Drifting Away
Almost 15 years ago, I went on a nine-brewery, ten-day tour of Great Britain. In a weird case of cosmic serendipity, the first three stops were breweries whose fates would eventually merge: Fuller’s, Meantime, and Dark Star. Fuller’s was historic, London’s last 19th-century regional cask ale brewery, and perhaps the last brewery anywhere still conducting parti-gyle brewing. Meantime interested me because it was trying to reestablish IPAs in their homeland, plus it was working on a project to make a lager with English ingredients. Finally Dark Star was one of the upstart craft breweries that had really developed facility with hops, and everybody was buzzing about Hophead, their pale ale made with American Cascades and Centennials.
You probably heard how the story ended. Asahi went on a spending spree, and acquired all these breweries. Last week, Asahi announced it was “closing Meantime Brewery in Greenwich and will move brewing of its Meantime and Dark Star beers to its Fuller’s site in Chiswick.” Today, Fullers’ reputation is solid, but Meantime and Dark Star have become much diminished. It’s no longer surprising to watch purchased brands wither, but it’s not what any of the breweries promised when the consolidation happened. When Fuller’s acquired Dark Star in 2018, the latter claimed the sale “gives us huge opportunities to brew more one-off small batch beers.” That was a pipe dream even before Asahi bought Fuller’s the next year—acquired brands do not find creative flower under new management; they get pushed off into a corner while the owner milks their core brands.
Meantime’s convoluted path to Asahi started with a sale to SABMiller in 2015, and at the time Meantime CEO Nick Miller was trying to allay fears that customers would abandon the brand under new ownership. “I think the term ‘craft’ will disappear… If you stay true to what you believe in, which is high quality premium beers, I think the drinker will welcome that.” He should have worried about what would happen to Meantime. Neither one makes any interesting beer anymore—aside from the old classics developed by their founders—and if they slowly drift away, who will notice?
As all this was happening, I thought back to 2011. I was impressed with each of the breweries, for different reasons. Fuller’s was Fuller’s, of course—then and now an indelible fixture of English brewing. If Asahi closes the Griffin Brewery in Chiswick, at least the Fullers’s place in history won’t be lost. But for the average consumer under 35, do Meantime and Dark Star even register? Do they know that these were once important enough breweries to attract international attention?
Alastair Hook founded Meantime in 1999, which by American standards isn’t that early—but it was a big deal in London. One of the most historic brewing cities in the world, London was a terribly diminished place with maybe a dozen breweries when I visited. “We’re here to change the way people think about beer,” Hook told me, bubbling with excitement. “The world is working it out. World-class craft beer and the revolution that is craft beer is the best thing that ever happened. And for me, after 25 years as a brewer and start to see—I’m glad I hadn’t retired and become bitter. I’m glad I’m still in the thick of it at the age of 48 and being able to see it happen all around me.”
Alastair had seen his industry slowly die the entire time he’d been working in it. Little breweries like the one he founded had the potential to reverse the trend and introduce a new generation to beer. It worked, too. Despite the difficulties the UK is experiencing post-pandemic, the number of breweries has tripled, and in London it completely skyrocketed. (Today London has 10x the number of breweries than it did the day I visited Meantime.)
Alastair Hook at Meantime in Greenwich, London
Dark Star as it was in Partridge Green
Dark Star was also important, and as I look back I wonder if it wasn’t even historic. I was attracted there because of all the buzz Hophead was getting. A lemon-yellow beer with 35 IBUs, it was bitter, bold, and very much not your father’s pint of bitter. Yet at 3.8%, it was also very much in the British tradition. At the time, a sometimes nasty internecine war pitted old cask breweries against new American-style keg breweries, but Hophead placed a foot in both camps. “Some people get too obsessed—evangelical—on both sides,” Tranter told me. “Some beers are better suited to cask, without a doubt, especially low-gravity English ales. But some beers are more suited to keg.” Now it is common for low-alcohol cask ale to be vivid and aromatic with New World hops, a merging of the trends that were at war a decade and a half ago. At the time Hophead seemed interesting for its use of US hops—but now I wonder if it didn’t blaze a path forward for English ales.
Meantime and Dark Star were important enough to attract the attention of larger suitors. They did so because they were forward-looking breweries developing beers that would serve future customers, not ones stuck in the past. Big breweries thought they could buy this kind of innovation, but now we know that’s not how it works. (Real innovation, not that PR blather.) Mark Tranter, perhaps sensing changes, had already departed to found Burning Sky, which made its own impact on the course of British brewing. I don’t know what happened to Alastair Hook, but his memory is not being served very well by the current owners of Meantime, who misspell his name on the brewery website. In any case, the breweries are in a far sadder place than when I visited them.
This is the way of things: sell a smaller brewery to a larger one and it will inevitably change and very likely decline. That’s no reason not to sell—anyone spending a lifetime building something deserves a retirement plan. But decline means loss, if not of the beer itself, then the thing that made it special. Once it is no longer connected to the place it was born, it’s just a label on a can. In a decade, probably not even that.