A Rant About Craft Brewed Beer

Hey Everyone,

It has been a while since my last post (which was also my first post), but I have something beer related on the mind so I'm back to put it in writing and let it bounce around the internets for a while.  First of all, thanks to all 52 of you who read the first blog post about Saison Beers (pronounced Say-zon) hopefully it was informational as well as enjoyable.  Today I want to talk about Craft Beer, the Craft Brewers that produce it and the imitators who simply want your money

An American Craft Brewer is defined by the Brewers Association as small, independent and traditional. 

• To be considered "small" a Craft Brewery must produce only 6 million barrels of beer or less per year.  (Each barrel is 31 gallons.  Traditional Kegs are half barrel or 15.5 gallons of beer)
• To be considered "independent" outside interests who are not themselves craft brewers can only own up to 25% of a Craft Brewery.
• To be considered traditional a Craft Brewer must brew at least 50% of its products or total volume as all malted grain brew or all malted grain with adjuncts that Enhance rather than Lighten flavor.

So now that I have presented the somewhat technical definition of Craft Beer let me try to break down what it actually means and how it presents itself to we the consumer.  In a nutshell, to be considered a craft brewery a brewery must not be owned by a monster company like INBEV for example who owns Anheuser-Busch as well as many other brands.  

To be considered small a craft brewery must stay under 6 million barrels of beer production per year.  To put that in perspective, locally, Epic Brewing Company is brewing around the clock more days than not to produce about 12,000 barrels of beer per year out of their current SLC location.  New Belgium, a regional juggernaut, produced 473,000 barrels of beer in 2007 according to their website.  Finally to hopefully cement the scale of Craft Breweries in your brain, the largest of the Craft Breweries is, Samuel Adams producing, Boston Beer Company who brews 1,841,348 barrels of beer annually according to CNBC.com.  (Anheuser-Busch produced 121.9 million barrels of beer in 2005 according to Beer Wiki)

To be considered Traditional Craft Breweries must use malted grain or some flavor enhancer as at least 50% of the ingredients that make up their beer.  Examples of flavor enhancers may include: fruit, coffee, chocolate or anything else that will add flavor to a beer.  Big Brewers such as Anheuser-Busch use rice and other additives that lighten the flavor, color and body of beer in an effort to make it less expensive to produce.

At this point, if you have read this far, you are probably asking yourself, "What is your Point?"  Without further ado, I give you my point.  If you are drinking beer that doesn't fit into the Craft Beer category, you are really missing out!  Craft Brew is growing by leaps and bounds in America and it is time not only for you to try it, but to embrace it and make it a part of your beer drinking lifestyle.  Craft Beer is created to be enjoyed, and it is an almost certainty that the brewer who created the Craft Beer will take part in producing that beer from inception of the recipe all the way until the beer is bottled or kegged.  This pride and personal ownership of a beer is a logistical impossibility in large breweries and the quality, or lack thereof,  is noticeable to even the novice beer drinker.  I encourage you to go out and try new Craft Beers, embrace the quality over quantity lifestyle and support this great culture of American Craft Brewing that is growing like wildfire on a windy day.  I encourage you even to become a craft brewer yourself, visit your local brew supply store and pick up a starter kit or find a friend who brews their own and join them on a brew day.  Allow yourself to be creative and come up with something that is truly unique.  Say no to the big three beers in 2013 and be aware of their tricks as they continue to buy up craft breweries to mass produce under their once pure name to simply turn a profit.  

Drink Craft and Drink Responsible.

Cheers,

Ty

post script,

Here is a short, non-exhaustive list of beers you may have thought were craft brewed but aren't.  The following are brands that have been purchased or created by Molson Coors, Inbev or some other large company to be deliberately marketed as imitators of Craft Beer.

• Shock Top (Inbev)
• Blue Moon (Molson Coors)
• Jack's Pumpkin Spice Ale (Inbev)
• Landshark Lager (Inbev)
• Kokanee (Inbev)
• Amber Boch (Inbev)