The rise of the Micro Brewery in my opinion is probably down to two things; the closure of many of the older breweries either directly or by taken over by a bigger brewery, secondly since the early 80’s the younger generation have tended towards reasonable and not so good Lagers. Again this precipated the closure of more traditional breweries.
The last 10 years in particular have seen the rise of a number of traditional ale breweries each with its own take on what a great beer is. The problem here is that for every 10 Micro Breweries created 9 go out of business within a year.
What makes a successful micro brewery?
Firstly someone who knows how to make a good beer, they probably have been making their own at home for a few years and have a good base receipe, they need to have good business sense, a site to brew from, they need to have an good outlet or series of outlets that can take the product on a fairly constant basis, they need to make their beer regularly with the sane consistency each time they brew and finally it takes a lot of money to set up, I would estimate about £100K just for a 1 Vat concern and ideally you need 3 so add another £50-80K.
So why do they fail? Well all of the above can cause failure. Also and this may be hard to swallow (not for them initially) is that people may not like the beer they are producing. That’s not to say they are making a bad beer, just other peoples tastes are different. I would argue that is why most Best beers are pretty similar in overall taste (sorry brewers that is not an insult but a business fact). I think as a drinker it is good to go off the beaten track as frequently as possible and try the full spectrum of beers available.
I’m not a great Porter fan but I still try a couple at most beer festivals I go to.
One of local micro breweries failed to make it, but has continued as a volunteer manned enterprise and seems to be succeeding.