BREWERY GROWTH
Choice for British beer drinkers is booming as a record number of new breweries has been recorded by the 2006 edition of the Good Beer Guide,
published today by the Campaign for Real Ale. Editor Roger Protz says the guide lists more than 80 new breweries, almost twice as many as in
the previous year. There are now around 500 micros, 35 family-owned breweries and several bigger regional producers. Protz says that the spate
of new micro breweries and the booming regional sector prove there is no ‘real ale crisis’, in fact there is greater choice today than at any time
since the Good Beer Guide was first published in the early 1970s.
The dramatic number of new producers as well as the stability in the regional sector has been fuelled in part by the government’s introduction of
Progressive Beer Duty. PBD enables micros and small regional breweries that produce up to 30,000 barrels to pay less duty. But the main driving
force behind the upsurge in new breweries is consumer demand. Britain has more micros per head than any country in the world, including the
United States.
The 2005 annual report of SIBA – the Society of Independent Brewers, which represents most of Britain’s micros and smaller regionals – says sales
among its members have grown by an average of 12 per cent a year compared to 2004, with six out of 10 SIBA members reporting growth in excess of
10 per cent. The micros’ share of the cask beer market has grown to more than 20 per cent, up from 14 per cent in 2003. Even the statistical
company A C Nielsen, which in recent years has prophesied the virtual obliteration of real ale, reported in July 2005 that the decline in the
cask beer sector had bottomed out and there were signs of recovery.
Timothy Taylor in Keighley, West Yorkshire, have invested around £11 million over a decade to enable production to grow from 28,000 barrels a year
in 1997 to close to 50,000 today.
Hydes in Manchester has doubled its capacity from 100,000 barrels a year to 200,000, aided by the contract to brew cask Boddingtons for Interbrew.
Daniel Thwaites, a regional giant in the North-west, went down the nitro-keg route in the 1990s but has now returned to the cask fold with
enthusiasm. Cricket hero Andrew Flintoff appears in special promotions for the brewery’s Lancaster Bomber.
Copper Dragon in Skipton, West Yorkshire, opened in 2003 and has quadrupled production in just three years.
Information in the latest CAMRA Good Beer Guide, published at the end of September, reveals that West Yorkshire is the county boasting the highest
number of breweries, with a total of 28, while North Yorkshire has 22. In the North West, Greater Manchester has 23 while Lancashire has 12.
Here in Cumbria when the GBG went to press the count was 15, and rising!