Craft Beer? Rising

Last weekend was the first ever Craft Beer Rising (CBR), held in the trendy Brick Lane area of London in the Old Truman Brewery building CBR is labelled as “here to throw off the shackles of a traditional beer gathering by crafting events, experiences and environments that take craft beer to the masses”. Lofty aims indeed.

The event was held over four sessions; Thursday day for trade buyers and other important people, with Friday evening, Saturday day and Saturday evening for the punters. After getting themselves into Timeout and other listings CBR sold out (each session had a capacity of 1100) at £10 a head (plus booking fees). This really is an achievement for the organisers as there were plenty more who wanted tickets with people coming to the doors on the day to see if tickets were available. In hindsight maybe they could have done a Sunday session too. Either this shows the effectiveness of the marketing for the event or the popularity of good beer in London; personally I think it was a combination of the two.

Craft Beer Rising essentially gives each brewery attending a trestle table and lets them get on with it, it’s marketed to the breweries as a chance to promote themselves to the “younger, more discerning consumer” and for this promotional opportunity the breweries have to pay a fee to be there.

In terms of the breweries represented there was about 40 contrasting breweries and I must say there was some excellent beers to be had, I particularly enjoyed a Brewdog Libertine Black Ale, Point’s Belgian White, and Offbeat’s Baby Belgian Dubbel. But I want to focus on the actual event as combined with not taking tasting notes as I went round (the horror!) I think the event’s concept and execution is more interesting.

Alongside the breweries’ stands there was also a Music room with DJ’s, live performances and a bar collaboration between the good people of Utobeer, Lost Group and Powder Keg Diplomacy which is such a good idea I wish it existed all year round.

The Breweries

I’ve had a think about the breweries that were at CBR and I’m struggling to tie them together . The term Craft is bandied around quite liberally in the information about CBR but was this really Craft Beer? As I’m a little fuzzy about definitions and I don’t want to get hung up on what is and what is not a Craft Beer but I wouldn’t expect some of the breweries at CBR to ever be considered Craft, I’m referring here to breweries like Marstons, Greene King, and Young’s. I also found it to be a slight shame that there wasn’t a real focus on London Breweries and there didn’t seem to be any geographical theme at all as breweries as diverse at Duvel, Brewdog, Steven Points Brewery (US) and Ten Saints Brewery (Barbados) were all represented. I’d be interested to know how the breweries were decided upon, but I imagine it was the ones willing to pay to be there, which is a limitation of the concept I suppose. 

I think the event would be stronger if it could be more geographically centralised as how much exposure are some of these breweries actually getting? The event would have been largely attended by Londoners and I suspect a lot of the attendees are not going to be actively hunting down for example Steven Points Brewery beers on BeersofEurope, compared to if they could get the beer they tried at CBR from a brewery nearby. It sounds like CBR want to take their event on tour and if they can get more local breweries to attend I think all parties gain and it makes the concept better.

The Pricing and Beer Tokens

To purchase beer inside CBR first you had to acquire non refundable Beer Tokens... tokens can work in a small event but there were a couple of problems here; 1) They were not refundable and I slightly over estimated how many I would need and had to go round purchasing full bottles to take home to avoid losing my money, 2) Queuing to purchase beer tokens takes time away from the breweries exposure, 3) To buy food you had to use cash. Lose the beer tokens and just use cash is the summary here.

The entry fee for CBR was £10 plus a booking fee of £1.75ish which I think was basically unavoidable. This is a lot considering you do not get any freebies and the session I attended was 4 hours in total.

Interesting Ideas

CBR had a couple of interesting ideas which I haven’t seen at a festival before which are worth mentioning. There was an app where you download it and get free things or offers etc, this was clever as the app people get people to download it and the punters get flash promotions and challenges. Sadly this was an iPhone only app and I’m an Android person myself but it did seem a good idea. The semi gourmet street food was also good as usually at festivals the food can leave a lot to be desired, I had a rather nice frankfurter which set me up for the evening.

Location and Set Up

Craft Beer Rising essentially gives each brewery attending a trestle table and lets them get on with it. I liked the fact that this gave the opportunity to chat to staff from the breweries rather than pointing at a barrel which made the event a little more interactive. The downside was that early on in the evening before everybody had navigated the queues to get in and get tokens I felt that there was a bit of an odd vibe as it was a bit brewer v brewer as they were aware that they losing time to expose their brand, this took some aspects of the celebration of good beer away and replaced it with a more Darwinian trade show feel, but once the queues subsided and everybody got in the atmosphere was much better.

For me £10 is too much when you can get into other festivals in cool locations such as the upcoming Wandsworth Beer Festival at Le Gothique for much less including a glass. Reduce the entry fee, make it more about the great beer you can get locally from craft breweries, get rid of the token system and I think the event would be improved. Overall I had a good time at CBR and I think CBR is a good twist on the standard beer festival which just needs some tweaks here and there which will come with experience.