The Craft of the Matter

PETER: We’ve got a call from William in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Welcome to BackStory.

WILLIAM: Thank you very much. I just wanted to ask you about the brewing topic, specifically the small craft brewing. And if you’re aware of any history associated with that, and where you see the future of the small craft and microbreweries—where it’s going. Do you think it’s a fad?

PETER: William, I’ll just pass it to Brian. But first just say that if craft brew takes off, it’s a return to the good old days.

BRIAN: Yeah, Peter, everybody was a craft brewer in your day. I’m surprised you’re passing it along so quickly.

PETER: It was in-house

ED: Before we skip over to Brian, I think I need to talk about the golden age of when we destroyed that in the 19th century and the 20th century with mass production. And so, what began in the 19th century was really being able to produce large amounts to ship, when you had ice and standardization, and being able to have water supplies that are consistent, and being able to get all the raw materials by train, and so forth. That begins in the 19th century. Really accelerates in the 20th century, and almost comes to like, an extreme form after World War II. Is that right? Before it comes back into craft?

BRIAN: That’s right. It’s really during the Great Depression, and then increasing during the war, World War II, that a lot of the regional brewers are wiped out. The major development there, William, is Prohibition. And then, of course, there’s the Great Depression. And a lot of those regional and smaller brewers—they didn’t call them craft brewers. They’re just brewers for the local area. They just didn’t make it through those 13 years of Prohibition, and then long economic downturn afterwards.

So what we have after World War II is really a national brewers and national distribution. They start using throwaway cans. They start putting chemicals in beer and packaging it in a way that it no longer has to be shipped on ice. And this is part of the story of a national market, national advertising. Everything’s going great. We got Anheuser-Busch. We’ve got Miller.

And then something happens in the ’60s and the ’70s, and that is the counterculture. It’s a return to the local. And along with that, we have brewers, who I guess you would label as craft brewers, begin to emerge with a real critique of these large national standardized breweries.

PETER: Yeah. You know what’s really driving this, Brian, is the new inequality in that people can afford to pay twice as much for a craft brew. OK. William, so what’s your stake in all this aside from the stake of a consumer and drinking good beer?

WILLIAM: I’m originally from Michigan, and now live in and Pennsylvania. And I graduated from Western Michigan University, and there was a brewery near my apartment which served as my study hall also, I guess you could say.

[LAUGHTER]

But we could only get, when I was going through college, that local brewery, that small craft beer, in that area. And now I’m starting to notice some of that beer is being marketed here in Eastern Pennsylvania.

BRIAN: You mean your Michigan beer is showing up in Pennsylvania?

WILLIAM: Which is fine with me. I’m not complaining. But I’ve heard it brought up before though that how big is too big to consider it still a small craft before it starts going mainstream, and then becomes another, well, you can get that anywhere.

PETER: Well, you know, it is going mainstream. And all these microbreweries have been brought up. They continue to brew. They continue to do it the way they do it, but they’re now owned by Budweiser, or some other company.

BRIAN: Oh, not all of them.

PETER: Not all of them, but it’s—

BRIAN: You know, because those hippies in the ’70s who wanted the local and the authentic, and hated that standardized Anheuser-Busch, those big American corporations? Well, guess what? Those big American corporations are now owned by foreign companies. Anheuser-Busch—

ED: So now they’re exotic again.

BRIAN: Exactly. Well, not so much. They are gargantuan.

PETER: Now we’re drinking Dutch beer. Or South African beer.

BRIAN: Here’s a test, guys. What beer company owned by American ownership accounts for the largest percentage of the market?

WILLIAM: I know that Old Milwaukee was voted best tasting beer not too long ago. But I don’t have a clue.

BRIAN: William, you’re changing the topic. And Old Milwaukee, by the way, is not owned by an American company.

PETER: That’s South African.

BRIAN: That’s South Africa. That’s part of the Miller constellation, if I’m not mistaken.

ED: Rolling Rock.

BRIAN: That’s not a bad guess. It’s Yuengling.

WILLIAM: Wow. Right here.

PETER: Right in Pennsylvania.

BRIAN: Right near you. And it just surpassed Sam Adams, the Boston brewing company. But what’s amazing is those count for tiny percentages of the market. I think less than 2% in each case. So on the one hand, we have a real move towards the microbreweries. On the other hand, most Americans—and most Americans who consider themselves to be real Americans—are drinking beer that is owned or produced by owners in other countries.

PETER: So Brian and Ed, what interests me about all this is the ersatz use of the word “craft.” It’s something like “organic.”

BRIAN: “Natural.”

PETER: “Craft,” as in, the potato chips I eat are often “handcrafted.” And I have this image of little people making each chip for me.

BRIAN: So you don’t don’t mean Kraft as in processed cheese.

PETER: Well, I think it’s the kind of nostalgia invoking Ed’s century and before. My century, too.

BRIAN: Pepperidge Farm. Ye Olde, with an E.

PETER: Hey, thanks a lot, William, for your great call.

WILLIAM: Hey enjoy your ales and stouts, and have a grand day.

BRIAN: All right. Thank you so much.

WILLIAM: Bye now.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

FEMALE SPEAKER: [SINGING] This is the last call for alcohol this evening.