Size Matters

It should not matter what sort of company makes your beer—but in reality, this is crucial. Size matters. At some point in the expansion of a brewing business, those who seek to make good beers cede control to those who wish to command a large business.

Mission statements, brand presence in the marketplace and maximizing margin becomes more important than what is sold. Customers’ impressions of a beer’s name matter more that what they think of its taste. EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization) trumps IBU (International Bitterness Units).

Making a lot of money for a brewing company’s shareholders and execs involves selling oceans of cheap, dull liquid to the gray mass for as much they will pay. Quality comes to mean avoiding unpleasant or challenging tastes that cannot be masked by chilling, and removing all poisons except the essential one, alcohol.

A key assumption is that far more people like the idea of having or going for a beer than enjoy the taste of the stuff. This problem is addressed by losing the taste through grain substitution, hop depletion and extreme filtration, and selling it cold.

For over a century, breweries have drifted away from creating beers of distinctive character to making technically fine, instantly familiar, culturally approved intoxicants in high volumes.

Such was the confidence of (our) banks and pension funds in this approach to making beer that corporations like AB-InBev, Heineken, SAB Miller and Molson Coors were given the wherewithal to become so vast that they began to lack the space to make, or shipping arrangements to handle, small volume lines.

The modern beer market split into two unequal but entirely separate parts. The large producers make easy-to-swallow recreational drugs with nothing to say, while microbreweries indulge the awkward pussies who insist on liking beer, can distinguish its various forms and enjoy exploring its boundaries.

Enough glass ceilings were in place to ensure that the micros stayed micro and did not upset the status quo, so everyone stayed relatively happy.

Then came trouble, as several unrelated factors converged to provide the global firms with a sizeable migraine that may be a sign of more serious underlying problems.

Three decades of relatively normal people banging on about the superiority of craft beers, backed by the experience of trying them, are leading to even more beer drinkers preferring them. Craft brewers become local heroes for generations seeking to regain pride in their community.

Health and financial fears persuade people to drink less alcohol, but this hits the pointless beers much harder than the enjoyable ones. Beer sales shrink in almost every traditional beer-drinking nation on the planet, though craft beer sales mostly hold up or expand. People are drinking less but drinking smarter.

With the banks generally wary of lending and no longer impressed by assumptions of ever-expanding wealth, they question the wisdom of extending limitless credit to purveyors of boring beers, intent on survival through inflicting them on emerging markets like India and China.

Correct me if I am wrong, but are the inhabitants of these nations not renowned for their imaginative kitchens? The idea that newfound wealth will cause them to crave mediocrity is a strange one.

I can only imagine that it will be recognized that there is no point in having global brewers anymore. They grew their market the wrong way.

I just hope my pension fund does not hold stock in whichever one goes under first. ■