Pete Brown - Beer Writer

It was always part of the plan to put a brew in, but for many years it it was just a plan. It's a hundred percent acquisition of Green Beacon. No, we had a chat with everybody. Anyone would have seen this coming a mile away. Super simple and direct question.

Hi, I'm Bruce News Editor Matt KirkyGuard, and that's just what we're here to do. Talk about beer in the brewing industry and have a conversation with the people who make the industry just what it is and see what we can learn from them. English beer writer Pete Brown probably needs no introduction to our listeners. Apart from having been a guest on the podcast a number of times, he is a multi-award-winning beer writer and his books would be very well known to anyone with an interest in beer.

Earlier this year, Pete tweeted about the dire state of craft brewing in the UK and the number of breweries closing. With the precious facing Australian brewers, I wanted to hear a little bit more about the challenges being faced there and see what was relevant in our own markets and what we could learn. Pete and I also talk about the evolution of the craft beer market and how we got to this point in the craft beer cycle.

We also discuss at the very end his latest book, Clubland, looking at the intoxicating history of the working man's club in the UK. As always with Pete, it's a very thoughtful conversation about beer and I hope you enjoy it.

Pete Brown. Welcome to Beer is a Conversation. Hello. It's nice to be back. It's wonderful. It it's far too long. We've had the uh the that that great disconnect over the last couple of years. We did speak once or twice, but it's been a long time since you've been down here or have managed to get up to uh the UK.

Yeah, yeah. I've I've missed that. I was very lucky that just before lockdown hit I got this really strange period of travel which was never happened before and likely not to happen again. But I'd be in one amazing place and I'd get a phone call saying, Do you wanna come here? So I was At late the end of twenty nineteen, I was in Melbourne for a while, uh I was in uh South Africa, I was in California

And I'm just so grateful that that weird aberration happened just before we we locked down. So yeah, I'm uh I've but yeah, what ne nearly three and a half years now since I was over there. Actually, funnily enough, um I I think when you came out you were if not a guest of Stone and Wood, you certainly visited the Stonewood Brewery and since then we've seen

Them uh taken off the uh indie market? Yeah, that was actually the time before. That was twenty sixteen. I was uh twenty sixty oh wow that's when it bro was brought up by Stone and Wood. Uh and yeah, I spent some time at the brewery. We made uh we made a beer uh that we took up to Brisbane. Uh and uh yeah, that was it. That's it. Spoke w we we spoke there and we went on a bit of a tour of some of the very kind of some fantastic bars. It was amazing.

Uh that that trip was magical. They really was. And and so Melbourne was just uh when you were here speaking at the BrewCon? That's right, yeah. Yeah. So hung out in Melbourne for five days. Did the keynote, it went down okay. That's so is the huge yeah, someone flight as you all were halfway around the world, it's like I hope I really hope they like this speech. And they did. You um spawned a lot of conversations and you subsequently followed up. It was almost the

um overview of the book that you came out with um that we you sp where we spoke about. What is craft? So that was one of three two or three uh speeches I gave, presentations I gave based on that kind of thinking. And and as soon as lockdown hit, I thought, I need to turn that into a book and so it grew out of uh the the the talk I gave in in Melbourne and became my lockdown project.

I said can I write and publish a book in 13 weeks and we did and then it won some prizes so I was totally vindicated.

We might actually come back to that because it's always I I I don't know what it's like in the UK, but certainly here there is a generational change that's gone on and there were Oh yeah, I I guess people like us who used to debate endlessly, I think it was even in the before Twitter days about what does craft mean? And

It d y you just sort of see the kids eyes glazing over these days, just like, you know, w talking about the old you know, the the war. If you're under thirty now These beers have always been there. There there is th you you don't know what it was like to just walk into a pub and only see five global mainstream lagers. Uh y you've you've grown up with IPA, with SAWAS, all this kind of stuff, and it's just it's just how things are. So uh it is a a very different perspective.

You know, it made me realise very much that the craft beer revolution that was the terms that used to be talked about, revolutions are always against something. Um and in Australia it was the monopoly of the big two where everything was lager and you couldn't get anything else. But I do wonder that as that's moved on, and I I've I've come to talk uh a little bit about the idea of what I call the postcraft world, that it was always against

what went before. But I still don't know that Beer has ever enunciated Clearly what it is, you know, in in terms of the the the craft beer. We we we haven't moved into clearly enunciating exactly what it is. We always knew what it wasn't. And that's where things have become a little bit fractured for me.

Yeah, totally. And that's what I realized in the book is that the way we were talking about craft beer, say four, five years ago, uh had absolutely nothing to do with the meaning of the word craft. Um so everyone carries around this set of warm, fuzzy associations. It's a great word because everyone has this idea in their head of what what craft is and those associations are almost always positive. Um but we were we were in this kind of uh um Cross purposes with a consumer, I think.

Uh in the consumer ideas of craft were this warm, fuzzy yeah, it's this guy with the shirt sleeves rolled up. Stirring a wooden paddle in in some old uh thing and there's ho there's hay and there's I don't know why there's hay but there's hay round on the floors and and the steam coming up and and it's and it's all this lovely kind of pre industrial and and craft beer was never that. Um i i you know

Uh most of the principles of the word craft go out the window as soon as you walk into a craft brewery. Um and by night by twenty nineteen we were talking about independence. um the Australian Craft Beer Association, here in the UK, in America, independence became the only meaningful uh term and and that was very I I'm not against that at all, but that was a very industry centric

point of view. And, you know, there's a there's a chunk of people drinking craft beer and the desire for them to drink beer brewed by an independent, small independent brewer, is why they drink it. But but that certainly doesn't apply to everyone who drinks craft beer now. Um, you know, if if that is your motivation that's great. But if if that's not your motivation then, you know, say you're all you're also drinking Stellar Artoir and or V B Um

You haven't got a problem drinking beer made by big multinationals. So you're drinking craft beer just'cause you want something a bit hoppier or or or or something like that? W and it's also mainstreamed. As as you said, anyone under thirty, um, you know, in uh Australia we've got uh little creatures that I'm sure you would uh remember. So it launched in two thousand and so that's where I really set the

Yeah. B C A D line and one of my seminal beers. Yeah. Just wonderful. So anyone who is of legal drinking age. these days was born in a world in which little creatures existed. Um and, you know, increasingly w stone and wood is uh, you know, fifteen years old this year, I think. So, you know, rapidly coming up and Yeah, we were debating you know, what was craft and you know, things

back then and to to anyone that's drinking beer now, they've never known a time when those beers weren't available on tap. And to them it it it really is. Um, you know, do you wish granddad would shut up about the war? Yes. Yeah, I think so. It's like look, it's just beer, just drink it. Yeah, yeah. And uh and and have you so I I I I I I should preface this by saying I really wanted to talk about a post that you posted um a couple of weeks ago about how tough it is for craft breweries and

you're seeing a high rate of closing. Yeah. And I wanted to get some of the the the the thoughts about that and uh some some of the things you said about that. But I I guess before we do, where is beer? Um

at at the moment, what are the brands that are growing? What is you know, what are the what what are the styles that are really big in in the UK these days? So we're we we've we've got stuck in um in Hazy IPA pale ale territory. And that is Kraft Beer. It is Kraft Beer because it is hazy and pale. And that's that's what Kraft beer is.

