Do you think you're a good person? Do you? Do you sit there and go: “I don’t vote tory, I do pay taxes, generally speaking I’m even pretty good at recycling - sometimes I go to the effort of washing out the tin of beans and that. A real upstanding citizen who Greta would be proud of.” Is that what you think, yeah?
Well if you’re drinking one of the mass and popular lager brands every single time you go to the pub and ask for a pint of cold, let me explain why you might want to re-think it all a little bit. I understand why the craft beer gets shat on, I do. Those people with the waxed moustaches do not help themselves. But economically, politically, and more -allys, it isn’t such a bad tipple.
Defining craft is a mess, everyone twists meaning to suit their marketing campaigns, so let’s just get into what it ought to mean. Craft beer is beer (wahey) made by small independent breweries. Often, and ideally always, their aim is to make the best product possible, which means quality ingredients, pushing boundaries with the taste, and also having a good work environment and community around their brews. And often it means range, everything from a 0.5% pale ale to 1 14% monster of a stout. Tidy.
In a world where shopping locally is encouraged from economic, political, and environmental standpoints, surely it makes sense the beer comes from up the road too, produced by local people just trying to make a living making sauce. There’s also a lot of purpose within craft beer breweries, for example Queer Brewing often raises money for LGBTQ+ charities through their beer, which, regardless of your sexual status, is just a nice thing to do.
Politically, well, if you’re someone who thinks it’s bad actually, that every brand you’ve ever heard of is owned by the same company, it’s the same in the booze world. Some companies have as many as 630 beer brands in their portfolio. A craft brewery might put out a new beer or two each week, but that’s change, not expansion. Anyway, variety’s the spice of life, whoever she is.
The craft beer world isn’t without its problems, it does cost more (but there’s an argument around fair pricing of products and how actually the profit margins are far less). There also exist issues of transparency around “craft” because some brands like to use it as a marketing tactic even if they’re owned by larger companies. But that’s all technical stuff isn’t it. Booze for thought, or something like that.
Of course we all know you’re going to go to your local and drink what makes you happy and always has. I’m not saying to upend your entire life over this. But if you find yourself accidentally in one of those pubs where you know nothing on the menu because it’s all local and has stupid names like “miscellaneous gothic juice bomb,” embrace it. The daft names aside, there might be some good to it.