Blacksburg Brewing Company - Craft Beer Industry

Craft Beer Industry Beginnings

America's brewing landscape began to change by the late 1970s. The traditions and styles brought over by immigrants from all over the world were disappearing. Only light lager appeared on shelves and in bars and imported beer was not a significant player in the marketplace. Highly effective marketing campaigns had changed America's beer preference to light-adjunct lager. Low calorie light lager beers soon began driving and shaping the growth and nature of the American beer industry, even to present day. By the end of the decade the beer industry had consolidated to only 44 brewing companies. Industry experts predicted that soon there would only be 5 brewing companies in the United States. At the same time as American brewing landscape was shrinking in taste and size a grassroots homebrewing culture emerged. The homebrewing hobby began to thrive because the ONLY way a person in the United States could experience the beer traditions and styles of other countries was to make the beer themselves. These homebrewing roots gave birth to what we now call the "Craft Brewing" industry.

Craft beers, often dubbed "microbrews," are generally "all-malt" domestic beers produced using 100 percent malted barley. Their inspiration can be traced to British, German or Belgian traditions or is often uniquely American. Craft beers range from pale to dark in color and from mild to strong in alcohol content. Sometimes they include unusual ingredients such as fruit, herbs or spices. Compared with other beers, their emphasis is more on flavor, and less on appealing to a mass market. (The best-selling American beers are brewed using 30 to 40 percent rice or corn "adjunct," resulting in a paler, lighter-bodied and lighter-flavored beer).

The Revolution

The foundation for the craft beer renaissance was laid in 1965 with Fritz Maytag’s purchase of the Anchor Brewing Company. Maytag maintained some of the original beer traditions of that brewery, brewing unique beers during a time when all of America's unique beers and breweries were disappearing. But more than a decade would pass before America’s beer renaissance would begin in earnest. In 1977, the New Albion Brewery in Sonoma, CA became America's first microbrewery, producing traditional all-malt beer. In 1982, Yakima Brewing and Malting Co., Inc. opened in Washington as a "brewpub" - a restaurant/brewery that is permitted (for the first time since prohibition) to brew and sell its own beer on site.

Craft beer has gained recognition and market share ever since, winning over consumers with quality driven flavor and freshness. Today there are about 1400 craft breweries in America and craft beer sales growth has out-paced both imports and the large brewery (AB, Miller, and Coors) segments. For more information on craft beer, visit the Brewers Association, the source for most of the information on this page. For information on the colorful past of American beer, visit BeerHistory.com.