Over the past 40 years, the craft beer segment has exploded. In 1980, a handful of "microbrewery" pioneers launched a revolution that would challenge the dominance of the national brands, Budweiser, Coors, and Miller, and change the way Americans think about, and drink, beer. Today, there are more than 2700 craft breweries in the United States, with another 1,500 in the works. Their influence is spreading to Europe's great brewing nations, and to countries all over the globe. In The Craft Beer Revolution, Steve Hindy, co-founder of Brooklyn Brewery, tells the inside story of how a band of home brewers and microbrewers came together in one of America's great entrepreneurial triumphs. Citing hundreds of creative businesses like Samuel Adams, Deschutes Brewery, New Belgium, Dogfish Head, and Harpoon, he shows how their combined efforts have grabbed 10 percent of the US beer market - and how Budweiser, Miller, and Coors, all now owned by international conglomerates, are creating their own craft-style beers, the same way major food companies have acquired or created smaller organic labels to court credibility with a new generation of discerning eaters and drinkers.
This is a timely and fascinating look at what America's new generation of entrepreneurs can learn from the intrepid pioneering brewers who are transforming the way Americans enjoy this wonderful, inexpensive, storied beverage: beer.
Author Biography:
Steve Hindy is the author of Beer School and co-founder, chairman and president of Brooklyn Brewery, one of America's top 20 breweries. A former journalist, he became interested in homebrewing while serving as a Beirut-based Middle East Correspondent for the Associated Press. He and Brooklyn Brewery have been featured in The New York Times, the New York Post, Crain's New York Business, New York magazine, CNN, The Huffington Post, and countless beer blogs and specialty publications. Hindy is a member of the Board of Directors of the Beer Institute and the Brewers Association. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
