It’s that old chestnut again. What is the definition of craft beer? The simple answer, at least in South Africa, is that there isn’t one. For me, “craft beer” is kind of an ethos really, and very difficult to define. So is it a pointless term? And can we come up with something better?
This oft-discussed topic was brought to the fore again in a number of places at the same time last week. Around the time that this article from a San Diego publication started doing the rounds, a similar conversation had started up on this post on my blog, questioning whether CBC, as a large(ish) brewery backed by a foreign brewery could really be classed as craft. A concurrent thread of comments on the post discussed the possibility of using the term “all-malt” to differentiate the beer currently known as “craft” from that known at the moment as “mass-produced”.
There was also this piece on a US beer drinker suing AB-InBev for misleading him into thinking the Leffe he was sipping was brewed in a Belgian abbey, when in fact, it was brewed in an immense factory. But this got me thinking – if you’ve been enjoying Leffe or Blue Moon for months or years, not realising that it wasn’t a “craft beer”, does that suddenly stop it being palatable? Does big business really taste as bad as chlorophenols in a beer? If the stuff tastes good, do you care if it was made by a man in a cassock or a woman wearing a white coat? What is craft beer to you and do you care what it’s called? Share your thoughts on all or any of the above in the comments section below, or if you don’t feel much like typing, choose an option from the poll…
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