Britain Needs More Authentic Beer Drinking, Not More Authentic Beer

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Britain loves a good craft beer. Craft ales have exploded in popularity over the last decade with brands fighting to claim the critical ‘craft’ characteristic of ‘authenticity’ by talking up their provenance, ingredient quality and of course the personal touch of their artisan origins.

Can the average beer drinker taste the ‘authentic’ difference? Possibly not, but it doesn’t matter, because that’s not what craft drinkers are buying anyway. At a deeper level, ‘craft’ and ‘authenticity’ itself are solutions to the problem of meaninglessness (yes, craft beer can get all existential). Craft beer tells a tangible story of ‘person’ and ‘place’ that we intuitively ‘get’. And in a world that feels like it’s moving too fast in the wrong direction to fully make sense, that gives us something real to hold onto.

The bigger problem in beer drinking is not what we drink, but how we drink it. Pubs are closing at an ever increasing rate reducing our drinking options and turning our high streets into yet more coffee shops and estate agents. Hybrid working makes it harder to ‘grab a drink with a friend on the way home from work’ because who knows what days anyone works any more. As any publican who relies on hybrid workers will tell you, the tradition of a big ‘Friday night’ is a thing of the past. And with ever rising prices, the ‘kids’ simply can’t afford to drink in pubs, so get drunk at home before emerging for last orders.

We simply can’t and don’t drink like we used to. And for the great British pub-going public, this the tangible experience of things ‘not making as much sense as it used to’ in a visceral, doesn’t-feel-quite-right-in-my-bones sort of way. It feels symptomatic of a world we once knew slipping away, under the influence of unseen forces we can’t comprehend and are powerless to change.

There is much that is wrong with British binge-drinking culture, but there is much, much more that is right with British pub culture. If the pandemic taught us nothing else, it was that we can’t live by screen alone, we need real world social interaction. And pubs are those places that bring the local community together to catch up on news, drown sorrows, put the world to rights and maybe get lucky on Friday night. In an increasingly secular world, they are an important social glue holding communities, high streets and villages together. And, as any foreigner will tell you, they are a charming part of what makes Britain Britain. 

Great British beer drinking not only ‘makes sense’, but helps make the world make sense. In a world that is moving too fast, we need an hospitable place to hole up with friends for a few hours to take stock. But it’s beer culture, not craft beer that is giving us something real to hold on to amidst the madness. We need a beer brand to stand up for authentic drinking, not simply authentic beer and give us some genuine, authentic beer cheer.