American Craft Beer Week takes place as “a national celebration highlighting the culture and contributions of craft beer.” According to the Brewers’ Association, as of May 8, 195 breweries had posted up 470 events on the association’s website. You can search these by state. The association has also linked to a “Declaration of Beer Independence,” a feature on ACBW on the Colbert Report, and to the ACBW Facebook page. If you don’t feel like sifting through the database to find an event, you can pay a visit to the Facebook page where some are posted. Oh, and there is lots of talk on Twitter, too.
That is not to say that everyone is a fan of ACBW. Long-time beer bloggers, Alan McLeod and Stephen Beaumont, take issue with the message of the whole thing. Why drink from a small brewer because they only make x barrels? Why not drink a beer on its own merits?
Agree or disagree? And I’d be curious as to whether you, in Beaumont’s words, “give a proverbial rat’s ass about [ACBW].”
quality does tend to correlate inversely with quantity, with rare exception – good homebrewed “clones” tend to taste better than their commercial counterparts, for example. naturally there are exceptions – really great brewers/breweries can scale up without quality sacrifice as long as they have total control over qc (stone, dogfishhead come to mind). but smaller does tend to be better – as long as the brewers love what they do and love to make great beer!
Homebrews over commercial/mastered brews? I’d be curious as to whether others share that opinion but I’ve rarely found that to be the case.