Um and there's an incredible lack of imagination at the moment, a a lack of progress, a lack of dynamism. Um and It it's like I I don't mind the existence of hazy pale beers, but for me Kraft was all about this wonderful choice of styles. Um and that's gone in in most places. Um there are th this time last year we had a dark mild revival. Um, which I think was, you know, okay, let's pick the let's pick the beer style that's least likely to be cool.

Let's make it cool and it was really interesting because it was everywhere and then it got to about May And people started posting on social media, uh, is it okay to stop pretending we're like Dark Mild yet? And and it it is that kind of very fashion image led side of the market uh that uh that dominates. And you talk to brewers and they say

We brew we brew hazy pale elves because that's what the market wants and that's what the consumer wants. And I say I respond by saying, Yeah, that's how Heine can make their decisions as well. So, you know, but th there's not as much of that bold, brilliant innovation experimentation as as we used to have because brewers are struggling and they need to keep the lights on and so they brew what sells.

Wh which is business, after all. You know, it's They are in business. But that's where it is fascinating and I I I I've heard other people draw a very similar analysis. You know, once upon a time we rebelled against everything being a paleaga. And and yet the people who did that are now all brewing the the the same monoculture for for for want of a better word. And in and as soon as somebody comes up with a great idea that starts to Get some traction.

Everyone else will everyone jumps on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone's kinda w will someone please find us the next big cool thing so we can all follow it. And Yeah, I I always look for meaning or truth or, you know, try and make sense of things. Is there anything wrong with that? I I guess at the end of the day.

I th well, this comes on to this brings us to the next point, isn't it, which is that um if all you're gonna do is brew hazy pale elves, you don't need two thousand different brewers to do that. And and this is the this is the issue now. So last year we had eighty breweries closed.

uh as opposed to about forty new ones opening. So that's the first decline in the number of breweries in the UK. I I think probably I might be wrong, barring the odd blip, but for twenty years that's the first time it's you know it's kinda peaked. And seems to be going down. And and I got I got invited by the Sunday Times to write this Is Craft Beer Over piece?

Uh and if you if you if is the craft beer boom over and if you Google that phrase, people have been trying to write that piece since twenty eighteen uh and I've seen ludicrous uh stories from two or three years ago, uh where the subhead is something like with only two hundred new breweries opening last year is the craft beer boom finally over? And it's like, what, you're saying two hundred new breweries opening is a sign of decline. That and that just shows you how

Brilliant the UK is it doing itself down, beating itself up, looking for the misery wherever they can find it. Yeah, I I well I I I don't think you're alone there because again it's always that that that's one of the th one one of the things. It's still one of the stats that I always have to remind myself of and it may have been Bart Watson from the Brewers Association, but it was certainly uh a a an economist pointing out that

one in four businesses fail in the first three years. Yeah. Kraft Brewing is still outperforming general business start ups. Um in in that sense, uh because most of them are still around. But then I also balance that by my fear is the metric that quite often I hear quoted in the industry, because it's an industry that's very hard to get meaningful stats in.

they show the health of the industry is the number of breweries it's opening. Yeah. Which to me is a bit of a false note. Just because breweries are opening, it surely it's beer consumption or profit or there are other metrics.

that are actually more meaningful um than just that one. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Um we've we've got we've got a a number here for for breweries that the number of breweries that are opening is quite a different number than the number of brewers that are actually brewing beer at the moment. So you get these kind of people kind of starting up but not actually brewing yet.

Um but I I took this I took this brief from the Sunday Times and I wanted to go out and go uh yet again uh we have kind of you know, doom mongers saying the craft beer boom is over, uh here's why it's not. And then I went into the market, spoke to brewers, spoke to retailers and every single person I spoke to said, Yep, the boom is over. The boom is mo craft beer's not over, but the boom years are definitely over.

Uh and I didn't find a single person who told me anything different. So I had to kinda reluctantly go, Yep. Uh, the boom's definitely over. I I I love the I I it's always attributed to Mark Twain who, you know, pot couldn't possibly have said all the things he's been attributed with, but it was uh

Yeah, history doesn't repeat but it rhymes. Yeah. Um and one of one of the rhymes uh or one of the sort of uh analogies I often draw is um you know, it there is a little bit of a gold rush mentality whenever anything is attractive, popular, and everyone races off to the gold field and you only ever hear the people that Strike the nugget. You often don't hear the people that sort of uh end up hocking their uh

pans and their clothes and their dog just to, you know, get the stagecoach home. Absolutely. And uh sometimes that's the you know, the the hype coverage of the of the brewing industry fits within that category because we are still seeing people entering the industry with that same you know, eager anticipation for a fun novel industry.

that probably existed a decade ago. And I don't and I think it's a little bit more ruthless or a little bit harder now. Yeah. Uh I mean there's a lot more competition. Beer beer overall beer volumes are declining.

uh and they they always have been, more or less, and for twenty five years. And and all the all the people that are going into the market are competing for the same small segment uh of that. You know, yes yes to take in some uh share away from the from the big guys but but they're mainly competing for the same spots on the shelf or uh on the bar uh and that competition is intensifying and a lot of the people who are going into it

I I think the most revealing thing I realise is that in in any start up in any industry, uh you if if you if it's your if it's if it's you that's mortgaged your house to to raise the money or or it's your dream that you've been sitting on for years You work every hour you can stand.

You know, you you you you work the weekends, you uh in in brewing you you're in at six to to mash in and then you're working and then you're doing the paperwork in the afternoon and then you go to a meet the brewer event in the evening, uh, and then you're up doing it again the next day, seven days a week. And I spoke to a few brewers who just realised they couldn't carry on at that pace. Um and if they couldn't carry on at that pace, they didn't have a business.

