Crafting a Nation: One Craft Beer at a Time

It's a fair critique that Thomas Kolicko's hops-umentary resembles an extended beer commercial with its lyrical amber-colored cinematography, mellow melodies, and loving interiors of distilleries and barrel rooms. But that's perfectly reasonable, given that the subject here is the craft-brewing movement, which is defined as a beer factory that bottles less than a million units per year. Craft brewers and brewpubs have experienced a boom across Great Recession USA, as energetic entrepreneurs have followed their dreams. Amidst sound bytes from the management of Black Shirt Brewing Company, Sierra Nevada Brewing, Upslope, Jester King, and other outfits—mostly describing financial struggles coupled with a deep belief in their products—a bit of a political subtext foams up: namely, that these underdog, privately run breweries tend to embrace progressive/sustainable practices: re-habbing abandoned factories in urban-blight areas (including the abandoned print-shop in which Escape from New York was filmed), forming alliances with small farmers, using solar energy and recycling, and sometimes adding professionals who were either laid-off or discouraged from the corporate world. For all their success, however, craft brewers still wrestle with the dominance of the giant beer multinationals (Budweiser and Anheuser-Busch reps are not interviewed here) and are forced to fight against shortsighted government regulations that end up discouraging small, local breweries (Texas is described as particularly bad in this regard). Sure to appeal to microbrew lovers, this entertaining overview is recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)