Beer: simple, yet sophisticated, marketing

Fresh Foods

You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer. – Frank Zappa
Elsevier Food International, Vol. 11, Number 2, May 2008

A cold beer is a thing of beauty, and with the globalisation of the industry, there’s barely a corner of the planet where you can’t enjoy one. However, even with the remorseless spread of the beer industry and the development of brewing technology and equipment over the years, the process and essential ingredients – barley, hops, yeast and water – have remained largely the same. Beer was first brewed in ancient Egypt in 4000 BC and – with tea and coffee not yet discovered – it quickly became the drink of choice as it spread across the world. It was safer to drink than water as the alcohol and hop ingredients killed harmful bacteria. In fact, evidence suggests that by the Middle Ages in Europe people were having beer for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Liquid bread
It was the use of natural ingredients that earned beer its reputation as ‘liquid bread’, and throughout history it has often been consumed as a healthier alternative to water, which was frequently contaminated. In the Middle Ages all the brewing – and indeed bread-making as well – was carried out by women, or brewsters as they were known. Beer was brewed at most homes and they developed into the first taverns or pubs. Hops weren’t included in beer until 800AD.
Europe’s first lager was made in Germany in the 18th century with brewers storing the beer in cold places like caves to mature it. This process was called 'lagern' (German for 'to store'), hence the name lager. The first pale lager – Pilsner – on which most of today’s lagers are based – was made in the German town of Pilsen in 1842, in Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic). It quickly became a huge success all over Europe and reached the US by 1874.
The ale market has been in decline ever since then but microbrewers, particularly in the US, have proved that there is still a market for distinctive ales in recent years. The brewing industry really benefited from the industrial revolution of the 1800s: the steam engine, the thermometer and hydrometer all served to improve the efficiency of the brewing process. The advent of refrigeration in the 1860-70s was a key turning point for the industry as brewers were able to make lager all year round. And the discovery of yeast's role in fermentation by Louis Pasteur in 1857 enabled brewers to refine their products even further.

Future trends in beer
Today’s beer market is dominated by global players like Anheuser-Busch, InBev, Heineken, SAB Miller and Scottish & Newcastle. The world’s top 40 breweries produce approximately 85 per cent of the world’s beer and they are involved in a constant battle for what brewers call ‘share of throat’.
Currently they are flexing their muscles in the developing markets, particularly China and Russia, where beer sales are now surging after decades of consumer restrictions. They are doing this in various ways: firstly, by acquiring stakes in brewery companies in these countries, for example Anheuser-Busch owns a 30 per cent stake in China’s best-known brewer Tsingtao;  secondly, by opening new breweries in the developing markets. In addition the brewers are consolidating some of their operations and entering into alliances with each other, for example Scottish & Newcastle and Carlsberg have an Eastern European joint venture.

Microbrewers
But it’s not all over for the little brewers who can co-exist alongside these multinationals in local markets with a more regional character. For example, in Germany beer drinkers are fiercely loyal towards regional brands. In recent years there has been a revolution in the US microbrewery industry to offer customers more hoppy and flavour-rich beers. Just like the bigger companies, these smaller brewers are investing in modern technology and innovation with a continuing focus on efficiencies and new products and marketing.
On the products side, brewers are concentrating on expanding their offerings across the world – for example, InBev has introduced Brahma, one of Brazil’s leading beers, to Europe, as one of its three world beers alongside Stella Artois and Beck’s.
Marketing these beers is an incredibly sophisticated – and expensive – business and is backed up by global advertising themes that promote certain beers as being cool, better tasting or just plain trendy.
Wheat beers, flavoured beers and even diet beers (in the US, naturally) have all come on to the market in recent years. Wheat beers originated from Belgium (witbier) and Germany (weissbier), and the Belgian brand Hoegaarden is probably the world’s most famous wheat beer. Wheat beer is also produced in the US, Canada, Australia and Brazil.
Flavoured beers are nothing new to the market as bark, berries, fruits, herbs and spices have been used to add flavour to ales for centuries. Belgium produces the most traditional fruit beers – peach, banana and blackcurrant beers are common but cherry (kriek) and raspberry (framboise, or frambozen) are probably the two best-known products. These days brewers are increasingly pushing the envelope, with chestnut and chocolate flavoured beers, beers made with lemon and dragon fruit and even cola-flavoured beers. The beer market and the technology involved have become increasingly sophisticated over the years but the process and essential ingredients have not changed.

This article was provided by GEA, a company which  builds and supplies manufacturing equipment and process engineering expertise to breweries all over the world. GEA companies include: Huppmann, Tuchenhagen Brewery Systems, Grasso International, GEA Diessel, GEA Ecoflex, and Westfalia Separator.

 

For more information visit www.geagroup.com