In 1965, Fritz Maytag, heir to the Maytag washing machine fortune, bought the old Anchor Brewing Company. It was a brewery from the 1800s that had survived Prohibition but was barely hanging on. His amber Anchor Steam Beer sold well locally, and that was the proof others needed: flavourful beer could be sold in America.
Two more names followed. John “Jack” McAuliffe started New Albion Brewing in Sonoma, California, in 1976, and in 1980 Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi lit the kettle at Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. Between them came a legal change. On February 1, 1979, President Jimmy Carter’s signature made homebrewing legal, according to the Oxford Companion to Beer.
Where the word came from
“Microbrewery” began in Britain. As small breweries multiplied there in the 1970s, the word described a scrappy entrepreneur making bold new beer in a small building or a shed. Equipment was improvised, since no small kit existed; brewers fitted out systems from old dairy gear and cast-off tanks bought from big brewers.
America needed the idea more than most. In the mid-1970s the country made almost nothing but pale mass-market lager. Prohibition, which stopped American brewing between 1920 and 1933, had crushed nearly every small brewery, and few recovered.
Drawing the line
There is no single global answer on size. The Oxford Companion says almost everyone agrees that a brewery making less than 12,000 hl, about 10,000 US barrels, fits the description. The Brewers Association, the US trade body, sets the line at less than 15,000 barrels a year, with 75 percent or more of the beer sold off-site.
The Association sorts craft brewers into six segments:
- Microbreweries.
- Brewpubs, restaurant-breweries that sell 25 percent or more of their beer on-site and run significant food service.
- Taproom breweries, which also sell 25 percent or more on-site but without significant food service.
- Regional breweries, producing between 15,000 and 6,000,000 barrels a year.
- Contract brewing companies, which hire another brewery to make their beer.
- Alternating proprietors, licensed tenants that take over a shared brewery while brewing.
Above all of them sits the craft brewer label: small, meaning 6 million barrels or less a year, about 3 percent of US annual sales, and independent, meaning less than 25 percent owned by a drinks company that is not itself a craft brewer.
Why “micro” is fading
Many once-tiny breweries have outgrown the name. The Oxford Companion says “craft brewery” has replaced “microbrewery,” especially in the United States. The revolution it describes has produced over 1,600 breweries in the United States and about 600 in the UK.
The next step down is the nanobrewery, which has no agreed definition. Most are tiny commercial operations brewing batches as small as 10 to 15 US gallons. As of 2011 there were probably only 50 or so in the United States, and American tax authorities had already reminded them that they still owe federal excise taxes. The Brewers Association adds one more detail about the whole sector: the majority of Americans live within 10 miles of a craft brewer.
Sources
- microbrewery, (The Oxford Companion to Beer, ed. Garrett Oliver, Oxford University Press 2012; via Craft Beer & Brewing)
- Craft Beer Industry Market Segments (Brewers Association)
- Craft Brewer Definition (Brewers Association)
