IT HARDLY BEARS THINKING ABOUT

 In Pak 'N' Save supermarket today I looked at the beer shelves for the first time in a long while.

I was astounded at the range of 'boutique' beers on the shelves and even more astounded at the price of these - anything from $6 to over $12 for a can or a bottle for many of them. Who drinks this stuff? Rich hipsters?

Things have certainly changed in the drinks industry in this country. As you know I drink mainly wine and have narrowed my preferences of that down to Champagne or Methode Traditionelles, chardonnay and pinot noir. I sometimes deviate from wine and have a vodka and tonic. My vodka brand of choice is Broken Shed which is produced in Wanaka from whey spirit and is triple distilled. It's bloody good and far better than many other local and imported brands I've tried. 

There are so many new 'boutique' brands of vodka, gin and other spirits and liqueurs being made in New Zealand nowadays. This is a radical departure from the days when I was in the industry marketing beer, wine and spirit brands. I wonder how they can all survive - maybe it's those rich hipsters keeping them going.

Anyway, back to the beer thing - back when we were young guys drinking beer back in the early 1970s there wasn't a great deal of choice. The two main breweries - Dominion Breweries (DB) and New Zealand Breweries (Lion) both had multiple breweries throughout the country having bought up the smaller independent breweries over many years and, through a tied hotel system (they owned or leased the pubs and drinking holes and only their own brands would be allowed to be sold in these) had a duopoly going so were able to control pricing and distribution and, more importantly choice. 

The breweries also owned or controlled nearly all of the wine and spirit merchants which were the only alternative to their own pub-based bottle shops. This situation existed up until the 1980s when changes to The Sale of Liquor Act allowed wine shops (previously limited to selling only NZ wine) to sell other forms of alcohol and supermarkets to sell wine and beer. The control diminished and the big format wine and spirit merchants disappeared. Controlling the other outlets for beer meant that the breweries  restricted imported beers coming into the country. These, and also exacerbated by import quotas, were expensive and often not very fresh.

Both breweries produced beer using the continuous fermentation method, a rather dubious New Zealand  'invention'. This basically allowed them to continuously push out the beer in their vast factories with the advantage of consistency and volume. The downside of course was that what was produced was lowish alcohol, soapy tasting slop. The alternative method, batch brewing, was more expensive and required greater skill and care for consistent product. This was how the imported lagers and beers were made. They had more flavour, power and alcohol. The two breweries did make some batch brewed beer which they labelled 'export'. Some examples are Red Band Export, DB Export and Leopard De Luxe which were all great tasting beers but quite low in market share back in the 70s and 80s and only after licensing laws were relaxed did the locally made Steinlagers, Heinekens and others start to make an impact.

The continuous fermentation beers the breweries produced went by many brand names that usually referenced the town, city or region where a (original craft) brewery once stood. Some examples are Tui, Waikato, Speights, Lion Brown, Lion Red, DB Waitemata, DB Lager, DB Bitter, Ward's, Red Band and lots of others. These were, to be honest, rubbish tasting, invariably flat and low in alcohol (3.8%  - 4% ) compared to the 'Export' lagers and imported beers that were 5% and above. The duopoly encouraged rivalry (between themselves as they, cartel-like, restricted outside competition) and their marketing created 'hero' brands that supported sporting codes, teams and local events. Consequently loyal drinkers identified with their favourite brands and a Lion Red drinker would pour scorn on a DB Bitter drinker even though they were virtually the same. Collectively, the drinkers of 'hero' brands would in turn pour scorn on lager drinkers (New Zealand 'export' brands as well as imported brands) labelling them pussies for drinking weak and pussy beers. The irony in this is that the New Zealand 'export' brands and the world famous imported brands were (and are) stronger flavoured and higher alcohol beers than the 'soapy' 4 percenters. Go figure!

In the 1980s and 1990s, facing so much change, the major breweries (now owned by international conglomerates) paid more than lip service to the emerging craft breweries that were chipping away at their market share but, more importantly, capturing the interest of their loyal supporters of the 'hero' brands.  Larger than average operations like McCashins and Monteith's were giving the big boys the finger and had to be put down. Initially the big boys created brands to block them with but it soon became evident that the little guys were producing a better product, albeit in limited volume. The big boys (via their more experienced international owners) bought them out. Instead of closing them down they boosted the output while investing in quality control and created quite large 'boutique' brands way beyond what they would ever have become if they remained independent. This isn't a bad thing it's just the upside of market forces. Justifiably there are strong supporters of Speight's (re-invented by Lion Breweries), Monteith's and McCashin's (owned by Lion Breweries but let slide in favour of Speight's) and these have slipped into the mainstream.

Over the last decade, with further licensing deregulation, craft beers have become popular with a booming of manufacturers and brands. These newbies don't rely on the older strategy of creating hero brands to dupe dull-witted followers into carrying the marketing for them via sports teams, club room banners and branded apparel - they use branding and image innovation to excite younger drinkers (and old farts like Robert I assume). This marketing strategy had it's roots in the soft-drink, RTD and energy drinks sectors with racy imagery hiding a myriad of sins. When the interest and sales wane they immediately put out new brands and packaging and bombard the shelves with them. To this end they've benefitted from supermarkets being able to sell beer and who don't want to deal in the boring, low turnover and margin and cumbersome 'swap-a-crate type selling of quart bottles of Lion Red and DB Bitter and slabs of cheap lager. They promote the rapid change strategy as it enables them to populate the beer shelves with colourful, high priced and very high margin product. It's a  Win:Win for the producers and the retailers.

OK, back to my supermarket shopping.

I spied a beer brand that I recognised in another category - BORING.

You will recall that in an earlier post I mentioned BORING oat milk.

I reached out for it, thinking that I'd give it a try and then saw the price - $9.99 for a can. Fuck that! Are they nuts? I'm no rich hipster.

"I am."

I looked along the shelves at the many other items, all sold in units and the prices are staggering. This is for beer, admittedly made in a craftsmen way (read  amateurs who knock it up in the backyard) but, at the end of the day it's just water, grain and hops. The big breweries can make the same or similar stuff with greater quality control and sell it at a fifth or less of the price. I think that there's a bit of price gouging going on here and maybe the hipsters will wake up to it soon.

Meanwhile the shelves are choc-a-bloc with all sorts of brands, shapes and colours. The naming leaves a lot to be desired and runs from the puerile and silly through to the obscene.

                             

I doubt that Robert would take this brand home but if he did the allusion probably would go over his honest and naive head.

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I didn't buy any beer, opting instead for a 4-pack of Kopparberg non-alcohol cider. This is delicious.

On the way home I called into Super Liquor and bought a bottle of Broken Shed vodka.