Before I start, I want to clarify one thing. I shall refrain from commenting on brewers as a business but brewers as people who make beer.

I would also like to assume that all brewers want to make great beer. This might not be true, but I believe all brewers have this desire.

The next thing is to define great beer. Lucky that I have already done this….

I have defined great beer thus: GREAT BEER (notice in capitals therefore assume I think it is important), is the perfect balance between quality & consistency, and flavour & character. Quality is the specification of the beer and consistency is how often you achieve it. Flavour is the choice of the brewer and can be simple or complex. If it’s more complex then the greater the difficulty in achieving consistency.

Character is the natural variation that you find in a biological process. Why does one field of hops grow the same as a field next to it? Why does a field of barley grow the same way every year and why does yeast ferment the same way every time?  The answer is that they don’t and this all adds up to the character of the beer.

Just to explain further I want the first three sips of London Pride to tell you that it is London Pride. After that I would like it to tell you something that it does not always tell you in every pint, and that I believe is the character of the drink.

I think big brewers concentrate on quality and consistency but tend to ignore flavour and character. Indeed, they remove them in order to control consistency. This beer might be refreshing but it is not interesting and therefore cannot be a great beer.

On the other hand craft brewers are really interested in flavour and character and some ignore quality and consistency. This means that sometimes you fail to recognise the beer you have just bought, clearly a disappointment when it happens.

So I have at my first point (at last).

Craft brewers like Fuller’s can learn consistency from big brewers. Indeed I have always told my brewers to visit breweries like Budweiser and Carlsberg to learn their approach to quality but I add a caveat, which is don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater in the pursuit of consistency, which means don’t change the character of the beer.

So let us look at some areas where a craft brewer can learn from the big brewer.

I have mentioned quality and consistency above but just to emphasise its importance. One of the reasons for Fuller’s success was the Fuller’s laboratory team. Without them and their contribution Fuller’s would not exist today. I recommend all brewers, no matter how small, carry out routine testing of their beer.

There are so many rules and regulations controlling the production of beer. Whether it’s Customs & Excise, export regulations, food safety regulations or just health and safety, big brewers have been there and got the T-shirt. Ask them for help because most won’t bite.

There is nothing like experience, especially if you haven’t got any. I remember my first product recall and how helpful Guinness were to me, not just with advice but they actually carried out an investigation for us.

Then you can look at raw material and utilities. Big brewers get the best prices, chat to them they might advise you. They will also know how to deal with the water authorities better than you.

Big brewers also have better engineers than craft brewers. Most engineers I know are very helpful especially to people they like. Have a beer with them and chat through your problems.

When it comes to training, Fuller’s have tried to help other brewers with their training even to the extent of opening our doors and allowing other brewers to work in brewery and learn how we make beer and package beer. It is not in Fuller’s interest for other brewers to make awful beer, one bad pint can put people off for years. I believe that brewers should help each other.

Now let us look at areas that the big brewer can learn from craft brewers.

Firstly, innovation and new product development. Well would any big brewer have come up with IPA as the next big thing?

No.

Most new product development was an extension or repackaging of an existing beer. Now that has changed big breweries want to develop beers such IPAs. But in the main they struggle to get it, both from a beer point of view and from a marketing point of view.

Then there’s social media and excitement. Marketing spend in big brewers is hugely biased towards traditional media. They struggle to use the new media. Consequently it lacks excitement.

They can also learn from the balance between brewers, marketeers and finance.

In the craft world, brewers are seen to be the leaders. They are the experts in flavour and make the new interesting beers, therefore it is the beer that informs the marketing. In the world of the big brewer, it is the marketeer who decides what to make. The finance team decide the cost, then they instruct the brewer to make the beer. Consequently the brewer has a disconnect with the beer they are making

Finally, the value of the brewery site. All of a sudden brewery sites are sexy, especially taprooms, and event spaces. The public are welcomed in with open arms. Big Breweries by and large got rid of their interesting sites and turned them into soulless factories. Who got that one right?

So where do Fuller’s fit into this?

We brew around 200,000 barrels of beer per year. Many American craft brewers are bigger than this. I maintain that we are closer in size and philosophy to the craft beer movement than we are to the big international brewers. We feel comfortable in craft beer and that is why we want to belong.

I would like to look at some examples of how we participate in craft brewing.

New breweries can innovate faster than larger established brewers. They can get those beers to market much quicker. However established brewers have a history, something the new craft brewers do not have. The Past Masters is the way Fuller’s makes that history count. The first beer we made was an 1891 XX strong Ale. The next one was an 1893 Porter.

Through our search for historical barley varieties we helped generate interest in these, which continues to this day. Does this count as innovation? We could go beyond this though, and brew and taste these beers at the same locations they were brewed and tasted in the past. This brings a tremendous emotional attachment to these beers and I hope that the drinkers can participate in this too.

While I don’t claim that Fuller’s and Friends was original or groundbreaking, it was and still is a bringing together of friends. I also don’t see it as a Master/pupil relationship much more a meeting of equals. What ever it was or is, the first one was huge fun and I hope they continue for long time.

Fuller’s were a founder member of the LBA and have been active members ever since. Indeed I am now Chairman and Fuller’s ran the most successful LBA festival in June this year where we had 45 LBA brewers on-site. We all had a great time. I have great hopes for the LBA and hope to make London one of the greatest beer cities in the world.

In addition to this, the LBA wants to drive training for brewers and again Fuller’s will play their role in this. Indeed Fuller’s as I mentioned above have taken other brewers into our laboratory, bottling and other areas of the brewery and enabled them to learn how we do things. I hope that this has been of benefit to them.

Finally, many Fuller’s pubs now sell a wide range of craft beer. We try to support brewers from the London Brewers Alliance and from Fuller’s and Friends. I hope that this exposure is helpful to the brewers that appear.