Craft Beers

By Abel Busoni
Contributing Writer

Internationally, you can find American craft beers all over the world (there are well over a thousand) as they gain fame for high quality and tremendous innovation. Locally, you can find a genuine craft beer at Granite City #3. Craft breweries include brew pubs, regional brews, micro-brews, etc., and are the epicenter of everything fresh going on in the world of beer, but it wasn’t always this way. It wasn’t long ago that America was in the dark ages of beer, and it’s in those dark ages where we can find the most interesting questions.

The entire scene was essentially stunted by prohibition, a condition rooted in the puritan strain of our cultural DNA that was there in the beginning and still remains today. The largest beer producers today have their roots in somehow surviving prohibition and strengthening during the Second World War. It’s the period between WWII and the 1980’s that I label the dark ages of the beer matrix, when America’s largest beer producers rose to dominance, making the same watery lager in different cans. Beloved beer producers like Anheuser Busch, Miller, and Coors dominated the playing field, producing remarkably similar beers that were pretty good individually, but collectively represented liquid tragedy as in, this is the beer scene? Really?

Of course, we know now that there are many different styles of beer. We know that brewing can be a craft, practically an art, for which people can be both thoughtful and passionate. Yet from the Second World War right up until the 1980’s, the big breweries used their domination to enhance only their uniformity, both in the brew and in the acquisition of other breweries. Indeed, through the 80’s, there were only 80 breweries serving the entire United States (operated by even less companies)!

Why is it that the myriad nature of beer was not explored and marketed by those companies? Why is it that commercial dominance so often leads to a lack of creativity (see Microsoft) except in special cases (see Apple)? How is it that in our America, a country obsessed with having a wide selection in the supermarket, at the restaurant, at the bar, in schools, institutions, etc., there was a time when nearly no selection could be had in beer, a cultural staple for every modern country in the world? And finally, how is it that those corporate executives, those leaders of beer in the free world, could not match the passion of the brewmasters we see today? Probably because they were business people.

Homebrewing was basically illegal until 1978, when a Republican congressman introduced a law that would later be signed by President Jimmy Carter (if beer can’t be bipartisan, what can? President Carter’s brother had his own brew the previous year!). As most creative businesses start at home or in the garage, legalizing homebrewing became the incubator for the brew scene we see today, which is really a boosted up version of garages and basements across America. Brewmasters in the making began experimenting with European style beers that had been made on the other side of the pond for centuries. Belgian, English, German, Czech, and Dutch beers were all revisited as ordinary Americans discovered a world of beer beyond the beer matrix already constructed.

So why did those corporations limit the scope of the American brew to watery lagers for forty years? How could they do it? And had it not been for the microbrew revolution, would watery lagers still be the only beers available today?

Some suggest that, because the market did not beg for creativity and passion in brewmaking, the big beer producers felt no need to pump out an assortment of beer styles. However, we now know that the market likes IPA’s, stouts, bocks, unfiltered wheats, etc. I don’t think the 30 year old man (or woman!) of 1955 would turn down a good, unfiltered wheat. And if he didn’t like unfiltered wheat, could he turn down a good bock in October? If he didn’t like that, could he turn down an English ale? A dubbel or tripel?

Others suggest that the wide variety of beer styles available today arise from Americans’ increased demand for customized, personalized goods, from shoes to cars to wallpaper for computers or phones, i.e.,  get the exact beer for your exact taste. But if that were the case, why were so many Europeans enjoying a variety of beers long before our current age? And aren’t we really talking about the palette?

I think the lesson is that what the market doesn’t know won’t hurt the market. People were in a beer matrix and didn’t really know that they were drinking watery lagers. Not a truly remarkable principle, considering that everybody has heard it remarked that people didn’t need computers before they were invented, except that it was exploited by beer producers to make it way easier when different beers were already enjoyed by millions in Europe. Why should they introduce IPAs, stouts, bocks, or unfiltered wheats when they can make the same thing a gazillion times and save a ton of money with the same sales? Those corporations must have cared very little about the history and tradition of beer.

Of course, these days the big breweries are in the business of beer innovation. Blue Moon for example, while technically a craft beer, is owned by Coors. I like a Coors and I like a Blue Moon. But where was the passion between Roosevelt and Carter?

It must have been a passion for business. For consolidating gains and creating a product that was uniform, cheap to produce, and easy to sell to an unknowing public. What the market doesn’t know won’t hurt the market.

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