New look, new Tinted

Today sees a new look and feel for Beer Tinted Spectacles.

Last year, I found my passion for writing about beer waning – something I couldn’t easily explain or reconcile. One factor was time; my own business is almost five years old and growing, placing an inevitable constraint on other things. But it was more than that.  For some reason, I was finding the world of beer and the narrative around it frustrating and… boring.

That’s a difficult thing to admit, and on the surface utterly counter-intuitive. The world of beer is as healthy as it’s been – arguably for 50 years. The number of new breweries; the plethora of choice; old styles being rediscovered, re-worked or bastardised. Who cares in the pursuit of great taste?

Yet, one debate – that of New England IPAs got my goat. Tit-for-tat arguments about whether such yeasty, sediment-rich, cloudy, turbid brews are genuine brewer-led innovation or the products of today’s ‘Instagram culture’. At the time from what I could see, the debate was getting personal and pretty nasty. And this is amongst so-called beer lovers.

Beer lovers who are losing the plot.

Let’s go back just 30 years. U.S. beer was dominated by one brewer, who focused on two brands: Bud and Bud Light. Everyone else was a runner-up. Marketing spend was aggressive and enormous. U.K. beer was dominated by half a dozen vertically integrated leisure conglomerates, who owned the ‘route to market’ pretty much from the point that the newly harvested barley crossed the gates in the Maltings to the point where the liquid touched the drinkers’ lips. Depending where you lived, this meant a limited range from pub to pub. Innovation was quashed, possibly inadvertently, but quashed all the same. Regional brewers struggled to co-exist. Micros weren’t even a fertilised egg. Love or loathe CAMRA, they were genuinely fighting big, hairy corporate beasts who wilfully or not, were shaping consumers’ tastes and controlling the market.

To bicker about whether a cloudy IPA is good or not is missing the point.  The threat of drink consolidation is looming again. In the short term, changes will seem imperceptible.  New owners will commit to keeping the breweries (or cider presses) of the acquired companies open; their brands will be lauded; their people extolled. But soon, all too soon, small changes will occur. Recipes will subtly change. Efficiencies will be found. Economies of scale will be sought. The heady drug of profit and the churn of staff will see promises reneged and old favourties become milking machines for bottom line growth.

So, Beer Tinted is back. Stripped back, simplified, more picture-led, its core purpose nonetheless remains. To tell beer stories that celebrate great beers. To champion the people who have had the courage to risk everything in pursuit of a dream or a passion. To narrate a perspective on issues of the day from the point of view of someone who was once on the other side – the consolidator, the acquirer, the ‘big beer’ executive. To remind anyone who passes through these pages what we have, what we should cherish and what we will need to fight for.

Thanks for reading.

Author: David Preston

Brands, beer, fells, rails, poems and puns View all posts by David Preston