BR Analysis: Romanian drinkers develop thirst for craft beer – Reviewing the market opportunities

Although the vast majority of the beer drunk during this month’s World Cup will come from the major breweries, there are new players in town. Craft beer – long a trend in advanced Western markets – is starting to brew up a storm in Romania too, and local producers are raising their glasses to a far from flat market.

By Aurel Dragan

IPA stands for Indian Pale Ale, a hoppy beer that falls within the broader category of pale ale. The latter is an old beer that first appeared around 1700, made from dried malts with coke (a high carbon content fuel, usually made from coal), resulting in a lighter color than other popular beers at the time. Fast forward a few hundred years and pale ale has become synonymous with craft beer.

The biggest quality of craft beer is that it is not made by the big “mega-brewery” corporations. It is very close to what “microbreweries” – small, independent brewers – made back in the nineties. But because some microbreweries, like Sam Adams, grew into big companies and corporations, a new name was needed.

Now we have craft beer that is made by small, independent and traditional brewers – at least in the US. In Romania it is difficult to find “traditional” brewers, since all the old brands have been bought by worldwide corporations and all the independent brewers in the communist era disappeared.

Read more about

Bucharest startup scene maintains positive outlook as economy grows

read more

What we have been witnessing in the last five years is the birth of a new class of brewers that may have an important word to say in the coming years in terms of beer quality and taste. Today, there are around 30 craft beer brewers in Romania, of which three or four are large, producing over 10,000 liters per month, with a group of 20 that brew between 4,000 and 8,000 liters every month. The rest are even smaller, with a monthly production capacity of under 3,000 liters of beer. Most of them are under three years old, and six brewers opened this year.

First, there were a few pubs dedicated to craft beer, supplied by brewers from around the world and run by connoisseurs and enthusiasts. Despite not being at all cheap, the pubs did fairly well and the idea of producing beer that was not industrial started to look interesting. The trend is not local, but global, and has also been adopted by the big brewers, which have begun launching unpasteurized beer as a way of bringing back the taste of old and appealing to craft beer fans.

Ursus, Timisoreana and Tuborg are just a few of those that have come up with “old recipes” for new beers. How successful they will be remains to be seen, but we do know that sales of cans of beer went up by 38 percent for United Romanian Breweries Bereprod (also known as Tuborg Romania).

THE BEER INSTITUTE

The craft beer industry in Romania is entering a new phase, embodied by the birth of the Beer Institute, a specialized concept store that gathers over 100 Romanian varieties of craft beer. The idea of opening the shop belonged to Catalina-Adina Mugescu, a young teacher who believes in the potential of Romanian craft beer and in consumer education. Along came Andreea Veronica Sararu, a tourist guide who had discovered beers on her journeys around the country.

Together they invested around EUR 20,000 in the shop, which opened on Dorobantilor Boulevard, close to Romana Square in the center of Bucharest. “The funds came from personal savings, leasing and bank financing,” says Mugescu, who added that the investment should be recovered in 12 to 24 months and hopes that in the first year of activity the operation will have revenues of EUR 50,000.

“The main challenges for a craft beer store are a mix between finding enough clients and juggling with relatively low warranty terms for beers. The clients are looking for two things: beer accessibility (meaning a lot of beer in the same place) and good prices. So far, craft beer is mainly sold in the HoReCa (hotels, restaurants, catering) sector at high prices, while a retailer has other costs and prices,” says Mugescu.

In the big picture, craft beer is like a drop in the ocean, with a yearly production of around 2.2 million liters, versus overall national production of up to 1.7 billion liters.

IT ALL STARTED AT HOME

“We decided to produce beer at a relatively higher level (albeit small compared to the rest of the industry) because we had been doing it for years at home and it was time to take the next step. We come from IT and import-export. But the beer was constantly present in life,” says Dinu Cristian Mihai, producer of the Hop Hooligans brand. Together with Mircea Georgescu and Petre Ion, Dinu produces around 800,000 liters per year. “We have no limits to our beer styles. From IPA to imperial stout and sower beer, we constantly experiment with new ingredients and different techniques: some beers only in limited editions, other seasonal ones, others we hope to become traditional, like Crowd Control. We put anything in the beer, but we think well before. Any ingredient can contrast with or complement something else, or use it more effectively. It only takes imagination and time to experience,” says Dinu, who added that the founders have full control over the beer due to the small batches produced, so they can focus on the quality.  

Laurentiu Mandrila and Ioana Coca discovered craft beer eight years ago and started to produce it at home in small batches of 19 liters, for personal use and for friends. “We kept practicing and at one point we decided to shift from hobby to professional, especially because we participated in home-brewing contests in Europe and we won quite a lot of prizes,” say the two producers of Belgium-inspired ale.

“Like a good wine, our beers mature and fulfill their taste with time. In addition to the permanent blonde and brown beer assortments, Oriel Blond and Oriel Dubbel, we also focus on a lighter beer, 11 percent ABV, Oriel Quadrupel, matured in oak barrels previously used to mature some fine alcoholic beverages. For the first batches we used barrels of Jack Daniel’s and Rom de Belize, in which we kept the beer for six months. We are a fairly small micro-brewery with an annual capacity of 200 hectoliters,” says Coca.

Personal consumption was also how Bogdan Glavan started to produce beer. He now brews four types: one Belgian, one coppery and two IPA, with a total of 800 liters per month. “I learned beer brewing technique from scratch, even joking with a few friends that if I measured the time spent reading up on this area, it would probably be equal to that spent writing a PhD thesis – something I’m familiar with as a teacher. Following favorable reviews from those who tasted the beer, in 2016 I decided to organize myself so that I could sell to those interested. After a busy road through the Romanian bureaucracy, in the spring of this year White Collar Brewing really started to work,” says Glavan.

The future of the craft industry looks promising. With more and more brewers, there may be people in the legislative field that will understand that specific laws are required for this sector, leading to a more permissive environment for micro-breweries. And also a more educated customer that understands why a certain beer must be drunk at an exact temperature in a specific glass.