Uh I spoke to one guy who was ill. Uh he took eight weeks out of his business. And when he came back to it, it was just ruins. There was there was no way he could get the the the business back on its feet after being away from it for eight weeks. And and so it was just so highly geared in terms of time and effort. And I think a lot of brewers are still in that space.

And a lot of them are y kind of young guys and they've got that energy. Um but You know, th that's the only thing keeping a lot of them going, I think,'cause on business on on paper they're they're not a lot of them are not are not are not viable businesses. I I don't know what the British equivalent of this would be, but

in in in Australia we have news agencies and once upon a time they were you know, they sold the newspapers, the casket, the gift cards and those sorts of things. So it was a nice little it was a business that, you know, if if you ran it really well and you were popular with your y your locals and you you did sort of things, you might maybe grow the revenue by ten percent and if you're a grumpy p y you maybe lose fifteen percent. But you know, there was a certain it w it wasn't an expansion

business but they they were very attractive with people who maybe took a, you know, redundancy um and wanted to buy themselves a job. And it was the sort of thing you could buy yourself an income. um that was r fairly constant, um so you know, until newspapers died. Um lotto tickets came uh instead. And you could make yourself, you know, a a reasonable income for the amount of work that was involved, so long as you're prepared to sit there and sell papers and ra and raffle tickets. And

You know, if if you wanted to have a weekend off, you had to pay someone from the local school to run it for you and trust them to do it. Um, but it was costing you money, um, that was yours. But at the end, once you'd bought yourself an income for five, six, ten years, you could then sell it for probably about the same that you bought it for because it's someone else buying an income.

And yeah, for for a while now I thought that's actually for a lot of these small breweries, that's actually probably the best that they can hope for is doing something that they love and buying themselves an income. But as you say, so long as you don't get sick, so long as you don't, you know

uh get exhausted, um and and and you and you need to manage that, the difference is they're a very capital intensive business to start in the first place. Yeah, yeah. And the cap the capital costs are are hitting people, that's a major factor. So Um yeah, if you have soaring energy prices And you have soaring grain prices.

yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw. Rydyn ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd this this winter. Um,'cause our energy bills are just I mean

At one point it was going to be six thousand pounds for the year, uh, which is a significant chunk of my income, uh, just to keep the heating on. What one in four households in the UK are not heating their can't afford to heat their homes in the middle of winter. And um You think about how much more energy uh also household heating prices are capped. Business uh business energy prices are not capped.

So you think about the energy of that big burn under the mash ton uh and it's oh under the copper uh and there's no cap on that. And and so it's just uh it's just huge. And and because consumers are facing cost of living crisis You simply cannot pass on all your cost increases.

To the consumer. Means that the price of a pount is becoming unaffordable for a lot of people. So it's a real double bind that a lot of brewers uh find themselves in. I don't think our energy costs are quite as extreme as the UK, but w we have very similar costs, you know, in input pressures and then the the government um

through Genius about twenty years ago decided to index um excise. So the excise that's levied on beer and it goes up indexed to the cost of inflation and you know, w for for the twenty years that inflation was like one percent, it was a minor irritation, but suddenly when all of your inputs are going up, we've got inflation of seven, eight percent.

suddenly they're also having record excise charged, which brewers collect from the consumer they don't necessarily pay, but again, same thing. It makes a Um a point when house price when all of the house price basket of goods is going up by that seven, eight percent and beer goes up

Um as well, it makes it much less attractive. Yeah, yeah. Uh and then it it does. So so so the market is suffering and basically if you if you have cash reserves you're gonna get through it. If you don't have cash reserves you you you're gonna struggle. And and people are saying that if you can make it to maybe September this year Um yeah, inflation is already just starting to come down. Um th things you know, recessions always end. That that is, you know, just a an incontrovertible fact.

So it's just if you've got the reserves and you can ride this out, then then you know, we'll we'll see what happens then. But you know, it's the it's the big guys who've got those reserves and the small guys who don't.

And and the other dynamic we're seeing is uh you know, Heineken bought Beavertown uh in twenty eighteen. Uh they completed that purchase uh just late last year. And Beavertown um neck oil, which is uh four, four point one percent session IPA, has grown i is seeing four hundred and eighty percent year on year growth.

in volume. Uh so it's yeah, it's got the it's got the muscle of the Heineken distribution system behind it. The great thing about that is it shows that there is an appetite among the public for uh hoppy pale ale, uh more interesting beer than, you know, mainstream lager. There's an insatiable appetite for that. People want it. As soon as it's going on the shelves, it's disappearing. So that's good news.

But but the way that some of these brands uh are working is, you know, this kind of one craft tap on the bar. Uh and Heineken will go in and they'll go, Okay, we'll give you this beautiful, flashing uh Beavertown font Uh we'll do all the cellar work for you, all the lines, all the cooling. Uh you just have to sign here saying that Beaver Town beers are the only beers that go through this town.

And and that was the one guest tapping that pub. And so small independent brews go in and it's like, sorry mate, you know, we've got Baby Town now. Uh and so I'm starting to think that'cause I was I was going through For a project I was doing, I was going through all the annual reports of the big brewers uh a couple of weeks ago, and all the people Anna Busch uh and and Heineken, all the people that have acquired craft brands in the last few years

Those craft brands are barely mentioned in their annual reports. You know, they're they're talking about their core brands. Um they they want to push their core lager brands and those they're all talking about premiumization. And when they talk about premiumization, they don't mention their craft brands.

And so all these brands that they've spent tens of millions of pounds acquiring are not central to their business strategy going forward. They've bought them to block craft brewers out of the market. They've bought them to take that one tap on ...to pay that guy to not put craft beer on the bar. Um and and and I I'm starting to think now that that's that that was the plan all along. We buy Beaver Town, we buy Goose Island, we buy Camden Town, uh we we block craft beer and we we suffocate it.

That's I mean th that's a really interesting discussion to have'cause uh I again Every jurisdiction has different regulatory frameworks and i in Australia i it tends to be a contract of eighty percent or ninety percent with one of the two major breweries and then there are a couple of independent taps. We saw you know, five, six, seven years ago as craft beer became more popular

Republicans wanting to take a smaller and smaller because th th the the big brewers were so slow to getting into the craft and catching on, they saw it as a fad or they didn't see it as a volume play. And so contracts started reducing. Um, rather than eighty percent, maybe the publican wanted fifty percent, they would take a smaller rebate, but it gave them what consumers actually wanted and you know, they they wanted craft.

