When Sam Smith, co-owner of North London’s Pressure Drop Brewing, sat down to write a blog post in October, his aim was to get a few things off his chest. He wanted to highlight craft beer’s multiplying woes, taking in the misuse of crowdfunding, beer pricing, ‘craft-washed’ multinational brands and more issues.
His thoughts, though, touched a nerve. Clear-eyed and lucidly expressed, Smith’s exposition of the beer industry’s problems was soon being shared and discussed widely across social media – and multiple people in the business have subsequently been in touch, he says, offering their agreement with his statement and support.
Pressure Drop owner Sam Smith
Perhaps that’s not a surprise. The world of craft brewing is still fairly tight-knit, and many are suffering. The financial pressures – high energy costs, rising ingredient prices and shrinking customer purchasing power – are onerous, to say the least, and for London breweries there’s an extra problem.
The price of housing is, too. A number of Pressure Drop’s nine-strong team, like sales and marketing coordinator Sienna O’Rourke, now live outside the city.
The big brewers, meanwhile, smell blood. They’re desperate to add another slice of market share to their already overwhelming plateful. The recent wildfire-like spread of Beavertown Neck Oil, a Heineken brand, has come (at least partly) at the expense of genuinely independent breweries. Smith understands the reasons why – pubs are facing their own existential crisis and big breweries have the financial heft to make things easier for them – but it doesn’t improve an already difficult situation for the smaller companies.
And there’s another issue. Many craft beer customers – who, let’s be honest, tend to be middle-aged men – are cutting back on their alcohol intake. No one could criticise that, least of all, a brewery. Pressure Drop, ever nimble, has responded with Ja!, a delicious 3.2% ABV pale ale. Nonetheless, the rise of non-alcoholic beer, which presents technical challenges and often requires serious investment, is another boon for the big boys.
Ten years ago, small breweries were monomaniacal about IPA
It’s no wonder, then, that a number of smaller London breweries, such as Wild Card and Ora, have closed, while others have left the city for good.
Thankfully, Pressure Drop’s situation is stable partly because Covid-19 and the associated lockdowns were good for the brewery. Their customers, bored and sitting at home with more disposable income than normal, ordered case after case online. All this beer went out in cans – another boon, since the margin is better than on keg beer. Bills paid off and funds accrued in that period have helped in the years since.
It’s still tough. Smith estimates demand is down by somewhere between 30-40% since 2019. Pressure Drop is selling much the same amount, though, thanks to the closure of other breweries and a significantly greater sales effort. Where customers once came to Pressure Drop’s door, they now need to be chased.
Pressure Drop brewery in London
Not a time of great optimism, then, particularly given the sluggish nature of the economy, but for drinkers there is much to be pleased about. The quality of London-brewed beer has rarely been better. In recent months, I’ve enjoyed superb beer made not only by Pressure Drop, but Five Points, The Kernel, Gipsy Hill, Pillars, Anspach & Hobday and half a dozen other breweries across the capital too.
And it’s varied: ten years ago, small breweries were monomaniacal about IPA, but now there’s superb lager, cask bitter, nitro stout, pale ale and more brewed in the capital, too. Drinkers might have much less money than a few years ago, but we’ve never had such a wide choice.
This state of affairs, it should not be forgotten, is entirely thanks to small breweries. If it were down to the likes of Heineken and AB InBev, we’d all be drinking their most famous (and dullest) products. As Smith points out in his blog, small breweries “make things that the big corporates will never be willing or able to do.” That’s a point worth sharing.
