

These are the firms that survived the lean years of the “keg revolution” of the 60’s and 70’s, and whilst a resurgent demand for locally brewed cask ale, driven in the main by CAMRA, led to a reversal of their fortunes, at least for a while, some are still feeling the pinch. Furthermore, although the merges and takeovers, that had led to the formation of the Big Six brewers abated, during the early years of CAMRA, they soon started picking up pace again. Along with out and out takeovers, there were several instances of a falling out between family members, with some wanting to cash in their chips, whilst others from the family wanted to keep going. Oxford brewer Morrell’s is one example, where a family feud led to the brewery and its pubs being sold off, and there were several others as well. Ridleys, King & Barnes, Gales, and Young's spring to mind, and Lincolnshire brewer Batemans, nearly suffered the same fate. Fortunately, in that instance, company chairman George Bateman and his family were able to raise sufficient cash to buy out the shares of his remaining siblings and the brewery was saved.

There has obviously been a significant change in people's drinking habits, and the way in which they interact and socialise. Today, far more drinking is done in the home rather than in pubs and bars, and it's difficult to know where it's all going to end. It's one thing to have such a wide choice of different beers, although as the number of choices increases, so does the difficulty of knowing what is best. Many of us are creatures of habit, so does seeing supermarket shelves stacked high with arrays of garishly coloured cans of beer, often from breweries that only the most devoted of beer geeks will have heard of, improve our lives in any way?

Instead of increasing our freedom to have what we want, the paradox of choice suggests that having too many choices actually limits our freedom. Known as choice overload, choice paralysis, or the paradox of choice, people become overwhelmed when presented with too many options to choose from, and end up playing it safe, by sticking with brands they know and feel comfortable with. Attempting to overcome this paradox is one of the major issues facing new entrants to the beer market, and before going any further, let me say there are already far too many brewers trying to compete in a diminishing market.

I’m sure that I will be pilloried in CAMRA circles for saying so, but too much choice really is killing the beer market. Furthermore, when that choice is driven, by poorly formulated, un-balanced cloudy murk, brewed by the proverbial “man in a shed” it really is time to wake up and smell the coffee – or should that be the malt and hops!