Too long for a comment

Mr Lager suggests (on the Hardknott blog) that the point of the branding effort (he chooses Becks Vier for his example) is "Letting punters know what’s in it and ensuring the grog tastes okay" .

Well, no. Becks can (of course) knock out a largely inoffensive beer in pretty much whatever colour, strength and quantity their owners want them to. And of course they'll do that day after day.

The Bosses then spend piles of money telling us that it's "Different By Choice" - the product is presented as a Mainstream Alternative. Add some human beatbox stuff (remember when that was edgey?) and some special glasses (German technology) And what you've got is a marketing effort that says nothing about the beer except that it's made in Germany (= pure = good) and it's a bit weak (= not wifebeater).

What it does say is that it's "difference" and "choice" packaged up for men who aspire to drive a f*cking Audi and don't want to be thought of as the lout-ish type, they're way more hip than that. Look! I've made a "choice"! I have a nice shirt and pants, also some hip-hop. (Yep, and I know about Motorhead, but I'm quite mature now.)

Now that we've established the product's position, which we hope will appeal to our target demographic, we'll be needing some visible reminders of our expensive adverts. The drinker is paying a bit more to demonstrate his alignment with the product ethos, so we need to afford him a display opportunity. Hence branded glassware, POS, etc. That's branding.

I'm not sure why smaller brewers would bother putting their name on a glass. They haven't spent the money to make it worthwhile. Nobody cares. That's why a lot of people in Dave's survey aren't really bothered. RA drinkers are making all the statement they need by being seen to drink the stuff at all. A plain glass will do nicely.

i.e. I'm pretty much agreeing with Mr. Lager, in the end. In that most "Real Ale" products (particularly micro-brews) aren't strong brands. But that's not because they're weak products, but rather that the marketing effort is weak, or missing. Of course.

If consistency is perceived to be a issue in the market, then perhaps it should be addressed. Let's talk about "craft" products. Where simple consistency isn't a selling point.

Hazy Beer

“This focus on clarity [in British ale] is annoying,” he says. “You get punters in a pub who think that if a beer is clear, then it’s good. A fantastic beer with a haze, they send it back. But the best beers I’ve had have had a natural haze. In Germany, you get a beer with a haze, it means there’s something good in there. Or an IPA – there’s so much hop oil in there it will have a natural haze. The IPAs that have a hop haze are usually head and shoulders above those that don’t."

Jason Hawke of Moor Beer quoted here

Well, we try not to let it annoy us. But I know what he means. Now, I'm not a master brewer, but I have done a bit of (a) brewing and (b) reading, so I hope I'm not going to be too far wrong in what follows.

There are a few kinds of haze you might come across in beer. Sometimes these will be "faults". Now "fault" is a funny idea anyway. Consider a starch haze. In a British bitter (pale ale, whatever), a starch haze is pretty uncommon (except perhaps for a beginning homebrewer) and it's probably due to a rubbish mash. In some beers (e.g. historical white beers) potato starch was used, and in others, high proportions of unmalted grain - which would have promoted such a haze. i.e. haze would be expected in these beers.

Protein / polyphenol hazes, again quite rare in British pales, put down to bad brewing or malting, but key in many wheat beers. In other beers may be due to high levels of hop or malt polyphenols interacting with normal protein content. Indeed, to promote a stable haze in some beers, refined tannins are added.

Lipid hazes, fats (or oils) suspended in the beer - bad if you've got trub spoiling your pale ale - but what if it's down to hop oil from your shedloads of late/dry hops?

Yeast haze - you'd expect a pale ale to have low levels of suspended yeast (< 10K cells / ml ?), but we all know of beers that are intended to be visibly hazy (or indeed opaque) because of yeast. Some brewers add a yeast product (biocloud?) to give a stable haze. Others use fish-guts to produce the stable sediment, and high clarity, that their customers expect. It's a fact that some yeast, in some beers, will present a hint of harsh bitterness (or bite) and is probably best left sitting in the belly of the cask rather than in the glass.

