Someone else coincidentally bringing up Coors in what is an honest debate about "craft" beer.
You know where we stand - good beer is good beer. Bad beer is bad beer. No matter who brews what.
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From the Atlantic...
Beer isn’t exactly a subject prone to philosophical musings, but here’s a deep thought that’s been haunting the brewhead bulletin boards of late: what makes a craft brewery a craft brewery? According to the Beer Association, an industry group representing small brewers, a craft outfit makes less than 2 million barrels of suds annually, and 25 percent or less of it is owned or controlled by a non-craft brewer—i.e., MillerCoors or InBev.
Problem number one: any month now, the Boston Beer Company, the company that makes Sam Adams, will top 2 million barrels in annual production. Technically that will disqualify it as a craft brewery, even though Jim Koch, the founder of Boston Beer Co., is a godfather of the craft beer movement and a board member of the Beer Association.
Problem number two: in 2007 a brewery in Golden, Colorado called AC Golden started operations. AC Golden brews beer in small batches with local ingredients—including Colorado Native Lager, which you can only get in-state. Its beers have received respectable ratings on beeradvocate.com. It’s got everything a promising craft brewer could want. But AC Golden is careful not to call itself a craft brewer, because, at least according to the Beer Association, it’s not: it’s controlled by MillerCoors, the second largest brewer in the country.
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More here
http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/2010/05/when-is-a-craft-brewery-just-a-brewery/57211/ |
When it’s called Samuel Adams |
"a craft outfit makes less than 2 million barrels of suds annually, and 25 percent or less of it is owned or controlled by a non-craft brewer"
This is a dumb definition of craft brewery. Some years ago we used to use the word micro-brewery but it stopped being useful because the term applies to the definition above but failed to account for larger brewers like Boston Beer and Sierra Nevada that make good beer on a larger scale. So "craft brewery" was introduced as a better and more inclusive term that specifically distinguishes brewers who are focused on making good beer vs. brewers who are making cheap alcohol delivery products.
For the beer association to revert to a distinction based on size pretty much undoes the entire point of using the term anymore. Somebody over there has the brain of a spoon. |
Originally posted by PhillyBeer2112
For the beer association to revert to a distinction based on size pretty much undoes the entire point of using the term anymore. Somebody over there has the brain of a spoon.
Amen.
I’ve always defined breweries in four ways. A microbrewery is a small brewery regardless of the product it makes (ie. they could make macro-swill but only on a small scale). A craft brewery is a brewery of any size that makes beer with respect for tradition, quality and content rather than just getting drunk (this could include brewers like Michelob who make quite a large number of what I consider craft beers). Then there are macro-brewers who make the typical pale lagers we associate with bad beer. Finally, there are the independent breweries like Sierra Nevada, Samuel Adams and probably a few others that are more or less no longer microbreweries. This is also where a lot of the import breweries (Samuel Smith’s, the Belgian ones still run by monks, etc) would fall into. |
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If the vast majority of a brewers beers are crap, they aren’t a craft brewery. This includes small brewers.
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Why not just remove the size reqs and keep the rest of their made up definition? |
Since "craft" is pretty ingrained as a definition of a brewer by size, maybe we need a better way to define a "craft style" beer. "Good" beer? "Real" beer?
Sam Adams does a lot of things that rub beer geeks the wrong way, but being successful shouldn’t be one of them. And they still identify more firmly with the craft beer movement than the "brewed cold" and "specially lined can" crowd. There may need to be a new category that we’d hope more brewers will grow to occupy.
I have enjoyed some of the beers from the majors’ "craft" divisions, like Michelob and Leinenkugel (still haven’t found a Blue Moon I’d buy for anything other than ticking) |
somehow the term "suds" annoys me |
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Originally posted by bhops
somehow the term "suds" annoys me
+1 beer should not taste like soap. |
