It’s time for a beer pop quiz. What do Brewery Ommegang, Mendocino Brewing, and Yuengling have in common with Anheuser-Busch, Miller, and Coors? Alright, pencils down. If you answered that none of them are craft brewers, then congratulations on winning your beer geek merit badge.

Americans love to define things, drawing lines between themselves and their chosen groups, to the exclusion of others. The same attitude has slowly crept into the beer industry. From the earliest days of microbreweries, an upstart generation of brewers wanted to distinguish themselves from the large, corporate breweries. As the new brewers’ beers were clearly different from homogenized American lagers, their goal made some sense.

In trying to inform the public about their new beers, brewers quickly learned the public relations value of giving a name to their efforts. Despite agreement on this point, the brewers could never agree on the right phrasing. Were they boutique, cottage, artisanal, or specialty breweries? Due to their small size, many brewers identified themselves as ‘microbrewers.’ After restricting membership to breweries that produced fewer than 3000 barrels a year, the microbrewers quickly realized that success was eventually going to force some people out of the club. Despite increasing the production limit to ten and then fifteen-thousand barrels, the stunning growth of the 1990s burned the microbrewers’ first clubhouse to the ground.

A decade after abandoning ‘microbrewer’ in favor of ‘craft brewer,’ brewers are still arguing over what the latter means. This existential debate recently took on new life when the Brewers Association’s governing board established that an “American craft brewer is small, independent and traditional.” While few complained about the small and traditional components, a budding controversy centered on the association’s definition of ‘independent,’ which requires that less than 25-percent of the brewery be owned or controlled by a beverage alcohol company that is not itself a craft brewer. Suddenly, breweries such as Ommegang and Mendocino (owned by foreign breweries), Leinenkugel’s (owned by Miller), and Widmer, Redhook, Goose Island, and Old Dominion (partly owned by Anheuser-Busch) no longer qualified as craft brewers.

While outcast breweries and a handful of their supporters complained, many craft brewers didn’t see much of a reason to object. Some believed that the breweries that partnered with larger breweries had turned their backs on the craft beer movement, while others simply didn’t care about a dispute over labels. For its part, the Brewers Association believed the definition was necessary to protect the legislative and economic interests of its members.

For the brewers, writers, and consumers who reject the Brewers Association’s controversial definition, the craft beer industry’s identity crisis remains a difficult subject to tackle. For one, what other definition can we fashion to decide which breweries qualify as craft breweries? When consumers talk about craft beer, they generally mean beers produced by someone other than the big three. The value of the craft label quickly degrades, however, when applied to imported beers, such as Bass, Guinness, Hoegaarden, and Franziskaner, which are also brewed by corporate behemoths. Alternatively, how do we decide when a brewer stops being ‘craft’? Should we exclude the craft breweries manned by stuffed shirt, corporate types who do nothing but churn out thousands of barrels of bland pale and amber ales?

These questions are only going to grow more difficult to answer in the coming years. Can Boston Beer or Sierra Nevada still be considered ‘small’ when they exceed the two million barrel mark? Is there a difference between Full Sail Brewing, which brews beers for Miller and has accepted money from the brewing giant to update its facilities, and those craft breweries that enter into partnership deals with larger breweries? And what about the full flavored beers produced by the big brewers? While many consumers and enthusiasts deny that such beers qualify as craft, I’d bet money that they couldn’t single out the Michelob Porter, Miller 1880 Barley Wine, or Coors Barmen Pilsner as pariahs in a blind tasting.

In a conciliatory gesture, some brewers believe that we should call these products ‘better beers.’ But better than what, American premium lagers of Bud, Miller, and Coors? This awkward phrasing sounds a lot like a twist on Potter Stewart’s opinion on pornography, “I know a better beer when I taste it.”

In the end, the argument over which breweries qualify as craft is as pointless as debating whether somebody is punk enough to be punk rock. When beer develops into a game of us versus them, then the craft label becomes a meaningless political term. Instead of constantly redefining membership terms, we should focus more on the quality of the flavors and aromas in our pints and less on classifying the breweries that make them.

