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Yesterday Fuller's sold its London-based brewery to Japanese giant Asahi, who have been on a buying spree for a couple of years.

Fuller's was the last medium sized brewery left in London since Young's moved out a few years ago. The largely family owned firm now makes over 80% of its profits from its free house pub and hotel chain, and sees the beer business as a minor side-show. The chance to pocket £250 million was irresistible, and the price to Asahi was highly attractive thanks to the decline of the £ in foreign exchange.

It looks to me like the brewing world is increasingly divided between the super-giants like Suntory, Asahi and Anheuser-Busch, and the craft micro-breweries.

I'm a huge fan of craft beer, but I do believe there is an important role for medium-sized brewers such as Fuller's, Shepherd Neame, Adnam's and similar. The kind of traditional brewers who have local character, a range good of quality beers, and depended mainly on regional sales.

The difficulty for these brewers is how to scale up to nation-wide distribution or more, when traditional pub based beer drinking is on a long term decline.

Yes there was some disconcernation in my town about this. Fullers own a nice hotel on the highstreet here, but thankfully the purchase is only limited to the brewing side.

Medum sized breweries are in a tough spot where they don't get the economies of scale of a large brewery, but need to sell more beer than a small locality can support I suppose...

I'm not so sure it's a bad thing, the Fullers had clearly decided the brewing business was a sideshow and if they'd not sold out I could see it getting less and less investment and care as time went on

With the Asahi purchasing it at least it gets a chance to thrive, I don't see them dropping the local production etc as it is a profitable thing (although drinkers outside the UK may have a different experience as the brands are produced abroad for international market which can always be tricky in terms of maintaining their character)

 Kroem wrote:
Medum sized breweries are in a tough spot where they don't get the economies of scale of a large brewery, but need to sell more beer than a small locality can support I suppose...

Which means they need to sell around the country and even export a bit if possible, all more difficult for a small/medium operation than an industry giant. They have to negotiate deals and arrange transport themself or pay someone who specializes in trade to do it, so they either risk making expensive mistakes or stand to make little profit on deals further from home. 250 million could easily be 50+ years of profit from the brewery, available now.

And ofc there's the spectre of a no-deal Brexit hanging over them - they're too small to weather increased tariffs and unable to get around it, at least quickly, by the method the giants use, licensing. Licensing would ofc also not be profitable for them so they're probably unwilling to do it. The big guys do it to get more production volume and/or shorter, cheaper transport for their bulk beers - we expect it to be cheap, the taste is pretty much the same (nothing extra) and we accept it, but licensed London Pride? Not quite as easy, not cheap, it would hit the brand's image...

I prefer Harvey’s of Lewes anyway.

Just hope they don’t mess with the brew the way Thatcher’s throttled all the joy from Hobgoblin.

I miss my Grobi.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I prefer Harvey’s of Lewes anyway.

Just hope they don’t mess with the brew the way Thatcher’s throttled all the joy from Hobgoblin.

I miss my Grobi.

Green goblin, wytchwood still brew Hobgoblin, but yeah green goblin was never the same after thatchers took it on.

I thought Hobgolbin was tasting a bit worse, but put it down to it not travelling well. I pick it up from time to time here. Still a nice ale, but definitely not as nice as years ago.

Fullers is another one I drink when I can get it from the specialist shop here. Hope they just keep it them same but I doubt it.

Decent ale was the best thing about living in England along with Greggs pastries. Diageo controlled all the pubs in Ireland or near enough back when I lived there, and it has started to change in recent years, but to be honest it is all Galway Bay now and I think most of their output is muck, though all my friends in Dublin like it.

Living here in Franconia, there is a huge density of breweries and some absolutely lovely beer here, but no English Ale style brews. The Germans find flat beer horrifying (the barmaid in a pub where I ordered Hobgoblin tried to put me off it, said it was awful!). And they don't do proper creamy stouts either, so I am stuck drinking Guinness which is mass produced muck. Ah well.

Honestly from my POV though the selection of nice beer is a lot better than it was when I started drinking. Back then it was all mass produced stuff and a lot of godawful american beer.

Re: Guinness.

This could well be substantially out of date, or even apocryphal, but back when I worked in a hotel bar, people who fancied themselves Guinness drinkers would often order the bottled rather than draught.

Might be worth a try if you've not tried it and can find it (assuming it still gets made.)

If you can’t find bottled Guinness, a pint glass filled with Marmite, topped with shaving foam makes an ideal substitute. With the added bonus of actually tasting nice.

We could do with a beer appreciation thread. Fortunately there's still plenty of good brews around, and if you shop well you can get some stonking good deals too.
Black sheep, Old peculiar, Hobgoblin, Old thumper are my go to beers. There's a really nice one brewed up the road from me called Abingdon bridge. And there's even a (dare I say it?) lager that's nice - Noble by Greene King.