And the big brewers responded by buying um, you know, the stone and woods, the bolters, the uh four pines and putting those on. And I didn't s I don't see that as a way to kill craft or even directly targeting small brewers. They're almost the collateral damage. The big brewers saw it as they wanted to protect the f their mainstream taps that were likely to go to the other brewer if the other brewer had a better selection of the craft beer and we and we saw a lot of that. Um

The the the narrative for small brewers has always been the big guys are gunning for us. Where I always saw is more of like that, well it that that's a strategy, that's what consumers want, we need to be in there to some extent.

Because we'll always sell more Heineken, you know, uh I I don't know what the British equivalents are, but you know, if if if if C U B has Prony, V B, um pure blonde and um We will m sell a lot more volume through those taps, but we'll only have those taps if we can give them um Pirate Life, Balter and Four Pines. There's definitely some of that as well, yeah. Yeah.

Uh, we really want Beavertown. Okay, but you gotta take Heineken. I don't know if that's happening, but I've I've known in the it's similar things happened in the b in the past. It's the sa similar slightly different markets because of your tied house houses and uh the the way the pubcos work over there, but very, very similar and we are increasingly I think going to the more Pub co related where there are big corporate

um venues owning lots and lots of pubs that we will start to see a little bit of that yeah go on. And it is that tricky thing because I uh as sh someone showed me uh You do hear it fr from the industry, you do hear it, oh, we're being shut out, you know, the consumers being v forced to kind of just drink big brands. And someone showed me the list of that one of the big pubcos had that it it allowed its pubs to choose from. And I could have quite happily, you know.

drunk in that pub. You know, there were there were some great beers on there. Uh there was there was nothing that I thought that was that was lacking. But from a l industry point, if you're not on that list

Tough shit, you know. It's uh it's it's it's bad from bad from the diversity point of view in terms of uh all these brews out there who are who are not lucky enough to get on. And the problem is that when the when the free taps that are left after all that Uh the small brewers compete on price to to get onto those taps.

Um, so they're not making any money off it. Um the publican's grateful for the prize cut'cause the publican might be making money off that tap, but they're losing hand over fist overall. We've got uh I think eighteen pubs a week closing in the UK at the moment. Um so of course they're gonna compete on price for that tap. Um uh but it it just it's just not a long term strategy for survival. What are the options? Because again for the the the big brewers taking those easy independent taps.

is business for them. You know, they're they're they're not in it to to be charitable or leave yeah stones unturned. Exactly. I think there's a couple of things that brewers really and a lot of them are, otherwise I wouldn't have noticed it. I've not come up with this but uh I think now I think we all know that if you're starting a craft brewery in the twenty twenties

You n you need a tap room, you need a brewery tap. Um and and that gives you the if your beer's any good, that gives you the volume to tick over. And then anything else that you sell is is a bonus. Uh and we we saw that in America maybe five or six years ago and that's definitely now the case in the UK. Um I think the other exciting thing if you talk if you look at industry analysts is everyone's talking about e commerce.

uh and selling direct to the consumer at home. So I think what COVID did in the UK We w we've had a long term drift from the on trade to off trade. over the last forty years. And I think COVID probably accelerated, um uh a decade's worth of that drift uh concentrated it into three years. So sure we're now going back out to the pub uh again.

but not to the same extent that we were pre COVID. Uh and so e commerce presents this kind of playing field where you can go in and sell direct to the consumer at home. Um and I saw some stats the other day that basically said that's the that is the that is the big growth channel in the global beer market now. And and that benefit that benefits smaller brewers.'Cause you know, I can go to the supermarket and get twenty four cans of Heineken for

less than a quid a can. Um, you know, if I if I if I've got some if I've got at my fingertips uh you know, the opportunity to buy an an interesting mixed case of beers that I've not tried before, uh that's gonna get delivered to my door tomorrow, then then that's really exciting.

Is there that same excitement around beer that we once felt because uh uh again, speak just speaking from the experience that I observed, I used to drive Well I actually but before there were any craft breweries in my area or even good bottle shops I would drive two hours to a little bottle shop in Toowoomba.

just to get because I heard that they had Sierra Nevada in, you know, oxidized, badly travelled Sierra Nevada in. Yes. Because there were you know and that's what you do. But then as the beer world has grown my willingness to inconvenience myself to get it has My loc and at the same time, my local bottle shop has a phenomenal range of local craft beers.

Um, so now that it's easily available I look at and go, Oh, gee, that's a lot for a four pack. Um And and um how do we lock in the passion to make people inconvenience themselves if they need to or just pay that premium?

for something that as you've said, do the big brewers make equally as good beer these days when they want to. It's a funny one. It's a tricky one. Uh and uh I d I just don't wanna sound like a I've I'll be conscious that this chat I might just sound like I'm preaching doom at all uh in all directions. Um But this idea of premiumisation is a constant. I've been doing a lot of work on that this month for an investment bank that wanted me to talk to them about premiumisation in beer. And

You keep seeing articles on premiumization, as if it's a new thing. Oh, millennials want premium goods. And it's like yeah, everyone always has. You know, it's a bit of constant. Uh what what is considered premium changes and that's that's the really interesting part.

Um and y you look at the history of the British beer market, you know, once upon a time fake European lager was premium'cause it was premium to to ale. Uh on once upon a time absolute vodka w was premium and now it's kind of a standard house pour. Um and and so what is premium changes? And currently craft beer still very, very much up there in terms of people's premium perception. They're prepared to pay more for it, they're prepared to seek out uh interesting new things.

But m even more premium than that is Mediterranean lager. So somehow the big guys have managed to make you know bog standard lagers brood in Burton on Trent. But badged as if it comes from Madrid. Or Barcelona, that is now more premium than craft beer. We've seen something similar here where, you know, V B started to decline and so they released a beer

that was even crisper, but it comes from the same brewery, same production process, you know, the the same high gravity brewing. There's nothing premium about it. It's uh regarded as contemporary. So whereas the V B is now a traditional mainstream, suddenly you've got a beer that's lighter in flavour but in a flint bottle and a tall neck is contemporary but it seen as more premium than than the older brands and uh but I I used to love your articles with the work that used to do on it about

the reassuringly expensive um of uh Stellaratoire. Stellaratoire. Um and your your analysis of how that campaign locked in that value. Yeah, yeah. It's um whenever you do a campaign like that, it kind of fifty percent uh brilliant strategy, uh which is what I did, uh and brilliant creative work. Um and it's fifty percent look. Uh so so the so the most successful beer launch in UK history, uh, is this beer called Madri, which appeared towards the end of lockdown. According to sources

It is co as liked with the actu added hop extract. Um but it pretends it's from Madrid. Um and and they did this thing uh where they launched post lockdown. And I think they did I think they did a great job branding it. I think they did a great job the the the the the beer's pretty good. I could drink it without spitting it out. Uh and they did a great job in terms of aggressively selling it in, giving away free kegs, attractive branded glasses, all that kind of stuff.

