Did you ask yourself why craft beers are so popular nowadays? Or just are craft beers better?
At Sunny Barrels we are an online craft beer discovery platform but mainly a bunch of beer enthusiasts and we want to spread the beauty behind crafts. So one of the first questions we want to address is why you should stop drinking your traditional beer and start trying with craft beers?
Depending on who you are asking you would find a different answer to this question. And the reason for this is because there are a lot of reasons behind it. Let’s go one by one.
Transparency
All the marketing and manufacturing processes around traditional beers are not about the beer itself. They are focussing on many topics but the beer and its taste is not usually the main one. Additionally, can you tell which are the ingredients or processes behind the big brands? These things are legitimate since breweries are trying to protect their products but you need to admit that you don’t know too much about them.
With craft beers, it is a totally different story. Here it is everything about the beer, the flavour and quality. Brewers are going to try many different recipe variations to achieve the perfect flavour, texture and feeling before they are going live. And many of the recipes are public and you can try to reproduce them at home. Most things around crafts are transparent.
And you can go into your local brewery - once the pandemic would allow you - and in many occasions if you are showing interest and passion about crafts, the brewer will give you a tour and show you the ingredients they are using.
Supporting the local communities
After the 2008 economic crisis, craft beer has been the solution for many families to move forward and create successful businesses. The explosion of the craft beer industry during the last years can be understood as a consequence of that crisis. Many entrepreneurs started doing some beer in “their garage” and eventually created a microbrewery or a brewpub. This is of great importance nowadays where everything is globalised and local businesses are sometimes struggling.
So think that when you are drinking craft beer you are in fact supporting these local businesses and communities.
Flavour
Craft beers are all about the flavour. The innovation behind the craft beers together with the need of differentiation has taken craft beers to experiment and play with different flavours. And that’s great!
Did you realise how most of the marketing around traditional beers is focused on the temperature? On how cold the beer must be to give you the right experience? One fact here, usually cold temperatures are covering the beer flavour or more concrete the lack of flavour. In general the coldest the beer, the less the flavour. That means that when you are drinking super cold beer, you are experiencing less its flavour. In this situation you are going to have a great hydration experience - what it is great during the summer- but probably nothing more.
Obviously this is not the case with craft beers. No matter if you bought online beer or drinking at your favourite beer, you should not drink it super cool. Drinking at the right temperature and you will enjoy all his flavour with all its features.
Follow our next post at Sunny Barrels about the right temperature for the different types of beers.
Sustainability
Most craft brewers are cautious with the environment. In general, they build their beers in a sustainable manner. For this they are using many different techniques:
- Composting
- Techniques that reduce the amount of resources
- Techniques that reduce the amount of resources.
- Renewable sources of energy
- ...
Even if that is all is true there are also some challenges in the industry. Making beer is quite demanding regarding water consumption - in general a brewery is using three to seven barrels of water for each barrel of beer. This is an area to definitely have a look and improve during the following years in the industry.
Ingredients
As a rule of thumb, you need four ingredients to make beer: water, grains, hops, and yeast. Easy peasy! Now the one million dollar question is how microbreweries can obtain these amazing flavours with only these ingredients.
As the proverb says, “you are what you eat” and artisanal or craft beers are in general using higher quality, fresher, and sometimes organic ingredients. That is what makes crafts so good in comparison with traditional ones.
The craft beers producers are focussing a lot on quality than in profit and you can see it in the end result. By using higher quality ingredients, beers are getting more delicious.
Crafter loves their job
All crafters have one thing in common, the love they put in his job. All of them started as a hobby and made it a way of life, they are always looking for something new, for something better, checking in forums the new hop varieties, latest techniques, trying to be the next one winning the next contest because they found the new secret receipt.
We will continue with more reasons about why to drink craft beers on a different article but in the meantime if you want to enjoy great craft beers at your home, download the Sunny Barrels app and start discovering the beers that best suit you.