Article appeared in November 2007 issue of BeerAdvocate Magazine.

A revolution is quietly growing in the beer world. Led by a group of nihilistic radicals, this movement seeks to overthrow the way brewers categorize their beers. Eschewing the restrictions of traditionalism, these free-form brewers want to change the way people think about tasting beer.

The radicals focus their scorn on the beer styles most brewers use as guideposts. Beer styles have developed from time immemorial, many born out of necessity and even accident. As brewers gained greater understanding over the brewing process, including the importance of temperature controls and sanitation, their natural senses of curiosity resulted in the appearance of new flavors. With the help of historians and authors, these flavors eventually hardened into distinguishable types.

The most widely accepted source defining beer styles is the Brewers Association’s Style Guidelines. Since 1979, the trade association’s historic and descriptive style list has attempted to bring order to an otherwise chaotic scheme of eclectic brewing methods and styles. The current list details around 70 distinct styles of beer, with each suggesting the proper color, body type, malt flavors, and hop aromas or bitterness levels.

While some may view the guide’s technical mumbo jumbo as a science nerd’s attempt to suck the fun out of beer, this mild criticism pales in comparison to the radicals’ disdain. In challenging conventional brewing wisdom, a small group of brewers across the country refuse to brew their beers in adherence to any traditional set of parameters. These brewers insist that style guidelines place oppressive, arbitrary, and even damaging restraints on the boundless creativity of craft brewers.

At Sixpoint Craft Ales in Brooklyn, New York, brewer Shane Welch is a pioneer in free-form brewing. Where many brewers first contemplate the style of beer they want to brew and then begin forming a recipe, an approach he calls ‘working backwards,” Welch visualizes each step to a final product. The Sixpoint brewer rejects working within the confines of classic style guidelines, instead choosing to focus on how he wants the beer to taste, look, and smell, down to the smallest detail, and only then does he generate a recipe. While the resulting beers cover a wide-range of flavors, the approach may painfully confound those who prefer order of categorization in their pints.

Throughout our existence, Americans have enjoyed blazing their own trail, sometimes trampling tradition in the process. Craft brewers are no different, tortuously bending and twisting time-honored and venerable beer styles into hardly recognizable new shapes. American craft brewers have taken the classic imperial stout, barleywines, and IPA styles and given them mohawks, baggy pants, and a soul patch. While for many this willingness to untether themselves from the shackles of history is part of the craft beer movement’s charm, there has always remained an underlying, if underplayed, respect for tradition. Some American brewers, however, appear ready to forego the tradition inherent in beer styles altogether.

For many beer lovers, it’s hard to wrap their minds around the concept of free-form brewing. Where they could once judge a beer against some basic objective criteria, however broad, the free-form approach appears to lose all sense of order and flirts with chaos. Without the benefit of styles in the tasting of free-form beers, consumers are left to simply ponder whether they personally like the beer. For free-form brewers, this existential point is the essence of tasting, unencumbered by paper rules influenced by European standards of beauty and achievement.

While the nihilists quietly conspire around the fringes of the brewing industry, many traditional brewers steadfastly promote the importance of brewing within the existing style framework. When drinkers understand even the basic nuances of beer styles, they are better equipped to choose the right beer when they order. But without styles or beer ESP, how does someone decide between Sixpoint’s SMP, Apollo, Express, or Encore? Without a descriptive beer menu or detailed six-pack container, consumers are essentially required to spin the wheel when selecting free-form brands.

Beer styles also provide a necessary check on the beer industry, allowing the consumer to judge the quality of a particular beer against others they’ve had in the style. The lack of any objective criteria provides poor quality beer with the ultimate means of deflecting criticism. An unknowing consumer who finds a sour or unusual off-flavor in their free-form can never be sure the brewer didn’t intend the beer to taste that way.