They also launched just at the time when people were able to go to the pub again. But we're not able to get on a plane for a weekend break in Spain. And so you walk into pub, you see this beer, it's Oh, it's the it's the spirit of Madrid in like

Oh God, do you remember when we used to go to Madrid? Oh wasn't it great? Oh Spain. I really want to go to Spain again. Oh we can't get a flight. Oh I'll I'll just have this beer instead,'cause it makes me th Ooh, you can almost taste the tapas, can't you?

Uh and that's what we did with Stella, you know, we c we caught this aspiration. Uh we also just flagrantly ripped off uh the the Jean de Florette movies, um but but but we just caught that sense in the market that um th this idea of everyday premium. Um yeah, be before Stella

And Stellarato was like, Well it's premium but you drink it out of a pint like a normal beer. Uh and you pay more for it because it's special. Uh and it comes from France, doesn't come from France. But uh you know, it's uh it that that's what people felt. It's And it and and partly it's that weird, weird British thing.

Part of it is a global rule in beer that any imported beer is premium to any domestic beer. I s never have understood that, but it's a it remains an absolute truth in the industry, whatever country you go to. Um so Budweiser's not premium in the United States, it's premium everywhere else. Um so but partly it's that, but partly in Britain it's this thing of like, well if it comes from somewhere else, it must be better than something made here.

So you know, one of the world's top four brewing nations uh regards its own brewing heritage as just a pile of crap. Uh and if a beer comes from Italy or Spain, which have no brewing uh heritage, then it's better than a beer that's brewed here. Just nonsense. I once heard beer described as fractally interesting. The more that you dig into it, you know the the more patterns repeat. That's good.

But we're all susceptible to to that. And even craft beer drinkers, you know, we convinced ourselves that craft beer was better for a whole range of reasons and

you know, particular bed at beers were better because it's the way that we feel. I I I often say that we give as much to anything that we enjoy as it gives to us. Absolutely. In terms of that. And in fact you've done uh so many um wonderful tastings I've never been able to go to where you do Uh beer and music pairings and uh you know th there's all of those things that we're gonna do. rely on our perceptions. Absolutely.

changing our in enjoyment and how we feel about where something comes from even if it doesn't, it just needs to be it just needs to fool us enough to convince ourselves. Yes, and you do buy into it. You buy into it willingly, I think, uh sometimes.

It's like I I keep thinking about when I was a kid and I'd see kind of favourite cartoon characters and I and I knew they weren't real because they were cartoons and I understood the difference between real people and cartoons. But at the same time I chose to believe that they were real. And and in a kid's mind you can quite happily entertain those two conflicting

points of view at the same time'cause you've got this flexibility of imagination. And I think I think we do do that. I think we do that with with choices of brands that we that we buy. There's a little bit of make believe Um you know, if I if I buy this but this particular brand I am sexier than if I don't. Yeah. And any any kind of rational analysis will show that it's not true, but but it doesn't matter.'Cause it's true in your head. And and we haven't studied it too much in beer, but one and

Our our regular listeners will have heard me quote this before. Though the the wine industry studies where they'll blind give you wine with the electroencephalograph where they measure the the pleasure firing in in your head and they'll say, Oh, this is a ten dollar bottle of wine Yeah. And you'll experience and then this is a seventy dollar b and you'll physically experience more pleasure when they've given you the same wine and just told you

So it's not just we're not just kidding ourselves at a mental level, we're considering ourselves as an experiential level as well. Fundamentally, yeah. So so my my beer and music stuff that I do, uh I I always say that I I can change the flavour of beer by changing the music that play with it. And of course I don't change the flavour of beer. But but everyone thinks that I do. Uh yeah, it's a magic trick. Um it's it's th this this beer doesn't taste very nice.

when you play it with um Deboos' Claire Delune, Britt tastes awesome when you play it with Jimi Hendrix doing all along the watchtower. How how does that work? Well I There's the evil genius that is marketing and advertising because if you can i i i if if you can do it and uh you know, I I I still think that the um From Where You'd Rather Be tagline for Um Corona is one of those ones because it becomes you. No.

Uh maybe it's just here. Um yeah, it's it's'cause it's always palm trees and hammocks and you know, a leg hanging off the edge of the hammock and the setting sun over the water. That's great. Not saying it's Mexico, but from where you'd rather be. And then Great Northern, which is the biggest brand in Australia at the moment, stole that a little bit by calling it the beer from up here, and it was loosely based on the Cannes brewery that they bought and closed.

And they alluded to the the the the brand, but it was, you know, from where you'd rather you know, sorry, the beer from up here. Never actually saying where up here was. So Up here could be wherever you're outdoors and uh and and and it's a blank sheet that you project your ho your aspirations onto. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And uh just on an everyday basis when it can fulfil those aspirations. And I think Corona's a fascinating one, uh,'cause if you were to and I've done this with

agency advertising agencies. If you're to pour Corona into a tulip shaped glass and do a proper sensory evaluation on it. It's undrinkable. I mean it's awful. It's really bad. You know, it's skunked. It's sunstroke'cause it's in clear bottles. Um but it's regarded as one of the if not the world's leading premium brands. Because that imagery side is so strong.

Um yeah, that the back tip behind it is so aspirational. And it speaks to everybody. I mean who wouldn't you know, if you see those billboards on your way home from work? on a drizzly evening, who wouldn't rather be on that hammock? You know, it's a it's a great it's a great piece of marketing. And and my my thing is I I I I I always try to criticise But also go, Well they're doing something very right.

So what c what could craft brews or smaller brews learn from what it's it's very easy to slag off Madri for being a completely fake you know, f for being co-like with added hop extract. But but they're doing something that Kraft beer brews aren't doing. They're they're touching a cord with people that craft beers are not doing. So what are they doing that's right? And, you know, we might not have the huge multimillion pound budgets that they have.

But what are they what are they tapping into? And and could could smaller brewers learn something from that?

I used to get angry, like in my early fiery writing days, used to get angry about those sorts of things because you it's a fraud being perpetuated on the consumer, but it's a fraud that we willingly partake in, as I realised. But then I became a lot less angry about it when I realized when I would hear beer nerds, you know, craft beer aficionados, people who are very passionate, had very strong views.

dismissing a a a multi quality award winning, you know, champion award winning, medal winning beer. Um saying, Oh it's crap, they don't know how to make beer and you d and you're sort of going, What basis have you got you You've bought into another brand that resonates with you and makes that beer taste better.

