Plain Boring?

A short while back I tweeted about a minor epiphany I had while drinking my homebrewed reproductions of historic Irish beers, as it had dawned on me that perhaps I was looking for too much from these brews. I threaded a few comments together on Twitter at that time but I decided it might be better to make a more permanent piece regarding my thoughts on here too. (It is probably worth mentioning that by historic Irish beers I mean those I am trying to recreate as best I can from old Irish brewing records - albeit on a modern homebrewing system - while trying to be as authentic as possible with brewing times, ingredients, etc.)

Up to now I have thought of these beers from the point of view of being 'special' both in flavour and in terms of their heritage and history, but on that taste point it must be said that these old beers were not brewed or drank for the appreciation and discussion we see today in 'craft' beer drinking circles. They were consumed for other reasons such as refreshment and revitalisation as well as their use as a catalyst for conversation and companionship in the pubs and other establishments where they were drunk. The actual beer was never discussed much apart from the very odd passing comment I am sure, in fact if the beer did become a great part of the conversation, then it was usually for the wrong reasons. The beers I have brewed recently such as mild ales from the 1930s, plain porter from the 1870s and vintage ales from the 1950s were the equivalent of the macrobrewed lagers, stouts and ales that are in most pubs today and which are drank by the vast majority of 'normal' beer drinkers in this country - and again those beers - mostly - only elicit conversation both on social media and real life when something goes wrong. (It is certainly true that the breweries themselves mentioned the flavour and strength of their beers in their newspaper advertising back then but that was really no more than the marketing spiel of the marketeers, something we see to this day in beer advertisements.)

Those older recipe beer did - and do - need to taste clean and free from flaws, and certainly they theoretically at least use ‘better’ ingredients on the malt side of things, where heritage malt varieties such as Spratt Archer and Chevallier seem to bring a more flavoursome base to the malt bill, but the only way to confirm that would be to do a side-by-side brew and tasting with a modern malt. (As an aside, there is certainly more time invested in the process of brewing both in the mash and the boil, but whether these could be shortened is up for debate. It seems to me that the longer mash time is need but perhaps the boil time could be curtailed as it might have minimum affect flavour-wise on modern systems - so yet more side-by-side taste tests required.)

So would these old beers appeal to modern drinkers?

Well what is clearly true is that these beers are not flavour-bombs aimed at today's palate, and especially not on the hop aroma front, so they might not strike a note with the majority of craft beer drinkers, and that demographic would be seen as their perceived target audience. Flavour-wise they might fall short, as hop-forward IPAs and certain novelty brews are still the top sellers.

And what of nostalgia and history side of these brews? Is that enough to make people curious about them? My twitter timeline and the reader count of these posts would seem to show that this is of interest only to a minority-within-a-minority of drinkers, and it certainly true that beer history is not something most drinkers care about - and I can understand that stance.  History in general can be seen as boring and beer history in general can be ultra boring - or even irrelevant - to many drinkers.

The ultimate test of any retail product is whether it would sell to a given range of consumers given a good marketing program, so a good way at looking at these historic beers is whether they could be commercially marketable based on uniqueness, heritage and process, where the actual product is assumed to be well brewed but could essentially be classed as ‘meh’ by a large part of its perceived core customer.

I feel it would indeed be a hard sell, although I know there are breweries in the UK that have sold these kinds of historic recipe beers - but they are mostly bigger breweries with huge reach ...

But there may be a different angle, and that is within the cohort of macrobrewed lager drinkers. I thought of this while drinking a pale X Mild Ale I had brewed and thinking how much - in a way - like a pale light lager it tasted, and its bigger brother the XX was quite like a ‘standard’ lager - albeit both had a little more going for them to my palate. So what if these ‘boring’ beers were used to wean more macrobeer drinkers from lagers to ales? I am well are that we have plenty of good microbrewed lagers that are already trying to do that but they do not tell a story on the marketing front.

And it is from a marketing point of view that these older beers can tell and proper tale, and have a real story and timeline - a factual story involving real people and breweries. For sure, some compromises need to take place but the basic ingredients and process can be replicated albeit on modern systems. Those records of American hops from Yakima and Oregon being used in these beers are of interest surely, and the tale of what we lost in flavour and what we gained in efficiency as we moved from one lovely old barley varieties to another before we resurrected them again for a new generation who appreciates their flavour and history. What of the defunct breweries themselves? Think of the tales we can tell of the people and towns the gave succour and employment as well as beer. There is a long list of authentic woven history wrapped up in any of these lost beers - plenty of material for actual, real marketing …

Okay, so excusing all of these musings, in reality the commercial appeal of these beers is probably a bridge too far outside of the odd once-off special brew, but at the very least independent microbreweries should be looking at actual historic records - or talking to those who have - when they decide to brew a historic beer and not just go down the easy root of creating - not recreating - a red ale or porter plastered with words such as traditional, heritage or whatever sounds good.

And still on that point perhaps there is a different marketing angle, as surely there is something appealing about these beers to tourists who look for something more interesting and different drink-wise? A minority of them perhaps but there must still be plenty of visitors to this country who might hanker for genuine historic Irish beers from real Irish breweries, served in real Irish pubs - not just the red-washing at the beer tap that we typically see …

Food (or drink?) for thought - for me at least.

Liam K.

(All content shown here including pictures cannot be reproduced elsewhere without permission, full credit to its source, and a link back to this post.)