The Countries With The Most Craft Breweries

There are no 560 craft breweries in Russia, mark my word.
Most of them are microbreweries with the same standard range of unfiltered crap - pale, dark, something wheat and something kinda red.
There are only several true craft microbreweries, several dozens of contract craft breweries and definite quantity of "half-domestic half-social network" breweries.
Poland has got actually more craft breweries than Russia.

 

Thank you for your post. How would you characterize these "several true craft microbreweries?" What makes them unique?

 

What is "unfiltered crap" ? What beer was ever improved by filtration?
I'm still puzzled by what constitutes a "craft" brewery. It seems basically to be the new word for what were once called micro breweries.Brewing a good basic pale ale is craft brewing believe me.Beer doesn't have to be adulterated to become craft , you can work wonders with simply water, malt and hops and make absolute crap by trying to be too clever.

 

As has been discussed in several posts in this thread the ‘challenge’ is creating a universally accepted and unambiguous definition for a “craft brewery”.

For the case of the US, one definition for “craft brewery” is that one provided by the Brewers Association but there have been numerous BA threads where folks have argued over that specific definition.

For the case of non-US breweries I am unaware of any brewing organization/association which addresses the definition of what constitutes a “craft brewery”. For example, should a German brewery be classified as a “craft brewery” only if it produces beers akin to what we in the US associate with being a craft beer? For example do the German “craft breweries” need to produce “beers that are hoppy, barrel aged, and /or flavored” as posted by Michael (@TongoRad)? Or would a small brewery located in Franconia that makes beers like Kellerbier, Rauchbier, etc. be considered a “craft brewery”?

By extension what constitutes a “craft brewery” in the UK? Is it a brewery like BrewDog that produces a beer like Punk IPA a “craft brewery”? What about a small British brewery that produces beers like Mild Ale, Bitter Ale, etc.?

I truly doubt that on a BA thread we could all ever universally agree to what constitutes a “craft brewery” since even in the context of US breweries this topic is debated.

Cheers!

 

Nowadays Russian market consists of 3 parts: macro breweries, producing standard lagers, like BMC, young craft microbreweries and contract breweries, brewing wide range of styles like IPAs, stouts, pumpkin ales, sours and so on. And there is a unique russian sort of microbreweries, restaurant breweries etc. brewing unfiltered, unpasteurized, low-quality beers, retailing them on-tap and often pouring them into PET bottles. They say, there are often unsanitary conditions and other nightmares during production. Pale and dark beers are similar to german kellerbiers, but usually worse, wheat beers are predominantly weizens, sometimes wits. Red beers imply whatever you can imagine (vienna lagers, munich dunkels etc.).

 

We have the ridiculous situation in this country when a brewer of cask ales sells some in a keg and advertises it as its "first craft beer" , it's the same stuff they were brewing for years just sold in a different package.
There is of course the US influence but this is part of a two way process; many founders of "craft" breweries learnt their trade in Europe.

 

This just illustrates the rediculousness of comparing countries of widely varying size, somewhat like comparing US states.