But you're dismissing a beer that is highly credentialed beautifully made that you just don't like. And it it's fundamentally the same thing to m to my I I think my example of that is, you know, over the last few years, uh Brewdog have had their come up and s they've been they were absolutely the centre of the whole BME two thing in twenty one.

uh the behaviour of people within that company. They've been accused of all sorts of, you know, toxic workplace culture, bullying and and worse. And And, you know, those are very serious allegations and I don't buy a broodog anymore and and so on. But it's when you hear people go, Well their beers were always shit anyway And it's like No they weren't.

Just grow up. If their beers were always shit anyway, they wouldn't be in the position they are now. I remember you in two thousand nine going crazy for this brew dog beer,'cause we all did, and you did. So don't turn round to me now and say that their beers have always been shit. Mae'n rhaid i chi'n gwybod, mae'n rhaid i chi'n gwybod, mae'n rhaid i chi'n gwybod, mae'n rhaid i chi'n gwybod, mae'n rhaid i chi'n gwybod, mae'n rhaid i chi'n gwybod.

Yeah, and then just just this week they released uh they released the the results of a staff survey uh about their you know, they had consultants in to try and improve their workplace practices. Um people have dismissed that as bullshit and it's like But if you were brew dog in this situation with these accusations, you would try to improve it. So yeah, not to defend them and the practice that they used to do, but if you get called out for it and you try and do something about it

you kinda have to give credit where it's due. I mean I don't know. I it might be bullshit, I don't know, but just to kind of dismiss things like that just'cause you don't like them. Yeah, we it's it's all it's all the same thing, isn't it? Just a very emotive reaction. Uh not always not always rational to the front. Yeah, I... Listeners will be sitting here waiting you know for th w for for me to take the bait on Brewdog.

I'll never criticize the quality of their beer. They are absolutely committed to making good beer and uh and doing it well. So uh my criticism tends to be the brewery that said they'd never advertise, suddenly coming up with advertising. Oh that and uh like the World Cup, you know. Um We're not going to participate in the World Cup, but drink our beer while you're protesting the World Cup being here. Oh, and and and we're showing it at all our bars.

'Cause yeah, all all all of that. That's what I have problems with. But again totally, totally. I I I I I think that, you know. I don't not drink the beer because I don't like the beer. I don't choose not to drink the beer because I would much rather vote for breweries who I do support um for the positive things that they make. So uh which hopefully isn't too hypocritical. Um No. No. It's just you know, I I I I think I think we're both

have a thing where you know th that's a we're we were talking before about th the the I was I was gonna say golden age of beer blogging. Certainly an age of beer blogging, you know, in the in the noughties and stuff. Um and there are a lot of people who write about beer because they're passionate and and they they write what they believe, they champion beers that they love drinking, and and there's nothing wrong with that at all. I I I want that. in the scene. I want passionate advocates

uh blogging subjectively uh about what they love and what they hate. But I think both you and I have tried to have a more uh impartial view. I think when you get to a set position of influence you want to kind of You don't have to, but I think we kind of both want to say well well, this is how it is. This is this is a more kind of rational measured take on what's happening. Uh and so yes y yes you can be critical, but but you also have to kind of um

Take things for what they are. So like like I was saying about what are the big brands doing right. Don't like them, but learn from what they're doing right and then maybe use it against them. Yeah, yeah. I I can yeah, a hundred percent agree. I think, you know, I've grown up in some ways and sort of understood that the world w for for me a big eye opener was a lot of the practices I used to rally against the big brewers. And the small brewers have said we're against that.

Until they got to the size that they could do the same thing. Um and you know, and and that was craft for example, you know, the the the small brewers were against using enzymes until suddenly enzymes were okay. They were against technology until they could afford technology. Um I don't know what it's like in but one of the things I see here is there are a lot of brewers who still are anti pasteurizing, saying it ruins your beer and it's not craft.

Pasteurisers just happen to be an expensive piece of kit. Yeah. That that takes a lot of footprint and it's kind of like we're against pasteurisation until we're not. You know. Uh and Uh that b but then a whole lot of in in um you know trade practices that we see as well, you know, the the the the contracts, a lot of craft breweries that were once against contracts, once they got the size that they could incentivise venues to put them on over somebody else. Yeah.

They started doing it. There's that sense of craft beer being handmade. And and people say that their beers are handmade and so on. And then you go I did a brewery tour last the week before last and it was like Uh well the c the computer starts the mash at four AM and then I turn then I then I turn up at like eight and j just as just in time for the hopping. And it's like, Well, uh is this craft beer? Um

You know, uh anyway, that's that's another mouse hole not to go down. But but this is the fascinating maturing that the industry's had because that was part of consistency and, you know, if you want to reach a broader market, you have to make the same good beer

the same way every time. And again, that was one of the things I realised that, you know Standing there with a mash paddle and testing the temperature by thumb um and and all of those things isn't a way to consistently uh it's artisanal and it's small if you just wanna have a very small little following, but you're never gonna reach a broader market.

with that level of variability about it. And it's still good beer and it's still craft in my book. Yeah, except when it's not good beer. And you know, a few times I've had people, you know, there I am paying six, seven pounds a pint.

W with the and the brew's like, Yeah, yeah, we're not happy with that yet, we're still working on it. It's like, Well why the fuck have I just spent seven quid upon a why why are you releasing beers that you're not happy with?'Cause we can't afford to pour them away.

Oh well th th that's one thing but uh it i it's another one that um at risk of going down another rabbit hole'cause I do want to talk about your book. Um and I I I I I I I I wanna let you let you get away. I could talk for hours but That variability in beer and, you know, it it it it's one of the things that fascinates me that and I fell into it saying that beer is the new wine and that why doesn't beer have the

um respect that wine has and the command the price that it has. And you know, I reflect on this a lot. So I'd love your thoughts on about it because I think You make wine once a year. You've you've got your harvest and it's the winemaker's job to curate that grape into the best liquid that he can make. But once he's done that

you know, he's his job is then to sell it. If you win a gold medal for that wine, you can command a high price'cause there is only that one vintage of that wine. Whereas brewers can go in and make a pale ale today. Tomorrow they'll tweak the recipe a little bit based on yesterday's uh tweak it tomorrow, you know, maybe they'll sort of see how it goes and they're they're constantly tweaking and but it's something that they can m make every ever every day. So it's a it's a it's a miracle of

you know, so many things but it's a very different product from from from wine. Not qualitatively, not yes, not values, but just very, very different. And there are people who say that variability is a is a hallmark of authentic craft. And when I when I wrote my book on uh craft and argument, I I used an example of sort of hand blown wine glasses. Um you know, these these th these kind of they were very big here in the in the nineties where you'd c kind of green recycled glass.

