{"id":19161,"date":"2025-06-02T05:45:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T11:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/?p=19161"},"modified":"2025-06-02T05:45:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T11:45:13","slug":"6-02-25-beer-links-true-beer-vs-big-craft-very-bad-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/6-02-25-beer-links-true-beer-vs-big-craft-very-bad-news\/","title":{"rendered":"6.02.25 beer links: True Beer vs Big Craft & very bad news"},"content":{"rendered":"

The news Sunday that Martyn Cornell has died was a gut punch. Friends filled Bluesky<\/a> with small stories, including links to many of his blog posts. Rereading one of my favorites — “In which I give more badly written beer history a good kicking”<\/a> — I couldn’t help but smile for a moment. It was a sentence after sentence takedown, and should have made any writer happy to have Martyn not<\/em> review their work.<\/p>\n

JUST WONDERING<\/strong><\/p>\n

ABI\u2019s Years of Craft Strategy Whiplash Are Catching Up With It<\/a> details Anheuser-Busch InBev’s failures over the years to sell enough<\/em> beer that customers would rather drink than the ones their closer-to-home breweries back. In the story, Dave Infante mentions “big craft” (which he puts in quotation marks). If I read it correctly, I think he means “craft-like” (my quotation marks) beer from breweries that do not meet the Brewers Association’s definition of craft brewery.<\/p>\n

Which I think is different than the big craft<\/em> Alan McLeod has been referring to for at least a dozen years (scroll to page 7<\/a>). McLeod might correct me, but he has been referring to breweries such at Sierra Nevada (1.1 million barrels produced in 2024), and perhaps even ones such as Fiddlehead Brewing (108,143 barrels). <\/p>\n

This raises several questions. ABI big craft, after all, is made up of breweries that used to qualify to be members of the Brewers Association. How is Goose Island pre-2011 different than Goose Island today? Do they have more in common with ABI or Fiddlehead? More important to me, personally, as a brewery visitor, does Sierra Nevada have more in common with the ABI group as a group or with Liquid Mechanics Brewing (1,369 barrels) in Lafayette, Colorado, where I had a terrific Helles Friday afternoon?<\/p>\n

Forty years ago, Vince Cottone, a beer columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer who contributed to numerous publications, first used the phrases craft-brewing scene, craft brewery and craft brewing in the manner they are thought of today. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Cottone did not include the word craft beer in 1984 when he wrote an article headlined \u201cCraft Brewing Comes of Age\u201d for New Brewer magazine, a publication for members of the Institute of Brewing Studies. He also did not offer any definitions. <\/p>\n

He provided those in the \u201cGood Beer Guide: Breweries and Pubs of the Pacific Northwest,\u201d published in 1986. He wrote: \u201cI use the term Craft Brewery to describe a small brewery using traditional methods and ingredients to produce a handcrafted, uncompromised beer that is marketed locally. I refer to this beer as True Beer, a detailed definition and description of which appears in the following section.\u201d<\/p>\n

The details included a discussion of the ingredients and process that resulted in a True Beer. He explained when and why he thought adjuncts were suitable, the role of finings, filtration and pasteurization. He admitted the last was the most controversial. \u201cPasteurization damages beer flavor. Period,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIf it is minimal and carefully done, the damage may be slight, but all too often it results in unpleasant cooked flavor, usually coupled with some degree of oxidation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, True Beer described \u201cthe ideal, uncompromised beer, beer that\u2019s hand-made locally in small batches using quality natural ingredients, served on draft fresh and unpasteurized. It\u2019s not a new kind of beer, even in North America.\u201d<\/p>\n

That’s what I had to drink Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n

Finally, in 1997 Fred Eckhardt talked to industry members for a 1997 column that appeared in All About Beer magazine, asking the question, What is craft beer?<\/em> Greg Noonan at Vermont Pub & Brewery told him, \u201cI wish Vince Cottone had trademarked the term.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe McLeod should have trademarked “Big Craft.”<\/p>\n

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/center><\/p>\n

LEDE OF THE WEEK<\/strong><\/p>\n

Toddlers are climbing a plastic slide in the middle of a gigantic sandbox at Almanac Adventureland in Alameda, their parents slurping fros\u00e9 at picnic tables nearby. Indoors, kids are springing up and down in a bouncy house, while adolescents are frantically twitching their wrists at the pinball machines.<\/p>\n

If it weren\u2019t for all the stainless-steel beer tanks, you might think this is Chuck E. Cheese, not a brewery.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t view Almanac as a craft brewery anymore,\u201d said Damian Fagan, CEO of what was formerly known as Almanac Beer Co. \u201cThose days have gone.\u201d <\/p>\n

From The Bay Area\u2019s geekiest craft brewery distanced itself from beer. It\u2019s never been more popular.<\/a><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/center><\/p>\n

QUOTE OF THE WEEK<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m kind of stunned, actually. I had no idea this was going to be the way it would go. My thought at the time was maybe there\u2019d be two or three breweries in town, and I\u2019d be one of them and I\u2019d have a personal watering hole where I could go, but it got much bigger than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

                    — Oscar Wong<\/p>\n

From A city pays tribute to the ‘Godfather of Asheville Craft Beer.’<\/a> The Highland Brewing founder died May 25. More about this impact below.<\/em><\/p>\n

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/center><\/p>\n

YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY<\/strong><\/p>\n

– Oscar Wong Laid the Groundwork for Asheville\u2019s Craft Beer Community<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

– Inside Toronado, Still For Sale, a Slow Motion Wake Continues<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

– How Today\u2019s Tariffs Echo the Long, Strange History of Alcohol and Politics<\/a><\/strong> and Court Rules All \u201cLiberation Day\u201d Tariffs Unlawful<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

– No, porter was NOT named after \u2018the porters of Covent Garden, Smithfield and Billingsgate\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

– What would a pint with Neil Young, The Sugababes and Primal Scream taste like?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

– Why bitter is Britain\u2019s most misunderstood pint \u2013 and our pick of the best<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

– A brewer\u2019s guide to entering beer competitions<\/a><\/strong> (Because, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and ESB<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The news Sunday that Martyn Cornell has died was a gut punch. Friends filled Bluesky with small stories, including links to many of his blog posts. Rereading one of my favorites — “In which I give more badly written beer history a good kicking” — I couldn’t help but smile for a moment. It was … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[703],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-links"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wTn-4Z3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19161"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19172,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19161\/revisions\/19172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}