Belgian beer culture threatened, part 1of 2

Waiting for Godot at a Belgian beer cafe may take many beers.  Photo by
Charlie Papazian

UK based international beer journalist Ina Verstl reports on the precipitous decline of the Belgian beer café and Belgian beer culture in the  in a recent edition of Brauwelt International.  The story, Waiting for Godot. Belgian Beer Market.  is a well researched and insightful account.  Verstl parodies the state of the Belgian Beer Industry with Samuel Becket’s play, Waiting for Godot. which is a story of two men who divert themselves while they wait expectantly for someone named Godot.  Godot never arrives.

With permission from the author this is a summary of her report with commentary.

Verstl cleverly begins:

ESTRAGON: Do you know the story of Belgium’s beer cafés?

VLADIMIR: Stop it

ESTRAGON: They go quietly. More than 1,500 last year.

VLADIMIR: STOP IT!

ESTRAGON: Some stay and fight. But many retreat into the shadows

VLADIMIR: I remain in the dark.

ESTRAGON: This is how it is. In Western Europe, beer consumption is going down. Yet, in Germany they worry themselves sick over Feinstaub [airborne particulate], in Britain they angst over Europe, and in Belgium, where the writing is on the wall for most village cafés, punters just shrug their shoulders and drink their beer elsewhere.

VLADIMIR: Nothing can be done.

ESTRAGON: Well, there is always the black economy and tax dodging.

VLADIMIR: What do brewers do?

ESTRAGON: They cry into their beer. And wait for Godot, err the taxman, to clamp down on errant publicans. Or, if they are clever, they rev up beer exports to the U.S.

Verstl follows with a sarcastic and dark picture of things to come for the Belgian beer and brewing industry.  “Belgian Beer Paradise” is written off as a marketing ploy which brewers want the world to believe in, all the while it is implied Belgian beer culture is headed down the tubes.

Photo left: Belgian small brewers watch controls. Photo by Charlie Papazian

“Because, whenever there is talk about a paradise, we tend to turn around to see if there aren’t any clouds approaching. Sorry to have to rub it in, but you cannot have a Paradise without the fall. They come in a package.”

In an illustrative graph Verstl shows how beer consumption in cafés (HORECA) has steadily declined 15.24% in volume over a period of four years, while supermarket sales have risen less than 1/2 percent in the same period.  This is serious state of affairs for Belgium’s 100-odd brewers, 680 beverage wholesalers and 45,000 on-trade outlets.

The writing was on the wall as Verstl points out, “According to data issued by the Belgian Brewers’ Association, beer consumption has dropped from 12 million hl in 1990 to 8.7 million hl in 2008. For a country of only 10.6 million people, seeing 3.3 million hl disappear was a serious blow to brewers especially as this translates into 27 percent of their erstwhile volume… in the years 1998 to 2008, it dropped 12 percent.”

Continued .... Part 2