‘We’re surviving by the skin of our teeth’: The storm hitting Manchester's breweries - and what it means for your night out

A perfect storm of increasing energy costs, Brexit and the aftermath of the pandemic is battering Manchester’s independent breweries and about to hit beer drinkers squarely in the wallet.

Sky-rocketing costs of raw materials from grain to aluminium cans, inflation and increasing ‘border friction’ caused by our departure from the EU mean that the price of a pint is going to get higher, industry insiders say.

“If you remember Gladiators, it’s like we’re at that bit at the end, where we’re trying to get up the travellator,” says Paul Jones, co-founder of the award-winning independent brewery Cloudwater.

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“Well it feels like that, and it’s covered in oil, and Wolf is trying to whack us with a baton at the top.

“We’re surviving, but only by the skin of our teeth, really. The industry is going through all kinds of different pain at the moment.”

Jones says that the price of malted barley alone is up 11%, and canning, which makes up the lion’s share of Cloudwater’s output, is more than 20% more expensive. Grain costs are a ‘double digit’ percentage increase.

CO2, also used in the canning and bottling process, has as much as doubled.

“Everything,” he goes on. “Raw materials, brewing ingredients, utilities, cost of living, which is a factor for employers like us who like to keep their staff well, well away from any kind of working poverty scenario.

“All of the basic costs that we face, everything has gone up. And the questions for us now are ‘what can we stomach?’ and ‘for how long can we stomach it?’

"We want to make sure that in coming out of one of the most difficult periods in the UK brewing industry’s history we’re helping consumers back into