Fuller's I always saw as a last resort if it came down to that or drinking some kiddy friendly lager.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and if you're in North America, ignore all the old myths about Americans not being able to make beer. They're damn good at it these days. Over the last few years my favourite find was Arrogant Bastard by Stone Brewing of San Diego, alongside its angry cousin the Double Bastard.

Oh man, Asian beer sucks. Hopefully they leave it alone to do right what it already does.

I enjoy Fuller's London Porter. It's a rare delicacy here and I'm not sure if what we have even resembles what actually exists in Europe, but every part of it is fantastic, from the fact that it's good being somewhat warm to the amount of physical effort the bartender has to put into pumping it from the tap.

We are admittedly quite spoiled in the US as far as beer goes. We have the tasteless swill like busch/budweiser/coors but at the same time, we have so many strange little microbreweries that manufacture the most fantastic stuff. I'm drinking a "Double IPA" from ALDI (of all the places) tonight and it is a treasure. I can basically go anywhere and find something highly drinkable. That wasn't the case 15 years ago.

 daedalus wrote:
Oh man, Asian beer sucks. Hopefully they leave it alone to do right what it already does.

I enjoy Fuller's London Porter. It's a rare delicacy here and I'm not sure if what we have even resembles what actually exists in Europe, but every part of it is fantastic, from the fact that it's good being somewhat warm to the amount of physical effort the bartender has to put into pumping it from the tap.

We are admittedly quite spoiled in the US as far as beer goes. We have the tasteless swill like busch/budweiser/coors but at the same time, we have so many strange little microbreweries that manufacture the most fantastic stuff. I'm drinking a "Double IPA" from ALDI (of all the places) tonight and it is a treasure. I can basically go anywhere and find something highly drinkable. That wasn't the case 15 years ago.

Yeah we are kinda spoiled, I could walk into my local total wine and could stumble around aimlessly for quite some time trying to make a decision on what I want to drink. Unfortunately cause I spend so much money on little plastic models I often find I can't afford to drink the good stuff as often as i'd like.

Most of the small scale breweries in the north east do a roaring trade, a lot in the last 10 years have grown massively and selling across the UK and beyond. Most aren't really craft beer it's just local made stouts, bitters and IPA and that's exactly what people want. Stuff like Adnams and Wychwood aren't worth the time. Frankly I think most of those are gak, although Adnams does have a couple of good ones like Ghostship. It's a shame about Fullers because they were a good brewery and everything that gets bought up goes awfully. I think breweries need to resist that more and stick to their area. Maybe they were in trouble and that was the right move to make financially?

I think the last larger brewery of any note left in the UK is Everard's, who have somehow kept going strong. Their Sunchaser pale ale is absolutely superb.

I think there's a real difference between breweries in England and Wales versus those in Scotland. Thankfully the Scottish beers know what they're up to.

 Da Boss wrote:


Living here in Franconia, there is a huge density of breweries and some absolutely lovely beer here, but no English Ale style brews. The Germans find flat beer horrifying (the barmaid in a pub where I ordered Hobgoblin tried to put me off it, said it was awful!). And they don't do proper creamy stouts either, so I am stuck drinking Guinness which is mass produced muck. Ah well.

Honestly from my POV though the selection of nice beer is a lot better than it was when I started drinking. Back then it was all mass produced stuff and a lot of godawful american beer.

And rightly so. German beer is second only to Belgian special beers and about on par with good Dutch beer (no, not Heineken. That's piss. Go sit in the shame corner).

Now the Belgians know how to make a good beer. If people get the chance go to Bruges (It's in Belgium) and visit the beer museum there.
A nation who's main exports are beer, chips and chocolate know their stuff.
Theres a beer from their local Half moon brewery called Straffe Quadrupel Hendrik which is 14% and it's like drinking some sort of heavenly ambrosia.

 Henry wrote:
We could do with a beer appreciation thread. Fortunately there's still plenty of good brews around, and if you shop well you can get some stonking good deals too.
Black sheep, Old peculiar, Hobgoblin, Old thumper are my go to beers. There's a really nice one brewed up the road from me called Abingdon bridge. And there's even a (dare I say it?) lager that's nice - Noble by Greene King.

Fuller's I always saw as a last resort if it came down to that or drinking some kiddy friendly lager.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and if you're in North America, ignore all the old myths about Americans not being able to make beer. They're damn good at it these days. Over the last few years my favourite find was Arrogant Bastard by Stone Brewing of San Diego, alongside its angry cousin the Double Bastard.

Totally down for a beer appreciation thread!! I’ve got my own favored brews from across the pond!