Craft Camaraderie

With some frequency, Kurt and I are asked if we started Widmer Brothers Brewing Company as a part of a well laid plan or careful strategy. The truth is that we’re just a couple of knucklehead homebrewers who have been lucky enough to turn our love of beer and brewing into a pretty nice career.

When we built our first commercial brewery in 1984, we didn’t appreciate the depth to which we lacked knowledge about starting a business—let alone brewing more than five gallons of beer at a time. But we worked hard and had a lot of help from friends, family and people in the beer business.

One of the nice things about brewing is that among brewers there has always been camaraderie and a willingness to help each other and work together. In our early days of brewing the guys at Blitz-Weinhard gave us advice and did a little QA testing for us, which is what we do currently for some of our local craft-brewing brethren. And we used to combine our malt orders with other local craft brewers to gain price breaks by ordering in full truck loads. One time, we shared a big truck with the McMenamin brothers and took a field trip to the Oly brewery in Washington state to load up on used Golden Gate kegs. And we’ve accomplished a great deal by working with the other members of the Oregon Brewer’s Guild on issues with our state legislature. Kurt and I have also maintained close ties to the Oregon Brew Crew, the homebrewing club where we were early members.

Our joint project with the homebrewers called Collaborator is almost 10 years old and has been the source of some absolutely awesome beer. Every Collaborator homebrewer that I’ve spoken with has said that they learned tremendously by working with our brewing team. And our brewers have learned from the homebrewers as well. The bottom line is that there is a brotherhood among the members of our brewing community and I think this atmosphere of cooperation and willingness to work together is one of the reasons that craft brewing has been so successful.

Recently, there has been an attempt to define what it is to be a craft brewer. I’m sure that the people driving this process have nothing but the best intentions for those of us in the craft brewing community. However, the current definition divides brewers into classes and, I believe, will confuse beer drinkers, weaken the bond between brewers and distract everyone from what is truly important—beer! As I understand it, this new definition is not written in stone and the need for any definition at all is still being debated.

Large or small, brewpub or contract brewer, I think that it is in everyone’s best interest to continue to work together to meet the challenges we’re certain to face. As Paul Gatza has been able to report at recent annual meetings of the Brewers Association, things are going great for craft brewers. With solidarity I think that Paul will be able to continue to report the success of craft brewing for years to come. ■