And you can see tiny you can see tiny bubbles in the glass. It's quite thick glass and there's tiny air bubbles all around. Uh and they look great. They look they look handmade. And and the my my point is that if you buy a set of f six of those glasses Every single one is different from the other in terms of the the way the bubbles are, uh th the the the the dispersion of them, the look of them, each one's unique like a snowflake. But they all work as wine glasses.

Mm. None of them leak. None of them leak. None of them fall over when you stand them on the table. They're all of a roughly similar y you can see that they're all part of a set. And and and that for me is the difference between, you know, variations in character and variations in quality. Variations in character are to be welcomed. But a beer where you go Yeah, we're just not happy with this one, then

Yeah. I've I I've I've bought this wine glass. Yeah, it kinda leaks and it falls over when I put it down on the table. I'm still working on it, but i I'm gonna charge you ten quid for it. But the th and and then the other thing about that is if you're buying it, you're buying it for that variability because

hand blown wine glasses, you can't scale. You've only got one set of lips. There is actually um you know, there there is actually a physical limit to how many you can make in a day. So if you want to make an income out of it, You can't scale, so you need to command a higher price. Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. And convince people That that's the thing.

y y your argument was that if you want to be craft you need to be really small and be all of those things, but you need to be able to command the price for it. And that's the massive paradox of craft as a concept, is that by definition is it it is elitist.

standardized stuff will always be cheaper and more affordable than something craft produced. And, you know, there's a barrier to entry to to any craft market. Uh I worked out that you could buy an IKEA chair Um with after working for two hours on minimum wage behind a bar.

Um, whereas I could also go and buy a chair that's gonna cost me You know, thousands of pounds'cause it's been hand tooled and try and make it myself and it's gonna take a lot longer than that, two hours and much more materials. Exactly. And and may not carry my weight. Exactly. Um and so, you know, c craft c craft can only exist in places where there is a standardized affordable

alternative. Otherwise it's not craft, it's just the way things are. And and so it's a conscious decision on a consumer's part to spend more for something that is w which they perceive as being better than the than the standardized version. The standardized version of anything will do its job. Um the chair won't break when you sit down on it, the beer will be refreshing, it will get you drunk eventually. Um and and you're paying for something that you think is better than that.

uh but there's only so many people can do that. And because beer's always been this kind of democratic approachable beverage, uh th there is this l y s you get see this constant conversations. Um So you know, you can buy a if you get a really special kind of barrel aged uh you know Imperial Stout that's been sitting in Cabernet Sauvignon barrels for a year, uh and the bar is selling it for uh three pounds fifty for a third. Of a pint glass. You're always gonna get the guy who walks in and goes

That's ten quid a pint. That's ridiculous. I'm not buying that. It's like well number one, you would never drink it by the pint. Uh number two uh I i i i i the the pint is just an abstract concept in this thing. Number three, a third of a pint is just a little bit bigger than a one seven five mil glass of wine. Uh this is the same strength of w as wine, it's a similar character to wine.

F try finding me a glass of wine uh this size and this strength for three pounds fifty anywhere in any pub in in the UK. You're not gonna find it. It's a bargain, it's not a rip off. And so that's all you know, all our our concept of value uh and how how relative that is. You get people who say that beer should not be allowed to be sold above certain pints and it's that whole thing of like, I don't like it, therefore it shouldn't exist.

And that's a agile problem that I think is part of human nature but Mate, I I I I could literally talk uh with you for hours and I would much rather doing it over a beer and I hope you've noticed that even though it's quarter past seven in the evening I resisted the temptation to have a beer while you were having a cup of tea'cause that's just not fair. That's very kind of you.

But let's talk about your recent book, Clubland. It came out last year, but it's an audio book uh with your dulcet tones. I saw photos of you on social media in the in in the booth, but then it's also been on Radio 4. Yeah, so they do this program called Book of the Week. Uh so Monday to Friday every week, quarter to ten in the morning and half past twelve at night, uh somebody reads out a fifteen minute extract.

from a book. So you get five of those. Uh and so a production company chose very kindly chose Clubland. Uh and then I got to read it myself. So that was just brilliant. I was on the radio five times a week that f y in the uh in early January. Talk to me about Clubland, because it's one of your books that I haven't yet got.

Because again, I m my question was, is there a parallel that I will relate to in in i in Australia? So tell us a little bit about what the background of Clubland is in the UK. It's the history of the working men's club movement. Uh and th you know, there are clubs everywhere. Clubs go back to ancient Greece. They're you know, uh groups of like minded people who gather to socialise. Uh it's as simple as that. So there's a parallel wherever you look.

Um what was specifically interesting about working men's clubs is that they borrowed this idea of a club from the gentlemen's clubs in central London. Uh And it was philanthropists saying, This is what working men need. They need a place to socialise, uh, and relax after a hard day's toil.

There was a lot of background about how it was around the time when men were getting the vote, working class men were getting the vote for the first time. So there was this very a strong movement that they needed to be educated. They needed to be refined and improved. uh so that they voted for the right people and didn't didn't get any silly ideas about voting for socialists or or or fascists or whatever. Um And it originally kind of The idea was that they were without beer.

Um but then the working men managed to take over the clubs that were being run on their behalf and the first thing they did was get beer in. And so for most of the twentieth century working men's clubs were an alternative to the pub. Uh and because they were owned by the members There was no profit motive, so they could sell beer cheaper than than pubs could. Um but on top of that, you know, any investment got put back into the club uh rather than being given as profit to shareholders.

And so they would build games rooms and then they would build concert halls and and then with the concert halls they would go, Well well Joe's a carpenter, you're a painter, we could we could put a play on you, you can you guys can do the scenery and and you can read quite well, so you could act. And so they became places of entertainment as well as as well as drinking. Uh and um they would have newspaper rooms as well, uh, with all the days papers in.

And by the late twentieth century they were basically the the crucible for most of Britain's uh light entertainment. So, you know, when I was a kid through to you know s from the sixties through to about the nineties. If you saw a comedian, a T V presenter, a game show host, uh a singer, a band,

chances are they'd come up through the working men's club circuit, especially in the north of England w where I grew up. And so the book is kind of a history of that movement'cause it just hasn't been written about at all. Working class history tends to be ignored wherever you go. Um the club men didn't keep great records, so there wasn't much of a recording thing going on uh within the clubs.

