Happy National Craft Beer Week! Oh great, just what we need…another crazy holiday on the calendar. Thanks, Brewers Association!

We’ve got National Body Piercing Week and Fish are Friends, Not Food! Week in June. November has Rodents Awareness Week. And, there’s Meat Week in January. (Ok, we kinda like Meat Week. But that’s beside the point.). National Craft Beer Week is different. Why? Because what Craft Beer stands for is what America stands for. This industry should be celebrated. It’s everything we love about our country.

Craft beer is community. It’s a brewer donating his beers to help raise money for the local library.

Craft beer is innovation. It’s creating styles of beer that no one ever thought of despite 1,000+ years of brewing history.

Craft beer is art. It’s the beauty of the label matching the beauty of the liquid.

Craft beer is small business creating jobs. It’s a garage operation that becomes a 5 person team then 25 people and then a regional brewer making a real impact on our economy.

Craft beer is collaboration. It’s brewers from across the country sharing their expertise with one another to make a one-of-a-kind beer.

Craft beer is quality. It’s making English beers better than the English, Belgian beers better than the Belgians, and German beers better than the Germans.

Craft beer is entrepreneurs pulling themselves up from the bootstraps. It’s brewers using an old soda bottling line, duct tape, hair dryers and volunteers because they can’t afford a state-of-the-art line.

Ok, so we’re not perfect. There’s the litigation, the selling out, and t he “hipster-ification“).

But…

Craft beer is passion. It’s brewers spending countless hours tweaking a double IPA recipe until its perfect.

Craft beer is Main Street, not Wall Street. It’s bankers risking it all to leave their high profile jobs to follow their love of brewing beer.

Craft beer is caring for our environment. It’s sending spent grains to farmers, re-using waste water and sourcing local ingredients.

Craft beer is defying common wisdom. It’s a brewer bringing back cans as the container of choice instead of bottles for a generation of beer drinkers.

Craft beer is putting in an honest day’s work. It’s a distributer delivering beer from the crack of dawn until early evening and then supporting an event at night.

Craft beer is artisinal. It’s each batch being just a little different from one another because it’s all done by hand.

And Craft beer is personal. It’s the brewer choosing styles to brew because she loves them, not because her market research indicates an 11% preference for a particular brew.

Craft beer was even what our country was founded on. The Founding Fathers were brewers, cider-makers and maltsters. The Revolution was even planned at bars over a couple of pints!

If you are wond ering why Craft beer is booming, it’s because the foundation for Craft beer is no different from the foundation of our country.

Cheers to National Craft Beer Week! During this week and throughout the year, support your local Craft brewers!

About the writer:

Andy Gavrin

President, ABV Consulting, Inc.

a marketing agency for the craft beer industry

Twitter @abvbeer

Facebook/abvconsulting

www.abvconsulting.com

beerguy@abvconsulting.com

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