Out of all the fuss over the foolish "craft v. crafty" PR embarrassment for the Brewers Association has come some amazingly level heading thinking about terms and terminology in response. Just look at Twitter this morning. In September 2011, I proposed new words but think we can now nail down a more rigorous scheme that describes the continuum, the range of brewing scale, as follows:
Nano: Home brewers to brew pubs. Small scale. Primarily consumed where brewed. Not part of trade associations.
Micro: Local bottlers. Significant sales at the brewery. Actually small. Like to 100,000 barrels of production tops. Uses vans and, maybe, cube trucks. Gypsy brewers fit in here, too. Counts on t-shirt sales as revenue.
Craft: Distributes and known beyond immediate region. Not small except in the sense of a modest scale industry. Have brand consultants. Markets to phony groups like their "community". Gives away t-shirts.
Crafty: Distributes nationally and internationally. Pretends to be small but owns fleet of 18 wheel trucks. Runs TV ads during sporting events. Both Sam Adams and Blue Moon are in large part crafty. Not a pejorative. Licenses use of logo to others to sell t-shirts. Run trade associations to their benefit.
Macro: Big. As in honking. Major and beneficial economic force in town where breweries are located. Makers of popular beer. Have HR departments. In house legal counsel. Warehouses full of t-shirts.
Why do this? We need to remember that they who control the lexicon win the argument and the BA no more controls the meaning of "beer" or "craft" than the team owners control the meaning of baseball. And it reflects reality. There is no craft v. crafty dichotomy. There are shades of things, overlaps. There are also claims being made that are unsustainable when looked square in the eye. Further, like the directions of the compass like SSW or east-nor-east, a brewery can have multiple aspects. Sierra Nevada might be "crafty with micro tendencies" which is not a bad thing. Brewdog might be "craft with visions of macro", no? Just remember, this scheme does not describe the quality of any given beer as there is no relationship between scale and quality. None. The yeast just don't care. Anyone from a nano to a macro can make crap, krappht or good beer... or even all three at the same time.
There. Glad to have settled this all for you. No need to thank me. Full and immediate adoption throughout the industry will be thanks enough.
Comments
Craig - January 5, 2013 6:48 PM
I think "Brewpub" needs to mentioned as well. Most people associate a brewpub with a microbrewery, when in fact most (and most is my escape clause) are really restaurants who also, happen to make beer. Brewpubs that don't have good food don't stay brewpubs very long. Some, produce enough to blur into that micro area, but most don't.
Alan - January 5, 2013 7:56 PM
I did. I did I did I did. It's within nano.
But what is a brew pub chain?
ethan - January 5, 2013 11:25 PM
Nanos join trade associations, or at least some do. Partly because conferences are a lot of fun, partly because information is a lot of fun, and partly because in a highly regulated industry, joining voices to promote legislation and remove usless restrictions just makes sense, no matter how small you are.
We defenitely need t-shirt sales as much as beer :)
But I am down with the general "who cares" part of it, as with the styles debate. It is endless, needless and wearisome.
Alan - January 5, 2013 11:32 PM
Nancroist!
Ethan - January 6, 2013 12:35 PM
Fully. When it comes to the craft v. crafty debate, I think C.B.W. has as much or more to fear from Sierra Nevada building a second brewery than from yet another iteration of Shock Top hitting the shelves, whether or not it's honestly labeled.
Alan - January 6, 2013 12:46 PM
Yes, I think big craft (aka crafty) is a huge threat to good beer. Actual small brewers like yourselves ought to be lobbying against internal importing and branch planting. And start with reappropriating the word "small" from control of the big.
Gary Gillman - January 6, 2013 3:08 PM
Currently there is still a bright line IMO between large-scale brewing and craft brewing. Very few products of the former are really comparable to the latter. Sierra Nevada and even Boston Beer Company have grown commendably but even they are not close to the scale of a Molson-Coors, say. (And if they get there great, they deserve it). There are exceptions, we all know the beers here and in the U.S. But it is small potatoes so far for the bigs with the exception probably of Blue Moon which ships a lot of barrels I understand, but I am not sure that model will replicate with a double IPA or Imperial Stout, say. The history as it stands now seems to me to require a separation between the two kinds of brewing even though admittedly it is not as clear as 30 years ago and that is fine, it is what we all wanted surely. So I still view the nano, brewpubs and micros as part of craft brewing and the bigs as a force unto themselves. It could change in 5 years, but I'm not sure it will, given the great mass of beer still sold is in the bland international lager style.
Gary
Gary
Alan - January 6, 2013 3:15 PM
But there is no "craft brewing" to be part of other than marketing speak.
Gary Gillman - January 6, 2013 3:35 PM
There must be 30 or so small Ontario brewers featured currently at (e.g.) well-known Toronto beer bars making a wide variety of styles, aren't these craft brewing and ditto their hundreds of U.S. counterparts?
Gary
Alan - January 6, 2013 5:14 PM
Well, (i) people we doing the same thing before "craft beer" was coined and (ii) they are doing and using equipment indistinguishable from brewing at a larger scale. The label fails to acknowledge the fact of continuum.
Gary Gillman - January 6, 2013 5:26 PM
Well, that's true. I guess it depends how you look at it..
Gary