Standing in a barroom, looking up at the draft list, I remain torn over the value of free-form brewing. While pushing the envelope of beer is a defining characteristic of American craft brewing, so is respect for tradition. This constant push and pull has resulted in amazing displays of brewing artistry. While styles will likely continue to evolve and adapt to an ever-changing American palate, the free-form brewing revolutionaries may one day lead the way.

Article appeared in October 2007 issue of BeerAdvocate Magazine.

For many drinkers, Germany is a beer mecca, the pinnacle of brewing quality, skill, and history. In faux bierkellers around the globe, locals try to recreate gemütlichkeit by listening to oom-pah music while lifting hefty steins of classic beer styles. Tourists dream of attending the real Oktoberfest, while knocking back a few at their local county’s version.

The truth about German beer, however, is an elusive mixture of tradition, battling corporate behemoths, and drinker apathy. While you can still find lederhosen-clad guys jovially clinking glasses in beautiful beer gardens, foreign business conglomerates have consumed many of the grand old names of German brewing. Perhaps due to its indisputable place in the pantheon of great brewing nations, the craft beer movement hasn’t made much of an impact in Germany. Local drinkers often don’t know about the nearby brewing treasures that so many beer tourists come far to visit.

With modernity and consumer disinterest slowly chipping away at the German beer scene’s grand history, I wanted to consider the broader impact on the great tradition of lager beer. For better or worse, America has become the brewing world’s protective sanctuary for endangered beer styles. In the past thirty years, America has given new life to many moribund styles, from porter to pale ale. While American brewers have also done a laudable job of recreating German-style ales, many recoil at the thought of giving refuge to ailing lager styles.

In America, lager beer has almost uniformly meant derivatives of the classic pilsner style. Since before the repeal of Prohibition, names such as Budweiser, Pabst, Miller, and Coors have dominated the American beer market. It’s hard to believe, especially for those of us who didn’t live through it, that for decades upon decades, consuming American beer meant enduring a nearly uniform tasting experience. While the craft revolution put some cheer in American beer, lager beer has been left waiting for its invitation to the party. With the exception of Samuel Adams Boston Lager and a small handful of brands from dedicated lagerheads, craft beer in America means ale. India pale ales, weizens, and stouts are ubiquitous; bocks, dortmunders, and marzens are not.

So why is lager beer the Rodney Dangerfield of the craft beer world? Some posit that many beer enthusiasts regard lager beer with disdain because of its association with the big brewers, while others suggest that it is part of our craft DNA to rebel against lager beer. Others consider lagers to be uncool and lacking in the bold, striking flavors that are more obvious in styles such as Double IPA’s.

To love lager beer requires an appreciation of subtlety. Drinking a well-crafted, traditional lager is a sublime experience that requires patience, concentration, and the willingness to move beyond the obvious and banal pleasures of so many ales. Drinking an ale is like watching Bill Murray in Caddyshack, while tasting a lager is slyly smiling at him in Lost in Translation. Each has just the right quality depending upon your mood, but both deserve a place in your collection.

With a half-liter mug pressed firmly in my hand, I am a traditionalist who believes that lager beer is a thing of beauty, that each style has its place and time, and that the elegant gentility of malts is too often overcome by our brutish addiction to hop bombs. I frequently thank the beer gods that the extreme beer phenomenon has passed over lager’s house without staining its door with a double espresso Czech-style pilsner aged in a French oak barrel on top of cherries.

In considering the future of lager beers, it is the slow wane of Germany’s noble beer scene and the discourteous response of American craft drinkers scene that have me concerned. With the globalization of the beer world, America may very well one day be called upon to save the noble lager brewing tradition. Before this day comes, I hope to see our local brewers embrace this neglected family member and start producing high-quality, traditional representations of classic lager beer styles. It can start with you, the drinker who shies away from lager beer because you think a few of its distant cousins are soulless corporate tough guys. Crack a Victory Prima Pils, a Capital Maibock, or a Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold and help carry on the tradition.

Article appeared in the August 2007 issue of BeerAdvocate Magazine.