Importers of new and exciting American Craft Beers. Bringing marker breweries to the UK, such as Lost Abbey, Alesmith, Jolly Pumpkin, Founders, Port Brewing.

In the early twentieth century, Prohibition drove many breweries in the US into bankruptcy because they could not rely on selling “sacramental wine” as wineries of that era did. After several decades of consolidation of breweries, most American commercial beer was produced by a few very large corporations, resulting in a very uniform, mild-tasting lager, of which Budweiser and Miller are well-known examples. Consequently, some beer drinkers craving variety turned to homebrewing and eventually a few started doing so on a slightly larger scale. For inspiration, they turned to Britain, Germany, and Belgium, where a centuries-old tradition of artisan beer and cask ale production had never died out.

The popularity of these products was such that the trend quickly spread, and hundreds of small breweries sprang up, often attached to a bar (known as a “brewpub”) where the product could be sold directly. As microbrews proliferated, some became more than microbrews, necessitating the definition of the broader category of craft beer – high quality beer. The largest American craft brewery is Samuel Adams.

Craft Beer is an American term which is also common in Canada and New Zealand and generally refers to beer that is brewed using traditional methods, without adjuncts such as rice or corn, and with an eye to what’s distinctive and flavorful rather than mass appeal. Whereas the term microbrewery is a term for a small scale brewery that produces a small volume of beer, craft brewery describes an approach to brewing, which in principle may be carried out on any scale. Most microbreweries are also craft breweries; however “craft” beer can certainly also be a product of a large brewery, and there are many such products coming to market as a result of increased consumer interest in traditional beer.

It is true that some define craft beer as beer made without rice or corn, but such a broad rule would really apply only to German style lager beer which tradition (and for a long time, Bavarian law, see the Reinheitsgebot of 1516) dictated that only malt, hops, and water are used in the making thereof. There are those, however, that disagree with the notion that a blanket rule such as this be applied to all beer “styles” and maintain that so called “craft” beer can indeed contain other grains or adjunct sugars (as some “craft” and specialty products indeed do). To this end, it should be noted that a good many traditional British beers (including “real ale”) 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). Indeed, it can be argued that such additions can be an important and vital part of some traditional beers.

The Association of Brewers reports that in 2007 there were 1,406 regional craft breweries, microbreweries and brewpubs in the United States.

You can see the direction that we’re taking with our American beers – here – please contact us for more information and requests.