ather round, Comrades, there's a bloke stood on a wooden box and he's getting it all off his chest.  Ooooh, hang on a minute, he can't say that, can he?

Oh yes he can!  (and he just did - twice!)  

(The archive stuff has now been split off and is available here).

  The Latest Soapbox Rant : Sunday 5th July 2009 

It’s the deception I hate.

We were in Stockholm the other week scooping beer – amongst other things – and consequently we visited the best Systembolaget shop in town to get some “room beers”.  In case you don’t know what I’m talking about thus far, let me explain; Sweden has a State-controlled alcohol system which basically means that only beer up to 3.5% ABV can be purchased in ordinary shops (we saw a whole row of imported UK beers in one shop; Sheps Spitfire and Wychwood Hobgoblin at 3.5%, anyone?) so for anything stronger you need to visit a branch of the State-run alcohol shops (called Systembolaget) or go to a bar.

This method of controlling the sale of alcohol has it’s ups and downs; drink in the Systembolaget shops is surprisingly cheap (not much more expensive than here in the UK) and the range – at the best stores – is relatively varied and interesting, but on the flipside you can’t get that many micro-brewer’s beers in the stores “off the shelf” and consequently, with ordinary shops unable to sell the majority of craft beer owing to it being above the 3.5% threshold, there’s not a lot of other options if you want some scoops in bottle.  Prices in bars are universally high, around £6 a pint, plus no take-outs are allowed so acquiring bottled micro beer is a matter of either visiting the brewery or getting lucky at a Systembolaget.

Despite these measures, which seem designed to support the multinational brewers and prevent micros selling their beer, the Swedish craft beer market is expanding (in common with that in most other European countries) as many people wish to drink craft beer rather than industrially-concocted junk for a variety of reasons including health, ethics and support for the “little guy”.  Per Forsgren, the leading Swedish scooper, told us how, a few years back, the Swedish government decided that only one brewery was necessary in Sweden and so the Pripps monopoly (owned by Carlsberg) was allowed to close down almost every other brewer in the country before the policy was recognised to be a bad idea and the current crop of micros began to emerge.

So, that’s the political lesson over, back to my tale of angst.  We were in the Systembolaget Passagen store and had acquired eight scoops from brewers known to me from our Gothenburg trip the previous year when we came across an unknown brewer, Three Towns.  Now it’s not with some 20:20 after the event vision that I say I was suspicious of the very professional, slick labels and singular lack of information about the brewery anywhere on the label but, overriding my cynicism, we picked up Three Towns Sommerlager and Majbock for later consumption.

It was only during a superb Barbie at Per’s house a few nights later that, when I queried the Three Towns brewery’s identity, Per frowned; “It’s multinational crap” he informed us, and I felt very annoyed: I hate giving money to multinational companies on principle – in common with a growing number of “normal” people – and obviously Carlsberg Sverige realise this so, rather than badging their beer as Carlsberg, they’ve invented a spurious “micro-sounding” brand to con people into buying it thinking that it’s craft-brewed rather than industrially-made.  Carlsberg aren’t alone in doing this as corporations around the world try and cash in on the growth of craft producers and popular backlash against multinationalism by inventing new ranges of products (or simply rebadging their existing ones) with folksy-sounding names and – more insidiously – not putting their own name on the packaging (they’re not embarrassed, are they?) to try and fool people into buying their dross thinking it’s local and/or made with wholesome ingredients rather than the cheapest crud they can get their grasping hands on. 

Closer to home the “Red Sky” range of crisps is aimed squarely at the same market as Seabrooks, Kettle Chips and Tyrrells but completely fails to mention anywhere on the packet – apart from a tiny postcode, maybe a printing mistake? – that they are in fact manufactured by Walkers who, in case you needed a reason to hate them, are the UK outpost of the bloated corporation that is PepsiCo.  Then there’s Green & Black chocolate which has been in the hands of Cadburys for a good few years, but do they advertise that fact?  No, they keep it a very well-kept secret hoping, presumably, that those people who eat quality chocolate (that’s Cadbury out straight away; Dairy Milk doesn’t even meet the EU threshold on Cocoa solids of 35%!) will think it’s made by artisans in a small factory… well, it’s not, although I will admit that it’s a damn sight better than the usual crap Cadburys make!

Back in the beer world there are plenty of other examples of this blatant deception; Molson Coors brewery (now MillerCoors) make Blue Moon, a famous wheat beer in America, but fail to mention that they brew this beer at their huge factory in Toronto and instead claim it’s made by the “Blue Moon brewery company” which leads many drinkers desiring a craft beer to believe that it’s from a small independent brewer rather than a huge corporation with breweries worldwide, and then there's the small matter of a certain "Westgate Brewery" which produces beers but, similarly, fails to mention anywhere that the beers are - obviously to us, not to ordinary drinkers - made by Greene King which whilst not a multinational it does exhibit some of the same tendencies.

I could go on, but you get the message: I, and a growing number of ordinary people, don’t want to give money to these profit-at-all-costs multinational corporations and they realise it so, in their usual sneaky, underhand and devious manner, they are busy thinking up craft-sounding names in order to pass off the same old crap as a “craft product” or maybe a slightly better range that their usual crud.  In my opinion this is deception, pure and simple, and shows just why I dislike these insidious companies in the first place: rather than accepting people want a genuinely local and wholesomely-made produce they prefer to pass off industrial dross as craft hoping that consumers won’t know the difference. 

My experience in Stockholm shows that this works to an extent, but once bitten twice shy and next time I’ll let my innate cynicism make the decision and, hopefully, that’ll be the last time I give money to a multinational… until the next time I’m conned by the conniving bastards.

© Gazza 06/07/09

All previous rants are now available here to enable this page to load faster and upload quicker - revisit some of the old rants and be educated in the ways of the grumpy old men!