All You Ever Wanted to Know About Craft Beer

Document Type

Other

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

Social sciences

Publication Details

RTE Brainstorm, 17 May 2019.

Abstract

Beer is arguably the oldest and most consumed alcoholic beverage in the world and Ireland has a long history of beer and brewing. After a period of stagnation which lasted many decades, the Irish brewing industry is undergoing significant change in recent times and the craft beer movement is the catalyst for this shift. But what are the origins of the craft beer movement - and what exactly is craft beer?

In the early 1970s, the global brewing industry was preoccupied with commercial competitiveness. Breweries focused on producing an ever-increasing volume of beer, lowering costs and reducing production time rather than honouring, quality and craft at the heart of beer the product. Consumption and production of a single style of beer, lager, was at an all-time high. While this homogeneous bland tasting beer appealed to the mass market, it was not what all consumers wanted.

DOI

https://doi.or/10.21427/t4tq-1a62


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