Um but it's also very personal to me. Um I I grew up in that world. I was the first generation that didn't get my club membership card for my eighteenth birthday. Uh and I didn't want one and it never occurred to me to have one. And so part of the book is about the decline of the clubs and why why did I not want to go? Have have they declined? Was that what spurned spawned the uh the the the book?

Yeah, and um yeah they th there's still about fifteen hundred left. Uh but the average membership of them is in the seventies. Uh and they're struggling to attract new members and they they need to I mean they they had issues with they had issues with uh with sexism. W women didn't get equal rights in clubs until two thousand and seven. Uh, there were issues in the seventies with racism and there was this general sense that they were just behind the times.

On top of that they were strongest in the big industrial areas. So when all the heavy industry in Britain uh closed in the eighties uh you got this dispersal. Working class communities are now very different. It used to be very homogeneous and and now everyone's doing a different job in a different place at a different time.

Um and so there has been this big decline. But my argument in the book is that although they had lots of problems, there's still a really important role for them to play in in communities, just as these hubs, these centers

They're quite big buildings, they had lots of rooms. You know, there's nowhere else. Libraries are closing, youth clubs are closing, community centres are closing, and then there are these big spaces where most of it's locked and shut in darkness for the week, apart from Friday night when these old guys go in for a pint. Do you see a nostalgia bringing them back or do you see'cause y y you obviously don't remember why you didn't join or what it was?

Did you will your nostalgia for it now? You know, as we reach that sort of uh middle age. See you Seek them out? Yeah, a little bit. A little bit. But more than that, there's this thing that's happening to a lot of people I've spoken to, and you've got to be in the right place for this to happen and I'm lucky about where I live. Um we've got one down the road from us, uh

Which turns out to be a really historically significant club. I didn't know that until I started res researching the book. Um and I was looking for a venue for my wife's fiftieth birthday. And so we hide their concert room. Uh for Liz's birthday party. And we went in and everyone's like, Look at this place. This is incredible. It's like th this concert room hasn't changed since the nineteen seventies. It's it's used ac it's actually now used quite a lot for film shoots.

uh for people who so so the the Renny Zellweger pick of uh Judy Garland, they shot all their concert footage in in the Mild May.'Cause it still looks it still looks like that kind of venue, you know. And and there are a few the Malmans not the only one, there are these venues around the country where people will go for a for a party or something like that. And you get in there and you go, This is incredible. This is incredible and and w how do I get involved? How can I how can I

take part in this. And they'll commit to like, well, you know, it's all right now but normally it's just it's not normally like this, you know. And And so a few younger people are getting on these committees and revitalising them. So the Mildmay now has apart from being used as a film shoot and it gets a lot of income from that. Everyt every time we just had uh the director Steve McQueen shooting a film in there Uh

And uh you know, every time they get the income from uh a film shoot, they'll repair a bit of the roof, or they'll build some dressing rooms, or they'll they'll empty these old toilets behind stage, backstage that have been no one's gone in for forty years. And so the club's gradually regenerating. And there's a few around London, Leeds, uh, Manchester that are having similar things. And a new generation's finding them, repurposing them.

Yeah, having having kind of swing jazz nights, uh uh the thing about the Malmade Club now is that there's l all these different rooms. There's nine full size snooker tables downstairs just off the main bar, so people will go in just to play snooker. There'll be all the old ladies playing bingo, literally being kind of transported in from rest homes, retirement homes, and going up the stair lift to get to the bingo. It's their only

time out of the rest home all week. And then in a room just downstairs from them there'll be some kind of uh avant garde jazz concert going on. And so in this building you just got all these different things happening at the same time and there's a real

Sold. Now th this a very serious question in this day and age Uh for for some of the books that you've written, uh again, some of the foundational modern craft beer books, whether there's uh IPA, um uh Hops and Glory. Um and m uh I I keep three sheets to win and man walked in the pub. Uh b a as I showed you before they're on my uh bookshelf. But do you ever get royalties? From those? Like is there a legacy?

For royalty. Man walks into a pub I get roalties from. I get a few a few hundred pounds a year from that, which is nice. Uh most not a lot, but it's nice. But most most of the other ones haven't earned out their advance yet and they probably won't. Uh So uh yeah, I still technically owe money. I mean th i in in a way that, you know, you're never you're never called to pay it back. But they give you an advance based on es estimated sales and

So these days uh wha what's the most profitable way that the writer gets the larger share? Like is it buying an audiobook? Is it buying it from Amazon? Is there a uh you know, a old line uh an online retailer that is not one of the mega ones. There is in the UK uh there's a couple of places like there's a site called bookshop dot org where which works exactly the same as Amazon, except the physical copy is coming from a local independent bookshop rather than a massive warehouse.

Um so I don't know if that exists in Australia or anything similar. Uh but that's a really nice idea. So at least it could retail. So uh if they if they do ship overseas. Yeah, so that's bookshop dot org. Um but the I th there's kind of having to swallow some pride about this, but the way any author gets the most money is by selling physical copies themselves. So so the retailer normally gets a fifty percent margin.

Uh and if you buy copies and you lug a suitcase to an event like I do, then you're getting that fifty percent of the margin. Uh and i in these in these cashless days there was something wonderful about going to a going to an event with a suitcase full of books. Selling them for cash.

And coming out with an e an envelope full of readies, you know, it's just fantastic. Like what am I gonna do now? This is brilliant. And not having to lug that heavy suitcase home. The light suitcase swinging it through the air as you go down the street. With your money in your pocket, going, I'm gonna go for an Indian meal.

Well I'm not sure when I'm gonna get the chance to uh buy a physical copy from you and lighten your suitcase uh in person, but uh in the meantime I will buy a uh a copy and and I'm I'm I'm gonna buy both'cause I wanna have the audio book and hear your dulcet tones uh uh uh talking me to sleep at a at night as I listen to uh men's clubs. But uh Pete Brown, it's always a pleasure um and always a fascinating conversation and it's uh it it we never have enough time so hopefully we will get to have

Yeah. It'd be great to be in the same country, whichever one that is. Thanks, Pete. Alright. And that was Pete Brown. If you like this conversation and would like to make sure that we can keep having them, you can help us out. If you're a business that wants to reach professional brewers and brewery owners, we think we're the most targeted way to do that.

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