Dabbled in Facebook briefly. I use it as a “business tool” mainly (and it is a useful one), but if you’re there you get dragged into being “friends” and into “groups”. There’s a “Craft Beer” group where you’re only allowed to talk about “craft beer”. Some poor chap got told off for mentioning Robinsons beer…
Pffftt…
I’m not a big fan of Robbies. Old Tom on cask can be a delight mind you. Like most trad brewers their sterile shelflife-first flavour-second bottled stuff is mostly not great compared to their cask, and their cask is mostly a bit unexciting. But entirely pleasant when found in good condition.
But just because they’re a bit trad, presumably pay full duty rate, are more than 10 years old as a brewery, and that you find their beers in Tesco… seems little reason to blithely dismiss them as “not craft” in my mind. Let alone get on a high horse about it.
They’re independent and family run… do not represent a huge chunk of the UK beer market… well below the 3% that makes up the US definition for craft brewers, let alone the overall volume of beer produced under the US market definition. I’d be curious to know if they brew less or more than BrewDog at the moment. BrewDog… that common, or garden variety, Tesco brewer who most certainly are on the full duty rate.
Craft defined by style? Maybe craft defined by hops?
The mindless faddishness of it gets my goat and I want no part in it. It reflects badly on the industry as a whole, and it makes folk who claim that they like beer look like a bag of fashion-victim style tossers.
Yeah unfortunately for some craft is pulled pork, subway tile and grapefruit.
I really liked their mild and old Tom,
Craft beer has always been about style. The craft beer movement = a bunch of people who like a certain set of styles of beer talking about those styles and promoting them to the general public and trying to get them sold in pubs and off-licences. Mainly stuff like big juicy New Word hopped IPAs, impy stouts, black IPAs, sours and saisons. Non-traditional styles (for the UK, at least). Basically most things except lager, bitter and nitro-stout.
What on earth did you think it was about? Brewery size? lol. Its never been about brewery size. We’re not stupid, we know all beer is industrially manufactured and larger breweries tend to produce a more consistent product. Craft has always just been code for non-traditional styles.