Chill hazes - those protein / polyphenol hazes are more stable at low temperatures and tend to fade when the beer is warmer. So chill a fresh beer below the intended serving temperature and a (transient) haze will be produced. I gather these hazes can become more stable with time at any temperature - so beer may develop haze as it ages - eventually the haze may become dense enough to sediment out.

All that said - for many British style pale ales - two key measures that are commonly assessed in the cellar are clarity and condition. If it's clear and not too flat - put it on sale. This is a simple, and usually effective, tactic for presenting beer well...

...Except when the beer is known to be hazy, when the cask has a big sticker on it saying "NATURALLY HAZY", when the beer is delivered by the brewer who tells the publican "this is hazy, you know".

Anyway, one of my jobs next week is to uplift a 9 of "Hop Priest" (an extensively hopped IPA), which was judged to be unsaleable because it's "too hazy". Ho hum.

Mutiny

It will be soon.  Look out for it at the Swan (Ulverston) or the Dispensary (Liverpool).

Consistency. The bugbear of tiny minds.

Now, obviously, I do like a beer to be recognisably the same beer from gyle to gyle. And I do want it to be nice every time. But I don't need it to be exactly the same. Why would I?

Consider (if you will) those areas of human endeavour where consistency and standardisation are important: Screw threads, Firearms manufacture & er, stuff like that.

In 1841 Joseph Whitworth (a Northerner, naturally) came up with his standard threads (the first). This was neat. Now I can put a nut from manufacturer 'A' on a bit of stud from his rival 'B'. I win, everyone wins. Interestingly enough, even though we now have more modern screw thread standards (loads of them, some even metric!), you'll find lots of Whitworth's breakthrough in UK breweries. Where? In your RJT connectors - the screw thread is the coarse Whitworth. How about that.

Or, imagine a rifle. "And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this Is to open the breech, as you see." It's pretty important that the bolt is going to fit snugly in the breech. Otherwise all kinds of bad stuff will happen.
But rifles can't be made by hand. Not if we're going to use them in a proper Industrial War with literally millions of units deployed all over the world. They have to be made so that any bolt 'A' will slide "sexily" into any breech 'B', made perhaps miles away and years later.

On a related note, a pal-o-mine needed some unusual bits for a old car he would insist on nursing. They'd stopped making them of course. But he was able to call in to a light engineering shop where a nice old geezer with ciggie hanging out of the corner of his mouth was able to knock something up while he waited. Brilliant.

But it's an unpleasant reminder of how mechanised our spirits have become (in our mechanised world), when we expect our food and drink to be like machine parts. This is wrong. We should enjoy our beer (or wine, or bread) when it's not the same as it was yesterday. Is it better? Worse? Or just different?

Where we need consistency and standardisation, let's have it. Where we don't, forget 'em. Why aren't we sure enough of ourselves, our tastes, our identities even? Why do we want the world to be so unreasonably static around us? Things change - there is movement, and difference, and variety. Get over it.

The big producers can flatten it out. Grind it, and us, all down. They have to. That's how they work. But how did we let them convince us that's the way it should be? Are we stupid, or what?

Our old mate Gerard Manley Hopkins tells us that he's a fan of:

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

Life should be full of strangeness Like a rich painting

...as Mark E. Smith had it.
And I don't think he meant that it would be jolly to season our lives with a bit of bought-in strangeness. This is not the time for "pub jukebox" list game. In which I amaze and astound by shrewd choice of polycarb and vinyl. If it was, we endgame with "Fish Chart" - in which are reviewed works of Pike and Tuna Turbot first noted (but not preserved?) at Probe. Other claimants - You Lie Like Rugs.

"You don't have to be weird to be wired
You don't have to be an American brand"
Mr M. E. Smith - totally wired

This is serious, in that we need to go the whole hog including postage. For maximum yuks.
A tip if you like, "LEAVE THE CAPITOL".
But what do I know? I'm more like

"commune crap, camp bop, middle-class, flip-flop
Guess that's why they end up in bands"
Mr M. E. Smith - english scheme

Vast majority of people don't live in London. Perfectly happy about it.

That London: 8 million
UK outside London: 56 million (7 times as many)
Whole world outside London: 6866 million (858 times)

Not theft - tribute.

Dark country clip

Yippie flag

Yep, I know.