To think that 'craft' beer is slightly silly, if not downright pretentious ?

[vienna1981]

After all, traditional ales have been brewed in the UK for centuries and it's at least forty years since the Campaign for Real Ale was founded to rescue beer drinkers from the might of the big national brewers. All well and good until about twenty five years ago when small independent breweries began to increase in number. Then some bright spark decided to label these 'micro-breweries'. What ? Aren't these just smaller versions of what's been around for decades ? Why the special name ? However it was far more recently that the term 'craft beer' was coined and it really makes me wince. Somehow referring to one of the oldest alcoholic drinks on the planet as a craft product just doesn't suit. If CAMRA conjures up images of beardy-weirdy sages earnestly discussing the pros and cons of individual brews then 'craft' makes me think of lifestyle fashion slaves eagerly sampling the newest beer from the craft movement.

I can't get my head round it. I love proper British beer, can't stand lager and otherwise applaud the traditional ale scene. But if I was a small scale brewer and my business was labelled as 'craft' I would want the labeller to get over themselves as quickly as possible. I'm hoping it's just a fashionable term that will go away as quickly as it appeared.

Real ale has been called craft beer over there for a long time.

Nearly everything that is called "craft beer" in the UK is not real ale.

This is not the Americanisation of our language, it is a separate and useful term.

Do we need a Venn diagram?

YABU I live in Canadaand in my area beer used to all taste rather the same, since the microbreweries started opening we get a much wider selection of beer, some strong, some very delicate in flavor. We get to support the local economy, try new beers every time and I get to drink beer I actually enjoy.

Thank you Trills. You saved my texting thumb typing the same thing out.

Ooo finally a thread I can get properly geeky about.

Real Ale is the term CAMRA came up with to differentiate beer that still had live yeast, and undergoes secondary fermentation in the barrel/bottle. It came about at a time of massive market consolidation, with the primary aim of the big breweries being reducing cost. So the filtered, pasteurised keg beers they were offering were lowest common denominator stuff. Yeh, 'Real' seems a bit silly now but back then it made sense.

Over in the US they were in a worse state. Pretty much only crap lager (lager can be good too) from very few breweries. But then a few people, influenced by British brewing, started up. And they brewed good tasty beer. It wasn't 'Real' in the CAMRA sense but wasn't lowest common denominator. And often wasn't pasteurised and only lightly filtered. As this market grew they wanted a trade organisation to differentiate themselves from the multinational lager lot. They came up with 'Craft' which was pretty much based on size and ownership.

And then this revival of brewing interesting beer in turn influenced the British scene. Different hop varieties, much larger range of beer styles and strengths.

Craft doesn't really mean anything in itself other than as a marketing term. But in general it could be thought of as American influenced beer, often in keg as well as cask. Is typically more experimental than traditional British beer. Not all of it tastes good, with some being silly prices seemingly targeted at people with more money than taste.

But it isn't all like that, some of it is fantastic and it's great that as a drinker I have far more choice than the bitter and mild typically found 20 odd years ago.

Thank you whatsthat.

Thankyou whatsthat. A most informative post. So, if I'm reading this right, craft beer is the American equivalent of British real ale.

Harking back to an earlier post, I concede that some keg beers are good. Mansfield Best Bitter, Worthington Best, Draught Guinness and Kilkenny among them. However, I am reliably informed by my father that Watney's Red Barrel was the most foul-tasting, heinous witchpiss on the planet.

Mansfield Riding Mild and Old Bailly were beautiful beers.

I wouldn't really say equivalent vienna. Related maybe, with overlapping spheres of influence. CAMRA was (and still is) about preserving an almost unique British institution that was in danger of dying out.

And still there is a demand for John Smith's Smooth. Beats me.

Bon sante.

I don't care about the terminology; I do care that there is a lot of decent, interesting beer out there. I'd begun to take it for granted until a recent longish pause at a railway station. There, I had the choice of over-warm draught Tennant's; or bottled Heineken or Stella. In my student days in the 80s, that would have been standard in a lot of pubs. Possibly without the option of the Stella.

I'm by no means an expert but my son is something of one and he is enthused and passionate about the way the craft/artisan/microbrewing industry is developing in the UK. (Oh, apparently there are also nanobrewers, who are basically one-man/woman breweries.)

Interestingly, my son gives Gordon Brown some credit for the expansion of small breweries in recent years: in 2002, as chancellor, Brown introduced Progressive Beer Duty, which gave tax breaks to small breweries.

Amen to that floppy!

I like this article:

www.shortlist.com/instant-improver/food/the-rise-and-rise-of-craft-beer

I grew up in the area where Harviestoun Brewery, the brewers of "Bitter and Twisted" is at home - I remember my late dad's excitement when "Harviestoun Real Ale" first became available.

BTW, it's a wee thing, but I just love the competitive naming that craft/artisan/micro-brewers seem to go in for. "Bitter and Twisted" (from Harviestoun), "Dead Metaphor" (Brewdog), "Dad's little helper" (Rogue)