The UK Craft Beer Industry Reacts To The Beavertown Heineken Deal

The dust is still settling from Beavertown’s announcement that they’d sold an undisclosed stake in their London-based company to Heineken and social media is a buzz with opinions (good and bad) regarding the sale.

And here’s some significant industry voices on the matter…

Manchester, England’s Cloudwater threw down immediately when they learned of the Beavertown/Heineken deal…and announced that they’d no longer be attending the Beavertown Extravaganza…

Beavertown, The UK Craft Beer Industry Reacts To The Beavertown Heineken Deal

Responding  to a customer’s complaint, Cloudwater positioned their decision to boycott the Beavertown Festival this way… “If we’d known then what we know now, we wouldn’t have signed up for this year in the first place

BrewDog co-founder James Watt was equally unforgiving….

The Drinks Business is reporting that Hop, Burns & Black, a craft beer bottle shop / record store-and artisan hot sauce purveyor in south London, made a website announcement that in spite of the fact that  Beavertown beers make up 8% of the shop’s total revenue , they’d no longer be selling their product,,,

“We are, frankly, f*cking gutted about this but we feel strongly that we need to be true to our principles and our support of independent beer.

Beavertown has been hugely instrumental in developing the UK craft beer scene and to sell to Heineken (no matter what the share) feels, quite frankly, like a slap in the face.”

Heineken – like AB InBev – does not have the health of the UK independent beer scene at heart. Dressing up this move as good for the consumer is just spin – in reality this is simply helping Big Beer chip away at the UK independent beer scene. As independent retailers whose business is also at risk from Big Beer’s targeting of the industry, we cannot support this.”

 

 

IndieBeer a North London beer shop that prides themselves as “Selling beers from independent brewers” posted a picture that amplified their position.

https://twitter.com/indiebeershop/status/1009771655286218754

 

And Silver Street Brewing took a more philosophical tack to Beavertown’s decision that seemed honest…

 

About AmericanCraftBeer.com

AmericanCraftBeer.com is the nations' leading source for the Best Craft Beer News, Reviews, Events and Media.
Scroll To Top