This is an interesting list of the 50 largest craft brewers in the US. It’s important to note that the Brewers Association recently upgraded the ceiling of production to 6 million barrels per year from 1 million barrels previously. This allowed the Boston Beer Company, makers of Sam Adams and with 2.7 million BBL total sales, to stay on the list of craft brewers. Both Sierra Nevada and New Belgium are flirting with the 1 Million BBL line, but are still well below with roughly 900,000 and 760,000 respectively. The Gambrinus Co. based in San Antonio, TX and owners of the Spoetzl Brewery makers of Shiner, appear as 4th on the list. The next largest craft brewer from Texas is Saint Arnold out of Houston ranking #45. But are these really still craft brewers ?
I personally wonder if one can still call themselves “Craft” if you are in the top 10 brewers across the nation. Unless of course we’re talking about countries with a far smaller population than the US. Say, Belgium for instance. Personally, the notion of a craft brewer implies a certain “esprit d’artisan” or artisans approach to everything you do. It evokes the images of a single brew master carefully monitoring every step of the process, checking the quality of each ingredient and resulting product as they move through the malting, brewing and fermentation process. I sincerely doubt this attention to detail can be given to each and every batch once you reach the levels of those listed in, let’s say the top 10 of that list.
Realize however this does not mean at all I don’t enjoy the products of those breweries. Their level of quality and process control is impressive to ensure the consistency in the products they deliver. Yet what I find intriguing is that many of them will create “small batch” or “limited release” editions, which somehow makes me wonder why not every product is labeled “Small batch”. After all, if one is brewing with a 30 BBL brewhouse, everything can be considered small batch. One famous brewery out of that top 10 now brews on a 200 BBL brewhouse and decided to add a 10 hectoliter [8.6 BBL] pilot brewhouse to experiment and create small batches. If everything was “Craft” or “Small Batch“, this additional pilot wouldn’t be needed, now would it ? My point exactly.
I truly enjoy their beers, some of their creations are absolutely wonderful and we can never thank them enough for what they have done to revive craft brewing in the United States. And yet, as with all things, once one grows to a certain size, it is still fair and appropriate to cling to the “Craft” label ?
For more in depth information on the burgeoning world of craft beer, here’s some interesting statistics on the growth of the craft beer world in general. With a growth of almost 50% in barrels produce and active breweries across the country, it appears the United States is slowly getting back to the golden days of the small breweries that once were prevalent across the country.
Note: Exact sales numbers are hard to obtain, so I may be off a little bit, but it’s definitely accurate in order of magnitude.