The other day I noticed I have been making up a few more words and phrases to describe what I have been observing in the beer world. Not expecting Websters to give me a call anytime soon but they are useful tools for discussion. Here are a few:
“fan pub” – a pub, tavern, bar that caters primarily to beer nerds. Judgement neutral term at least. Words of affection for best such as Bar Volo.
“scene” – what happens at a good fan pub or pubs. Can be part of a larger healthy diverse interesting community. Too focused to be community in itself.
“national craft” – makers of good beer who sell across USA or Canada and maybe UK. Rogue or Stone or Sam Adams in USA. Question of shark jumping and morph to kraphtt a continuing concern.
“regional craft” – makers of good beer who sell within a US region or Canadian province / region. Bell’s from Michigan or Creemore of Ontario. No requirement for the PR of personality that haunts national craft.
“local craft” – good beer of limited distribution. New Glarus from Wisconsin.
“kraphtt” – non-craft that looks like craft. Long standing new-ism and more and more triggered by beers like Shock Top and Blue Moon.
Do these help? Any more of yours you could add?
[Original comments…]
Tom Streeter – September 18, 2011 7:20 PM
http://www.hoperatives.com
These are fantastic. I’m posting a link over at our place and I have a feeling “national craft,” regional craft,” and “local craft” are going to become part of our lexicon.
And “krapht?” Genius.
Jeff Alworth – September 18, 2011 8:19 PM
http://beervana.blogspot.com/
I’m all for new names, but I don’t know that your tripartite system for craft is quite there yet. The first issue is that “craft” remains quite murky. Which is craft: Craft Brewers United (Widmer/Redhook), Goose Island, Tugboat (a notorious Portland brewpub that makes about 50 barrels of funky, often infected beer, Sam Adams Light, Blue Moon?
I have my own definition for that, but it seems to satisfy no one and enrage many–so good luck parsing that.
The second issue is that the local/regional/national trichotomy is confounded by size. Rogue, as you point out, is national, but it’s smaller than Widmer, Full Sail, Deschutes, and even, I think, Ninkasi–all regional breweries. In fact, even local breweries can be sizable–New Glarus is the 21st largest in the US–bigger than Rogue at 25. Aside from Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada, I don’t know that there really are any other national craft brands. (And yes, I am navel-gazing about American breweries, ignoring Canada and Europe. But that just confounds things all the more.)
Kraphtt replaces “faux craft,” so isn’t strictly necessary; it’s a lot better, though, so I’ll happily adopt it.
Alan – September 18, 2011 9:08 PM
Size is not the issue for me. It’s the business model. That way we avoid the embarrassing discussion the Brewers’ Association dwells upon as to whether 2 million is small. [I do think this system works best with US or at least there is no real national craft up here.]
Stone is certainly a national craft brand as it’s available from coast to coast. Plus it allows in Blue Moon as national kraphtt. [Better than crap but not quite craft.] So if we have three words for quality and three for scope of distribution, that is a nine category system.
– national craft
– national kraphtt
– national crap
– regional craft
– regional kraphtt
– regional crap
– local craft
– local kraphtt
– local crap
Is there actually local crap?
Win Bassett – September 18, 2011 9:30 PM
http://www.twitter.com/winbassett
These are great! I especially like “kraphtt.”
Ethan – September 18, 2011 10:36 PM
http://communitybeerworks.com
another thumbs up for the word ‘kraphtt;” but defining it won’t be easy.
Jon – September 19, 2011 12:40 AM
http://www.thebrewsite.com/
Yes, there is local crap. From time to time it happens.
Alan – September 19, 2011 7:30 AM
I think I am going to extrapolate this out further:
– national artisanal
– national craft
– national kraphtt
– national crap
– regional artisanal
– regional craft
– regional kraphtt
– regional crap
– local artisanal
– local craft
– local kraphtt
– local crap
Then in each class the beer can graded from poor, isn’t bad, repeat buy to excellent. There will be gaps. There is no national artisanal. There is no local crap that is excellent but there is some regional crap that isn’t bad and a few that are repeat buys.
This is a consumption focused scale so scale of brewing operation is not all that relevant. It is also inclusive of all beer, not just craft.
As it is a sliding scale so just like the compass can tell you you are heading east north east you could have a unimportant regional kraphtt/craft which makes beers that are in a range from not bad to repeat buys. If we adopt something like a Hugh Johnson system of symbols Sam Adams could be described as a “nat k/f ♦♦ – ♦♦♦” or a national brewer of kraphtt to craft which makes not bads to repeat buys. This could compare with a “loc/reg f/a ♦♦♦ – ♦♦♦♦” which would represent an important local craft/artisanal brewer which makes only repeat buy to excellent beers. That would be Jolly Pumpkin of Michigan.
Kyle – September 19, 2011 10:20 AM
Pretty soon we will have our own language a la Pig Latin or Elephant. It will come complete with lazy grammar rules, ambiguous spellings, and hand-gestures for after that last Rasputin, when your mouth just won’t cooperate. Great post.