musing

What is craft beer?

Growth chart
Don’t expect me to answer that question. It was posed by Stonch at Lew Bryson’s Seen Through a Glass, and I started to comment there before I realized I was about to exceed a sensible length for comments.

The Brewers Association has a specific definition (scroll down on that page):

CRAFT BEER: Craft beers are produced with 100% barley or wheat malt or use other fermentable ingredients that enhance (rather than lighten) flavor. Craft beers only come from craft brewers.

And …

CRAFT BREWER: An American craft brewer is small, independent and traditional. Craft beer comes only from a craft brewer.

So when the Brewers Association collects data and reports 11.7% growth in 2006 over 2005 it isn’t including beers from Yuengling, all-malt beers from Anheuser-Busch, Blue Moon from Coors and many others.

Over time that’s made compiling and comparing numbers a little easier. For instance, had the BA (then the IBS) included Michelob Specialty beers in its calculations in the late 1990s then craft beer sales would have appeared to take a giant leap of (a guess) 800,000 barrels in 1997. We would have been comparing apples to oranges. The number is a guess because A-B never released figures for its specialty beers. In other words, the BA/IBS couldn’t have included them anyway.

Likewise, Coors does not report sales of Blue Moon Belgian White. Except in 2005, when they confirmed production of 200,000 barrels (more than the entire production of all but six craft breweries). They haven’t made a similar revelation this year, but I’ve heard from somebody – not at Coors, but who should know – that sales more than doubled to 500,000.

Just for fun, let’s plug that into the chart above, increasing both the 2005 and 2006 figures and then doing the math. Presto. Growth of more than 16%. Does that difference matter? Probably.

That’s the equivalent of nearly 7 million cases of Blue Moon that people are grabbing at the grocery store or convenient store, often from shelves where few craft beers land. If those drinkers are anything like everybody else who drinks craft beer – and remember these people (who may be you) are paying a premium price for Blue Moon, haven’t read the BA definition, and (poor fools) think it is craft beer – then they are going to try other beers that cost more and aren’t advertised on television.

This is not a new discussion. Fred Eckhardt wrote a great column on this subject 10 years ago in All About Beer magazine. He began with a definition from Vince Cottone written in 1986 (less confusing times, perhaps).

Cottone, the first to use the term, “craft brewer,” was implacably uncompromising in what he meant by that name. “Craft brewery,” he said, “describe(s) a small brewery using traditional methods and ingredients to produce a handcrafted, uncompromised beer that is marketed locally (and is) True Beer.” He also listed seven other small brewers as brewing “non-true” beers, including San Francisco’s Anchor (although a “craft brewery in spirit,” its beer was pasteurized), and six other small brewers who brewed malt extract beer. He had no patience whatever with “contract brewers.”

Eckhardt polled beer industry types in an effort to define “craft beer” and got answers that went beyond that. All of them are worth reading. For balance I suggest lingering words from Tom Schmidt of Anheuser-Busch:

I don’t believe there is anything such as “craft beer.” The use of the term may lead consumers to believe that beer made in some small, quaint place is much better than beer that is produced in a large, efficient brewery, where quality and consistency are the hallmarks. We all fight the same battle using the same raw materials. These supposedly “craft breweries” are finding that, to produce consistent products, they require process controls much the same as the larger breweries. Our brewmasters are (dedicated) “craftsmen,” not just brewing “engineers” who monitor the process from afar. Just because we are successful should not detract from the fact that we are also quality “craftsmen.”

But I confess that my favorite is from Greg Noonan of Vermont Pub & Brewery:

I wish that Vince Cottone had trademarked the term. (He would be) a good arbiter of what is and what isn’t “hand-made.” (He would reject) beers made in “micro-industrial” quarter-million barrel breweries and “fruit beers” made with 0.003 percent fruit-flavored extract. (If Congress were to legislate an appellation, the licensing board should include) Cottone, Carol Stoudt, Randy Reede and Teri Fahrendorf (to ensure) its integrity. Craft brewed (should) mean pure, natural beer brewed in a non-automated brewery of less than 50-barrel brew length, using traditional methods and premium, whole, natural ingredients, and no flavor-lessening adjuncts or extracts, additives or preservatives.

Yes, there are breweries using automation and producing beers I’d call “craft” with a brew length longer than 50 barrels, so feel free to quibble. But not with the spirit in which his definition was written.

We own the niche

Beer giantThere has been a fair amount of hand-wringing as the partnership of Fordham Brewing and Anheuser-Busch prepares to close on its deal to buy Old Dominion Brewing.

That’s understandable. Change is not always good.

But what we should not be worrying about is the fact that Anheuser-Busch is involved in the deal.

Today The Long Tail has an interesting post about “Why niche brands win.” The key paragraph:

Consumers are fleeing the mainstream for the authenticity and quality of niche products. Today, when a big company buys a little one, it hopes that nobody notices. The aim is to keep the indie feel of the niche brand, while applying the distribution and marketing advantages of the big acquiring firm.

