Dennett, Adam; Wyszomierski, Jakub; Gray, Steven; (2023) From the Beer Orders to Last Orders—Legislation, Taxation and the Modern Beer Landscape of London. In: Patterson, Mark W and Hoalst-Pullen, Nancy, (eds.) The Geography of Beer: Policies, Perceptions, and Place. (pp. 27-44). Springer: Cham, Switzerland.

Text Final_Draft_GoB_PPP_London_Beer_Chapter__AD_JW_SG.pdf - Accepted Version Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 3 December 2024. Download (1MB)

Abstract

London has one of the longest and most well-established brewing histories of any city in the world but by the Millennium the industry in the city had dwindled to just a handful of breweries brewing a limited range of established beers. Then, in 2002, the UK government introduced a new progressive beer duty tax which enabled small-scale brewers to brew beer while paying less tax than their larger competitors, thus levelling the uneven financial playing field that economies of scale had created. This chapter charts the impact of this transformative policy through the beer itself analysing data on over 9000 different beers brewed in the city by almost 300 different brewers. Through a detailed quantitative analysis of beers, their characteristics and their brewers, we document the evolving new beer scene unleashed by this small stroke of fiscal creativity. We find that once the small breweries were able to compete financially with the large breweries and a new cohort of passionate brewers had learned the necessary skills, a dynamic new beer landscape eventually emerged a decade or so after the fiscal change was made. This new scene reflects London’s global status, showcasing the planetary influences shaping one of the most exciting contemporary beer landscapes in the world.

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