The Guardian view on ‘indie beer’: crafting a new identity | Editorial

In tough economic times, a rebranding campaign by small breweries can help keep the industry's big beasts at bay

These are tough economic times for small-scale craft breweries, as recent closures have sadly illustrated. But the ethos of creative defiance and quirky independence lives on. At the annual Didsbury beer festival in Manchester this weekend, drinking possibilities range from the intriguingly named Interior Life in the Exterior World, by the Mancunian brewer Cloudwater, to the less angsty Superdelic Single Hop, from Big Trip. Sellout crowds have testified to the resilience of a sector that combines playfulness with anintense seriousness about hoppy beer.

Successfully appealing to the cognoscenti, however, is one thing. Courting non-aficionados, and coping with ever more wily multinational competitors, is quite another. A survey commissioned by the Society of Independent Brewers and Associates (Siba) has found that clever branding, combined with judicious takeovers of successful independents, is allowing industry giants to muscle in and profit from pushing their own pseudo-artisanal vibe. Just under half of those questioned by YouGov believed, for example, that the rough-and-ready sounding Neck Oil beer is brewed by an independent, when in fact it is the product of Heineken-owned Beavertown.

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