Revised definition of craft beer

Perhaps the controversy around the Brewers’ Association (BA) and its attack on “crafty beers” has had some good. In early March 2014 the BA revised its definition of a craft brewer. The revised definition states: “An American craft brewer is small, independent and traditional.”

What they mean by this is:

- Small: Annual production of 6 million barrels (7 million hl) of beer or less.

- Independent: Less than 25 percent of the craft brewery is owned or controlled (or equivalent economic interest) by a beverage alcohol industry member that is not itself a craft brewer.

- Traditional: A brewer that has a majority of its total beverage alcohol volume in beers whose flavour derives from traditional or innovative brewing ingredients and their fermentation. Flavoured malt beverages (FMBs) are not considered beers.

Suddenly some familiar names previously called “crafty” by the BA find themselves on the list of craft brewers. Why? Because the word “traditional” serves as the door opener to the club of craft brewers.

In late February 2014 members of the BA met and slightly tweaked the BA’s definition of a craft brewer, allowing a number of heritage breweries to join the club.

This change was more than a year in the making, after the BA launched its much debated “Craft vs. Crafty” campaign and released a list of “Domestic Non-Craft Brewers” that included August Schell Brewing and D.G. Yuengling and Son Inc., among other heritage breweries, because they use adjuncts like corn or rice in their recipes.

When the BA revised the definition, it recognized that adjunct brewing is traditional, as brewers have long brewed with what has been available to them.

However, due to the BA insisting on the “small” and “independent” sections of the definition, breweries like Widmer Brothers (with partial ownership by AB-InBev) are still excluded.

In our view, although the revision of the definition has been long overdue, it does not go far enough and it does nothing to scrap the unfortunate sectarian mentality in the U.S. brewing industry.