Craft Beer

Craft Beer is an American term also common in Canada and New Zealand to refer to beer brewed without adjuncts such as rice or corn, for distinction and flavor rather than mass appeal.

Some define craft beer as beer made without rice or corn, but outside of North America and Asia, rice and corn are rarely used in the making of traditional beer. In Germany tradition dictate that only barley-malt, hops, and water were used in the making of beer. A similar law, the Isle of Man’s Pure Beer Act of 1874 is still in force and means that Manx brewers can use nothing more than water, malt, sugar and hops in their brews. There are those, however, that disagree with the notion that any such rules be applied to all beer “styles” and maintain that so-called “craft” beer can indeed contain other grains or adjunct sugars. To this end, it should be noted that a good many traditional British beers have, for more than a century, made use of these adjunct grains as well as kettle sugars of various types (molasses, treacle, and “brewers” sugar, sometimes called invert sugar) to enhance rather than lighten beers. The distinction is further complicated because, in the United States, many traditional European styles are produced almost exclusively by craft breweries.

The term “craft beer” may be taken simply to mean the opposite of “mass produced beer”. Most mass produced styles of beer in the United States share many common characteristics: they are brewed with significant quantities of rice and /or corn in addition to barley; they are filtered; they contain chemical preservatives to compensate for reduced shelf life due to filtering; they are quite low on hops; and they usually don’t contain any flavor-related adjuncts. Conversely, many craft beers are unfiltered, bottle conditioned or cask conditioned, they normally don’t use rice, and they may contain high quantities of hops and /or other spices.

Craft beer refers to the products of brewpubs and smaller breweries, though some larger breweries, hoping to profit from the recent popularity of craft beer, believe that they should be able to market their all-malt beers as craft beers.