After water and tea, beer is the most consumed drink in the world, being the first among alcoholic beverages. From the liquid bread of the Sumerians more than 5,000 years ago, through the passion of the ancient Egyptians and the work of the monks of the Middle Ages, beer has reached our days in an excellent form, on the wings of a thriving industry. and an undergrowth of increasingly numerous and competent artisan producers.
If until a few years ago, especially in the Mediterranean, ordering a beer at a bar was the simplest operation in the world, today it is very likely that we will be asked for a surplus of information regarding our tastes. A level of specialization that used to be considered an exclusive prerogative of wine, and that now also involves passionate brewers.
The maturation of the offer and consumer tastes has contributed to the birth of a kind of ideological dispute between craft and industrial beer. In reality, the success of artisanal products in the last thirty years has been such that large industry has rushed to also occupy part of this market, producing limited and more complex editions that boast, at least from a commercial point of view, the same image of the creations of small producers.
However, explains Javier Donate, president of AECAI, Spanish Association of Independent Craft Brewers: “The industry does not produce artisan brewers, in the sense that it does not meet the requirements which are to have a maximum annual production volume of 5,000,000 liters and Do not use ingredients other than malt, barley and/or wheat, as a source of starch to reduce production processes, with the exception of those beers that, due to their characteristics, require another type of raw material and that should not exceed 10% of the Total production”.
The task is not easy, says Donate: “We do not enter into a price war although we strive to be more competitive by using the best raw materials and avoiding additives or other ingredients that do not provide quality to our beers. Unfortunately, distribution is controlled by the big brands and more and more doors are being closed to us.”
In fact, distribution is one of the most critical aspects and many craft breweries focus on selling directly to consumers through their stores, in some cases creating successful chains such as Ogham, an award-winning Argentine craft beer brand that has just opened in the center of Barcelona its first international brewery in Spain. “Artisans are a very complex and varied world, above all, it is a question of education: even people who do not appreciate them at first, then try them and become passionate about them,” says Fermín Frayssinet, founding partner of the company.
The industrialization of beer began in the second half of the 18th century, thanks to discoveries such as the thermometer, the hydrometer and later yeast by Louis Pasteur. The breweries, until then all artisanal, began to become smaller and larger, with a consequent standardization of tastes. In more recent years, at the end of the seventies, the so-called Craft movement was born in the United States: the first small breweries began to open, which produced with artisan techniques and were aimed at a more attentive niche of customers.
Of course, and despite the prominence of wine, beer culture is also deeply rooted in Europe, as demonstrated by the recent inauguration in one of the most emblematic buildings in Brussels, the Belgian Beer World, the museum dedicated to Belgian beer, a cultural heritage immaterial. The Czech Republic is the European country with the highest beer consumption per capita, followed by Austria, Poland, Romania and Germany. Spain is in sixth place, with an annual average of 81.6 liters consumed per person, between industrialists and artisans.
According to Aecai data, in Spain the artisan sector has more than 420 manufacturers and 1,342 jobs. Almost 4,000 own recipes are produced from local raw materials that generate 142 million euros in turnover, 1.1% of the market share. Although the first forty large industrial groups constitute 90% of total world production, today there are more than 17,000 craft breweries in the world. In 2020, the sector was valued at 95,230 million euros and forecasts speak of growth to 210,000 million by 2028. As for the public, the average age of craft beer consumers varies between 35 and 40 years.
Thus, there exists, or exists again, an authentic popular culture of beer, which also includes the publication of manuals for tasting, a progressive approach to haute cuisine and the birth of numerous specialized establishments. Furthermore, in recent years beer has learned to tell its story in a different way: the traditional link with sport, summer and friendship has been replaced, or at least accompanied, by messages to highlight the naturalness of the product, its connection with land and agriculture.
Despite all this, a phenomenon of true premiumization has not yet been seen, as has happened with other alcohols previously considered low-end, such as gin or rum. The process of making beer, in fact, is significantly shorter and relatively simple to justify very high figures. However, it is true that artisanal ones have a higher cost than industrial ones, due to the scrupulous selection of the best raw materials and the attention paid to the production process.
Beer is an ancient and ever-evolving world, with some of the current trends including an increasing use of local and seasonal ingredients to reflect the terroir of production; beers with low or no alcohol content; sour and wild beers, such as Belgian lambics and gueuzes, often fermented with wild yeasts and bacteria that add complexity; beers aged in barrels previously used for whiskey, wine or other spirits. An infinite number of options for a passionate public that seeks quality, originality and sustainability and that fights cenosillicaphobia, the fear of finding an empty jar.
