Surely it wasn’t all about interest rates, was it?
People want beer stories to be about passion, creativity, flavour and pluck. But just as often they're about business, bureaucracy and admin.
Why did the number of British breweries increase so rapidly after 2008? And why does the long-awaited ‘shake out’ seem to be happening now? There’s one obvious, rather boring explanation.
When we started blogging about beer in 2007 there was some interesting stuff going on in UK beer but it didn’t feel like a boom, exactly. There were around 700 breweries in the UK, with around 50 new breweries opening each year.
Then, in 2008, the global economic crisis kicked off. In response, the Bank of England started cutting interest rates from around 5% at the start of the year to 1.5% by the start of 2009, and 0.5% by March that year. They stayed below 1% for more than a decade.
What happened to UK brewery numbers in that time? They started to grow, and the growth began to accelerate. By 2017 there were more than 2,000 breweries, with more than 300 opening in the preceding year.
At the time, living through all this, it felt as if the beer boom was being sustained by sheer passion and enthusiasm – despite the state of the global economy.
But what if it was booming because of the state of the global economy?
Loans were historically cheap and saving was historically pointless. Why not start that brewery you’ve always dreamed of opening?
Apart from brewery founders themselves, there was also a glut of potential investors desperate for opportunities.
That seems to be what was happening with property prices. Big investors began to buy property, perceiving it as one of the only safe investments around, pushing up prices, and distorting the market.
If more traditional investments aren’t yielding decent returns, and brewing seems to be booming, why not have a flutter?
The problem is, interviews with brewers tend to focus on fun stuff like inspirations and personal stories, rather than tedious questions about financing. And there’s a sense, anyway, that it’s vulgar to talk about money – especially if you’re doing well.
If you started a brewery between 2008 and 2022 we’d love to know if low interest rates factored into your decision. You can message us on the QT with info via contact@boakandbailey.com
There’s also this wrinkle: the first British indie brewing boom took place c.1980 when interest rates were historically high. That was quite a different beast, of course – folksy real ale producers in sheds and barns, rather than wannabe BrewDogs and Camdens. But, still, it underlines that it’s always difficult to find a single reason for trends in business.
Whether interest rates did or not play a part in triggering the boom, their recent increase certainly has something to do with the sense of collapse that’s currently in the air.
In the past year there have been suggestions that a sudden and sustained increase in interest rates took many businesses by surprise, including breweries.
Sensible finance directors (“It me.” – Jess) had been factoring in, say, a doubling of interest rates, to 3% or so. But nobody had banked on it rising to more than 5% in the space of 12 months.
And suddenly, those cheap loans, taken out to finance expansion and purchase equipment, became not so cheap.
Whatever is going on behind the scenes, we suspect this most recent brewery boom will be tangled up in the collective memory with the 2008 financial crisis and, at the other end, with the pandemic.
Pub life 2024
“It’s artisanal,” says a young man with the haircut and moustache of a recruit in the Kaiser’s army, as he pushes a mahogany coloured pickled egg towards his partner’s mouth. She dutifully submits to being fed, grimaces, and takes a swig of beer to rinse out her mouth.
“St. Patrick’s Day promotion, pound off a pint of Guinness,” says the landlady. “But I don’t like Guinness,” says the woman on the other side of the bar. “You got any wild berry cider?”
“Do you know what?” slurs the man at the bar, waving his pint for emphasis, and sending a curl of beer splashing over the rim. “No, what?” says another customer, politely. “Four Mancs was in here.” “Four what?” “Mancs. People from Manchester.” “Oh, well, I’ll keep quiet then, because I’m from Manchester, too.” The drunk staggers backwards, as astonished as if he’d just met a Martian.
Steve Davis, the snooker player, walks through the door of the pub. No heads turn. Nobody speaks to him or asks for a selfie. Through gritted teeth, eyes fixed anywhere but on Steve Davis, the snooker player, someone nearby ventriloquises: “Ats Steve Gavis, the snooker clayer.”
A man from Mexico has lost his credit card. He turns the pub upside down looking for it, becoming increasingly frantic, his Spanish louder and faster. He and his friend crawl under the tables, run their fingertips over the whorls and swirls of the beer-soaked carpet, empty their pockets and bags. Then someone taps him on the shoulder and points to the fireplace where the card is neatly propped. He embraces the friendly stranger, retrieves the card, and insists on buying them a pint.
The twitchy man with the broken volume control orders a pint of San Miguel. While it’s being poured, his phone rings. He answers it, listens, and then shout-whispers to the barman: “Hold that pint for me mate, I’ve just got to pop out and get some, uh…” He tries to think of a euphemism or code word, something subtle that will keep everything on the lowdown. “Some, uh… A little bit of the old, uh, cokeage.”
On the blog
We went to Brighton for the first time in years and managed to visit a few pubs, employing our usual somewhat instinctive method. We were pleased to hear in the comments from someone who used our post as a guide for their own crawl and had a good time.
After an encounter with what we took to be some under-age drinkers in a pub in Bristol we wrote about how rare this seems to have become. Some said “Nah, you’re just not going to the right pubs”, and maybe they’re right. The most interesting comment, we think, was from Jeff Alworth on BlueSky: “If an American writer favorably described underaged teens getting served in a pub—well, it wouldn’t go over well. I tend to agree with B&B’s perspective, but seeing it written so baldly is startling to the American eye.”
Our most recent post was prompted by William Golding’s novel The Inheritors from 1955, about a tribe of Neanderthals facing extinction as Home sapiens begins to take over the world. It has some great passages about drink and drunkenness that got us wondering: what is the evolutionary advantage of booze?
There were also multiple editions of news, nuggets and longreads with plenty of interesting reading from other beer writers and beer bloggers.
And that was it, actually. It’s been a busy time and Jess in particular hasn’t found as much space for writing as usual.
If you do want more, though, we’ve kept up a regular pace of posting on Patreon where we’re now providing, most weeks:
Additional links and observations on each week’s Saturday morning round-up.
Notes on the best beers we encounter each weekend.
Please consider signing up at Patreon. (While it’s lovely to get pledges here, on Substack, we’re not planning to make people pay for this newsletter.)
And that’s your lot until April. Enjoy spring, and we’ll see you around at BlueSky, Mastodon, Instagram or wherever.