Anonymous asked:
I. Can't believe you have no support for UK real ales or craft beer. Brewdog is huge over here!
Here’s the problem: There’s no prevailing definition for what constitutes “craft beer” in the UK. We personally love Brewdog, but it’s a problem they’ve identified as needing to be solved as well: https://www.brewdog.com/lowdown/blog/defining-craft-beer
Canada has a similar issue: there are multiple regional definitions of “craft beer” and “craft brewery” but no national definition. That means the same beer and brewery may be considered “craft” in Ottawa, but not in British Columbia.
So until there’s an actual industry definition for “craft beer” we can’t really make arbitrary decisions on what to consider “craft” or not. Well, we could theoretically just create our own definition, but then we’d be the outsiders trying to tell another country’s beer community what to consider “craft” and what to consider “crafty.” That’s not a great position to be in. We’d much rather the country’s craft breweries and industry groups come up with their own internal definitions for us to go by.
So we’re rooting for the Brewdog guys to solve this problem, and they’re actually making really good progress. But until there’s an actual industry-understood definition for “craft beer” in the UK, we can’t really tell you what’s craft beer and what’s not.
