Rant: Craft is a Product, Micro is a Business
One of my Google Alerts scrounged up a Java Journal article about beer in which there was the following:
Dan Chivetta, also a brewer at Trailhead, explained the difference between craft brewing and microbrewing. “In craft brewing, there is a love, a passion for brewing. It’s an art form, where quality, taste and presentation matter more than the bottom line and quantity. Quality ingredients and perfection of process and technique make craft beer superior to its bigger counterparts.
I seem to have missed the explanation, and probably it should have read “craft brewing and macro-brewing.” Beyond that, however, a beer rant…
The shift of calling low production breweries craft breweries instead of microbreweries perplexes me. Especially considering many use the terms interchangeably. The opposite of macro is micro, not craft. Craft beer is a product a brewery creates and not a measure of its size as micro would be.
Anheuser Busch is a macro brewery. Schlafy is a microbrewery that brews craft beer. A large brewery like Anheuser Busch could brew craft beer, they simply choose not to.
The largest brewer of craft beer is Samuel Adams. They rank fifth in brewery production in the US overall. That makes them a relatively high production brewery that brews craft beer. Just because they manipulate the system to maintain small status in the eyes of the Brewers Association doesn’t change that.
The argument would be that the first four are tremendously big compared to Boston Beer, Co, and I fully admit there is a massive difference in production between Pabst and Boston Beer Co. in those 2007 statistics. However the dip from Boston Beer Co. (1.59 million barrels) to the number six spot, Yuengling, was only about 150,000 barrels. All this and Yuengling is not a craft brewery and probably not even a brewery many people have heard of.
But lets bring it on home. The gap from Boston Beer Co. to 18th place Boulevard is 1.2 million barrels, and Odell, occupying the lowest highest point in the Top 50 of breweries distributing in Missouri (48th), brewed only 40,000 barrels last year. That means Boston Beer Co. is about 4x the size of Boulevard and 40x the size of Odell.
What I’m really curious about, however, is why people are trying to distance themselves from the term micro? Some people take incredible offense to the term and swiftly correct anyone who utters the term as if it were a prejudicial slur. If I were to guess, as new microbreweries popped up in the 1990’s, while many found fermentation easy enough, brewing something with good flavor turned out to be a bit harder. As a result there was–and remains to be–a lot of mediocre beer that left taste buds scarred by the hip micro badging.
Whether that’s the reason or not it’s still just a manipulation of words. Many breweries that, because of their size, call what they’re doing craft brewing produce poor results. If three breweries popping up in the last few months is any indication as to what’s going on nationwide, even if ours turn out nothing but awesome beer, America will surely have at least a few registrants into a new school of bad beer with a fresh name.
7 Responses to “Rant: Craft is a Product, Micro is a Business”
It’s important to remember that Jim Koch is on the board of directors for the Brewers Association.
By Mike Sweeney on Jul 1, 2008
I knew that…thus the manipulation.
By Bill Burge on Jul 1, 2008
I’m still stunned that Yuengling is #6. I’ve never seen it outside the Mid-Atlantic. Hell, it’s brewed in PA, and we never saw it in MD till I was a senior in college.
By Ian Froeb on Jul 2, 2008
“Micro” is a very 1990’s word. Microgreens, Microsoft. There is something very cutting-edge and sleek about the term “micro.” It was a great word for the worry-free Clinton years, the alleged “End of History” when everything was being streamlined and improved.
Now, here we are in the post-2001 world. Everything is falling apart according to the media. The climate. The economy. World stability. Everyone wants to return to the simpler, good-old-days, when people “crafted” things. We now prefer things that are precious, not sleek. Hence, the ascendence of the term “craft.”
By Orrin on Jul 2, 2008
And post craft we’ll have Artisanal Beer I suppose.
By Bill Burge on Jul 2, 2008
It’s been two years since I’ve been there, but I’ve found the beer at trailhead to be unremarkable everytime I’ve tried it. You know you’re in trouble when beers are named by their color rather than style. I suspect the brewing staff could make good beer but are being held back by the owners. It’s kind of ironic anyone would ask this place to pontificate on the differences between micro, macro, craft, whatever.
By mister on Jul 8, 2008