by Alyssa Pereira
There aren’t all beers made alike. This is evident when you walk through any local store anywhere across the US.
The majority of the beer sections in American supermarkets and neighborhood bodegas aren’t handcrafted products. Instead, they’re manufactured in mass quantities, packaged, and distributed by a handful of international drinks giants.
However, if you pay attention, you’ll find smaller amounts of the unique, somewhat more costly, locally-made beers. Much like mass-produced macro beer, these brews are also made with common beer ingredients, which include hops, malts, yeast, and water. In contrast to macros, they can utilize the label “craft.
The battle to define the word craft with regard to beer has been in the making for a long time. Here’s why.
What exactly is the definition of craft beer??
Beer is a drink that contains alcohol created through making as well as the fermentation of malted barley, Oats, or any other grain as well as flavored using hops (or historically, in certain cases, herbs) to enhance the taste. The most common definition of craft is “an art or trade that requires a special, usually manual skill.” The word has grown into an adjective that describes beverages or foods created with these abilities. It’s an old word that was first documented prior to the year 900. It derives from an Old English craft (“strength and capability”) and refers to the German “kraft.”
The term “compound” craft beers was created in the late 1980s by Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Vince Cottone in the mid-1980s. At the time, microbreweries were expanding all over the United States, and the popularity of their products began to compete with giant alcohol conglomerates like Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors for space in refrigerators at supermarkets for consumers.
A year later, as part of a to breweries from the Pacific Northwest, Cottone explained his rationale behind choosing the term craft to describe these career Zymurgists in writing, “I 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.”
The phrase quickly gained traction and was featured in trade publications for industry and at various conferences, ultimately being included in the name for an Annual Craft Brewers Conference in 1996, an annual gathering of American craft brewers. By the end of that decade, the Institute of Brewing Studies– which eventually was absorbed into today’s dominant brewing industry trade group, the Brewers Association–formalized a definition of craft beer.
This description from the mid-1990s stipulated craft brewers to satisfy four requirements. They must:
- Possess a federal brewer’s note, a license to brew beers;
- Only sell beer that has at least 10% adjuncts (such as chocolate, fruit coffee, fruit, or any other non-traditional ingredients for beer);
- Do not make use of artificial ingredients.
- And must not exceed 30 percent owned by a major macro brewery.
This definition was instrumental in helping determine the rapid expansion of craft beers. Popular new styles, such as the bitter India Pale Ale, which is hoppy and bitterpainfulthe viscous, boozy Stout aged in barrels of bourbon, and the mixed-fermentation beer–more often known as sours — began to gain popularity among consumers quickly. In the following years, these new drinks could aid the craft beer industry to grow.
What kind of beer is awarded the Craft label in the present?
In the present, craft is not an arbitrary term in the world of beer. While large corporations try to present their mass-produced beer with the label of “craft” offerings, small brewery owners continue to fight to market beers produced by smaller and independent businesses. This is why craft is a fervently held title that is defined and redefined each year through the Brewers Association, the trade organization comprised of and governed by brewery owners and brewers from across the nation.
According to their dards, Craft brewers have to be:
- Small: A small craft brewery can create “six million barrels of beer per year” or less.
- Individual: “Less than 25 percent of the craft brewery is owned or controlled (or equivalent economic interest) by a beverage alcohol industry member that is not itself a craft brewer.”
- Traditional Craft brewery’s output should primarily consist of beer. Also, there are there is no permit for hard seltzer-based companies.
Craft brewery owners make small quantities of beer and then sell it to the locals within a particular town, community, city, or even a region. But it’s not always.
In the past ten years or so, huge brewery companies have purchased various small-scale brewing firms, Inc., released the production of their beers, and distributed them in order to spread their beer across the nation under the pretense of being such crafty. Although these beers are not crafted according to BA definitions, they can still be perceived by customers as being prepared.
The word craft has become so well-known that it has sprung up into other sectors of food and drink as a general term to refer to something that was created by hand or by hand in a controlled amount. With the rise of craft beers and coffee, cocktails made from the craft, as well as chocolate, have become part of the contemporary craft movement.
It all began with the growing popularity of beer. Today, it’s much more sought-after than it ever was, with the majority of Americans living within a 10-mile radius of a craft brewery that is independent, as per the Brewers Association. This is a huge amount of tasty, well-crafted beer available. Bottoms up!
