"The UK is ripe for a beer-drinking revolution" - 2001

Here's a piece the Daily Telegraph did on Microbar from August 2001. I dug it out while searching for quotes for a press release for Steve's brewing venture "Out There Brewing Company."

Some of the quotes from Steve and I were subject to some journalist license. Certainly neither of us said the words "personally, I blame most of the acts of random violence in the north east on Stella Artois", although the words "Stella Artois", "violence" and "north east" are likely to have occurred in a Pickthall jeremiad about the then-woeful state of British beer drinking.

I particularly like the quote that appears at the end: "Woolly CAMRA-types don't like what we're doing because we don't sell real ale." Again, we have been awkwardly paraphrased. This quote doesn't really capture what we were trying to express. A better quote would have been "Woolly CAMRA-types don't like what we are doing because we don't buy into their narratives. We don't use the term 'real ale' preferring instead 'craft beer'."

The line "with evangelists such as the Pickthalls working to promote craft-made beers, British beer-drinkers should before long have an alternative to lager that is not just real ale" is an interesting one. The reporter seems not to have grasped that we were pro-[good] lager and that our disavowal of the term "real ale" in preference for "craft beer" was in part motived by our desire to de-demonise lager. Also, could this be the first documented British use of "craft beers", albeit appearing as "craft-made beers"?

Click to go large and legible.