So A-B isn’t taking a stake in Old Dominion, which brews less than 30,000 barrels a year, to add to its production (more than 120 million barrels).

Have the beers of Widmer Brewing changed since A-B took a stake in the Oregon company? More recently, how about the beers of Goose Island (which A-B got involved with via Widmer)?

No, and no.

Small brewers – which is pretty much every brewery in America smaller than A-B, Miller and Coors – craft beers than large brewers can’t. OK, technically they can. But to brew a batch the size of Goose Island’s Matilda makes no sense to those guys. Heck, neither would the somewhat more mainstream Goose Island IPA (which Stonch just gave a rave review).

Granted, there was a time when such beers weren’t being produced. But as long as we are willing to pay a fair price I think it’s safe to say we’ve established our niche. It belongs to us, not the brewers. Not even the ones we really like.

That doesn’t mean drinkers of Old Dominion beers (or other outstanding beers it makes like New River Pale Ale) shouldn’t be vigilant. After all, A-B bought a stake in Widmer, not controlling interest. And Goose Island remains firmly in charge at Goose Island.

Old Dominion was sold, although Fordham has the (barely) largest stake. It seems that Fordham is who we should have our eye on.

Desert island beers II

Still thinking about Alan McLeod’s contest when I should be working, which also means without a beer in hand to influence my thinking.

So the today’s one word thought: Hops. (Yesterday’s was “saison” – these don’t have to be exclusive).

But I also did a quick search to see what Michael Jackson might have written about this. I knew he did a list on the World Beer Hunter CD-ROM, but you can’t Google that. Anyway, I came across this in a 1993 column in wich he laments Guinness marketing decisions.

I would want a Bavarian wheat beer to quench my thirst on a hot day, a Bohemian lager to accompany the fish I would catch on my desert island, a British ale to go with the wild animals I would barbecue and a barley wine to intoxicate me when I longed for escape.

But one glass of the Dublin stout and I would be transported from my desert island to a pub where the glistening black of the beer reflected the brass barrails, the polished mirrors and mahogany … Two glasses and I would begin to enjoy my own company, three, and I would find myself as entertaining as Joyce, Wilde or O’Casey.

Seems like a fair standard to set for our desert island beers.

And if you can find a beer that will help me write a few paragraphs of similar quality please let me know.

Dumber than dirt in Oregon

Enough has been written about the totally stupid decision by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission to ban minors from the 20th anniversary Oregon Brewers Festival. (Links at bottom.)

Instead, let Don Younger, whose Horse Brass Pub opened in 1976 and has been central in Portland’s transformation into “Beervana,” remind us of what it was like 30-plus years ago.

Back in the 1960s it was illegal for a Portland bar to have windows that were less than six feet above the ground. That way nobody could see what was going on inside, which was just as well.

“The taverns serviced about 10 percent of the people. The rest were terrified of (taverns), and with good reason,” Younger said. “There was no wine, no singing, no dancing. We had nothing else to do but get drunk and say [expletive deleted] a lot. It was crazy. I don’t know how we survived it.”

Yep, you really have a better society when you segregate those who drink and those who don’t.

More about this lunacy:

– Idiot Legislators Gone Wild – Stephen Beuamont
– The OLCC vs. Humanity – Jay Brooks
– Beer Advocate discussion

For the love of session beers

Lew Bryson, last mentioned here in the discussion of X beers (go directly to his comment, has joined the blogging ranks with a specific project in mind. He calls it The Session Beer Project.

I suggest that you go ahead and add Seen Through a Glass to your feed reader, bookmark it or do whatever you do with sites you want to keep track of.

He explains the project there and in The Buzz at his website, so read those instead of a lame recap from me.

The why behind why session beers get slighted by the media – and in this case I’m casting a big net, including everything online as well in print – probably interests those of us in the press more than it does you. For one reason, I field a lot of phone calls for print publications looking for a “story angle.”

They want to know about about stuff that grabs your attention right off – a little like the first whiff of an intense imperial stout – because of unusual ingredients, high levels of alcohol or ridiculous amounts of hops. Nobody ever wants to follow up on how Utah brewers make so many award-winning beers although they are limited to brewing those with 4% alcohol by volume.

And they want to write about the beer – not the people who make it or how they make it, not people who enjoy it or how and where they enjoy it, not the session. That’s a harder story and not as sexy a story.

In working on another project, I’ve been reviewing way too much 1980s literature about American beer. In one story a German brewer says he’d never export his beer to the United States because Americans can’t appreciate its flavors. He might still feel the same way, but the fact is ex****e beers helped change what was a pathetic image (both of brewers and consumers).

Does that mean Americans can’t brew session beers? Take a trip to Utah, drink a Firestone Walker beer, or just tune into Seen Through a Glass and see what Lew is drinking.

Does that mean Americans don’t appreciate them? Check out the growth of Boulevard Brewing, Blue Point Brewing or what the best selling beers are for many of the fastest growing breweries (you’ll see they are session beers).

Welcome Lew to the blogging world by joining his conversation about them.

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