The Greatest Crime in Craft Beer

With a title that makes a claim such as this, the mind races through probably dozens of possible offenses perpetrated against or even by the craft beer industry itself. Any of these offenses may qualify, depending on your personal drinking preferences and level of passion for today’s craft beer movement. Could it be the bland light lagers forced upon us by the major commercial breweries, whom we all know to be evil incarnate? Could it be the radical and experimental (and often mediocre) brews put out by craft breweries in an attempt to recapture their bleeding edge? Could it even be the overzealous online fans of craft beer themselves?

In fact, the greatest crime in the craft beer world today is something so innocuous and subtle that it most likely has escaped notice by most craft beer consumers. It has crept upon us silently over the past few years and has spread now widely in some areas, especially with the advent of the more upscale drinking establishments and fashionable gastropubs. It is not something new that has been added but instead something that has gone missing: the simple
16-ounce pint glass.

The pint glass has been the standard of goods exchange for draft beer retailers for generations of beer drinkers. A  U.S. liquid pint is a volume of measure defined as 16 ounces, or around 473 milliliters. (The British went so far as to regulate the servings of beer by law centuries ago, hence their 20-ounce imperial pint.) The name pint has its roots in the Old French and ultimately in the Latin picta, meaning “painted,” referring to the serving line painted on an ale vessel. The very definition of this word has historical origins tied to the selling, serving and consumption of beer – but all that may have now come to an end.

This crime is not one committed by the craft beer brewers themselves but by on-premise retailers, who have quietly started to replace their standard pint glasses with either similar-looking 14-ounce glasses of the same shaker pint design or stylized glasses of 12 or even 10 fluid ounces in volume. This is ostensibly a cost-cutting measure – one often accompanied by a price increase as well, so the consumer sometimes now pays more and receives less beer pulled from the tap. Understandably, a business must cover its expenses and ultimately make a profit but the consumer’s salary is not rocketing skyward, either.

This is the greatest craft beer crime because it has broken the standard metric of exchange between craft beer consumers and the retailers they support. No longer can we compare one establishment to another on the basis of price as their serving sizes cannot be relied upon to be equivalent, and some retailers are unjustly accused of being more expensive when they are actually the same or cheaper on a per-ounce basis. The consumer metric between the ultimate purchaser and the brewery, the 12-ounce bottle, still stands but for how long? Will brewers begin to adopt a 10-ounce bottle size or 8-ounce can for the same purpose?

(Actually, this trend has already started, albeit on a very isolated scale. Some breweries use the "stubby" bottles for their product, a throwback design from decades ago. This bottle style does have some distinct and practical functional advantages for brewers but it holds only 11.2 ounces in volume instead of the standard 12 ounces. Fortunately, the ubiquity of the iconic longneck brown bottle is a difficult tradition and marketing package from which to deviate.)

Nor are craft breweries entirely innocent in this practice. Customized brewery glassware is often provided to retailers, specialized glasses etched with the company logo that are meant to be the ideal serving vessel and volume for perhaps a boozy barleywine or pungent sour ale. For high-gravity products or limited-edition exceptions such as these, smaller portion sizes are understandable and acceptable but too often a simple sessionable amber or wheat ale is served in the same glass. Breweries do not object because they are eager for the logo to be displayed and happy for the free promotion.

As consumers, the only force we have is the budget we choose to spend on purchasing such products and supporting these retailers. Watch for the serving size you are offered next time you enjoy a craft beer from a fresh tap, and verify its volume if necessary. Challenge retailers that do not use the 16-ounce pint as their serving standard, and patronize those that still adhere to a reliable and universally accepted metric of sale.

Support Your Local Brewery

It is a mantra that resonates throughout the craft beer community. It is part sage advice, part current trend, part modern marketing. It originates from both components of formal microeconomics theory and home-grown wisdom. It is the counsel you receive from commercial brewers, home brewers and just about all beer-centric websites: Support your local brewery.

Fresh beer is better beer. Beer is a perishable product. It shares a lot of characteristics with farm vegetables or bakery bread, especially in the fact that (generally) age does not work to its benefit. Aside from a few exceptions of styles that may benefit from judicious aging, most beer simply gets old after it has fermented to completion. Protected from infectious agents, oxygen in the lines and the storage systems will continue to react with the beer, developing stale or papery flavors in the overall profile as chemical components simply degrade.

That said, the easiest way to avoid problems due to age is to buy beer from local brewers. Especially with brands that cross state lines, beers can sit in distributors’ warehouses for weeks if not months awaiting sales approval, tax certification or simply retail orders to arrive. Local beers avoid most of these problems as they arrive after dozens of miles from the brewery instead of thousands.

The local economy is important. Contrary to what is projected on the evening news, most of the United States’ economy consists of local businesses, not national corporations. Most businesses in this country are classified as "small businesses;" the vast majority (97.5%) have fewer than 20 employees. Local employers contribute to the local economy through property and corporate taxes, through employing of local personnel or subcontractors and through local charity events, recycling and gifting programs.

Every local community in this nation is a heartbeat. That heartbeat is a reflection of the health of the local economy, and the sum total of those local economies is the health of the national economy at large. But for the vast majority of us, those who own a home or employ others or have children in public or private schools, the well-being of the local economy is paramount.

What better way to encourage the health of the local economy than to purchase local products? The money and profits are returned to local businesses, not shipped to faceless, out-of-state bank accounts. Local sales benefit yourself and your neighbors with continued employment, consistent variety and quality of products, and a perception of strength on the national economic stage.

The green argument. Shipping foodstuffs, especially liquids, is terribly inefficient from a fuel/weight perspective. National breweries have cut their distribution networks down by constructing matching breweries in multiple states but craft breweries rarely (if ever) have that option. Distributors earn their living by transporting by truck cans, bottles and kegs of local beer to the far reaches of the continental United States, or further.

Trucks generate pollution, not to mention wear-and-tear on roadways and other transit systems. The longer they must travel, the more pollution they create. If you at all are concerned about your carbon footprint, or in any way interested in reducing personal waste and consumption, purchase local beer. Beer that travels tens of miles from local suppliers instead of across the country or across an ocean is—by default—the greener choice.

If you don’t like it, tell them. This is by no means a blind love-fest and forgiving endorsement for all local craft brewers. You should not drink local beer simply because it is local. The marketplace is competitive, and a brewery’s product should satisfy your personal preferences and tastes. However, do not be hesitant to provide feedback to a local brewer—especially negative, if delivered constructively. All brewers are interested in correcting what is wrong, and small local craft brewers can be much more personally responsive than a distant national corporation.