When was "micro brew" renamed "craft beer"?

It's certainly not perfect. I don't know what is, but at least craft makes a lot more sense than micro. SN, New Belgium, Deschutes and others of that ilk are most certainly not "micro breweries".

 

Not a beer. Not sold under the Sam Adams name. Not relevant to the discussion.



I tend to reserve "micro brew" for small, localized breweries. The "craft" term can still can still be used for those as well, but I wouldn't call Sierra Nevada or Stone "micro brews" as they're fairly large breweries.

That said, craft doesn't always equal quality.

 

About when the term for small computation device changed to iPad from micro-computer. Well, somewhere along there.

 

Steady on there marquis. 'Ruin' is quite an emotive word. Continue on down that path and it won't be long until you run into RCH Ale Mary and all of its cross eyed spice racky ingredients.

 

Should it be called Micro brew or Craft beer? Micro beer or Craft brew? Well no matter my opinion here someone will tell me it's wrong. Either way there are tons of great beers available out there and no matter what they're calling them, I'll be here to enjoy it.

 

I don't think too many consider rice and corn to be inherently "bad" adjuncts, either, though Marq posted this before session IPAs really took off. All Day isn't doing that terribly, after all

 

I kinda like the sound of Shift Beer. As in...shifted from the mass produced carbonated crap. Some brave brewers made a shift, a change. Consumers had an opportunity to enjoy great beer and made a shift to support and enjoy the movement in to well made beers. But if you say Shift Beer too fast, well, you know...

 

Perhaps you're unfamiliar with the craft industry's cringe-inducing video, I Am A Craft Brewer.

(Hard to take all in one viewing - FF to 1:24 point for their historically questionable comments on adjunct brewing in the US and their boasts on the topic).

 

I just call it beer. Qualifiers like "craft"are just used to try to position something as better because of an insecurity. "That's not leather, it's imported leather"

I don't much care for the BMC fare but I also think corn is a very valid ingredient in brewing.

 

Yeah I'm with you. Hate the term craft beer.

a) sounds pretentious
b) I'm sure this one is just me, but it makes me think of hippies for some reason

I have various personal criteria as to why I purchase one beer of a particular style vs another - but totally agree, it boils down to buying what I deem to be "good" beer, over average or bad beer.

 

It's true the term 'Craft' seems to contain a supposition of superiority. "It's not a movie, it's cinema!"

When I first started drinking beer about two years ago I entered without making the distinction, and just tried everything. Most of the beers I liked in the long term the best fell in the 'Craft' category. Even the mass produced beers I liked at the beginning like Guinness didn't hold up in the long term. So it's useful to me to make a distinction between craft and non-craft, because the term signifies that I'm more likely to enjoy it.

Whatever the size of the brewery, there are beers where the primary concern is the taste, and beers where other concerns go ahead of taste. And 'Craft' is a good a term as any to use when you want to express 'What beers do you have that are not BMC?'

 

don't really know, but apparently someone decided the word micro wasn't cutting it and decided to find a more applicable one to use as an umbrella term for small independent breweries than that. I can also understand the distinction between craft produced and mass produced, so I have more important things to worry about.

 

I worked for Stone back in 2004 and I remember that Greg or someone told me that Stone was a microbrewery when it produced less than 15,000 but at that time it was producing 32,000 bbl per year so it was a regional craft brewery, at that time I still used to say micro because in the 90's that what we said. The definition by production of a Macro at that time was a large number, 2 million, but I believe they, the Brewers Association, increased the barrel per year number to 6 million not to alienate craft breweries that where getting close to that number. I believe during the 90's a lot of breweries were really microbreweries like Stone while breweries like Sam Adams were technically not. But I think consumers just liked the name microbrews and when more breweries technically became regional craft breweries those brewers started to use the technically correct terminology then it trickled down to the consumers. Besides that craft beer sound better than regional craft beer.