At one time in beer's history, every town and community had at least one brewery. Until the days of pasteurization, beer had a very short shelf life that made it unsuitable for transport and subsequently made the town tavern extremely popular. Today, beer is transported around the world, and breweries no longer are forced to sell only to their local clientele.
From Colonial times until the present, many individuals have chosen to brew their own beer. During the years of Prohibition in the United States, for a poor man to drink he had to brew his own out of necessity. This is when beer became known as the drink of the common, hardworking man. Those with money could afford to frequent the speakeasies of the time, and could be served much stronger spirits such as whiskey, rum or gin. They could also afford the prices asked by bootleggers for their products. Hard liquor and champagne became the drinks of choice for the wealthy.
It is from home brewers that the emergence of microbreweries came to be. Beer drinkers, no longer satisfied with the weak tasting beer offered by the major brewing houses, began experimenting. They found they could produce a beer with a much more satisfying flavor than what could be found in the retail shops or the local bar.
What began as a yuppie fad in the eighties has now become big business in the new millennium. Microbreweries, defined as producing less than 15,000 barrels a year, are located in most major cities, and no state in America is without several small brewing companies.
The driving force behind the popularity of microbreweries is taste. The owners wanted something more than the major brew houses were giving them. Instead of light, mediocre beverages that tasted like everyone else's, they began experimenting once again with distinctive ales, lagers and pilsners.
It wasn't long before, at the encouragement of friends, that many home brewers were opening brewpubs; neighborhood and city bars offering friendly conversations and micro brewed beer.
The first microbrewery to open was in Sonoma, California in 1976. Boulder Brewing, which opened its doors in 1979, began in a goat shed and is the oldest still in business today. The first brewpub to open was in an old opera house in Yakima, Washington in 1982. Seattle, Washington lays claim to the most famous microbrewery Redhook Ale, begun by a winemaker who collaborated with a former Starbucks executive in an old trolley barn.
In the mid nineties, micro and craft breweries were beginning to have market impact. The major breweries, due to declining sales in their markets, decided to get in on the act and introduced micro lines of their own. For a number of years, there were so many unknown names on the market, many consumers switched to imported beers with recognizable names.
Now that the craze has blown over, microbreweries claim approximately three percent of the total market for beer sales. That is a small number, considering the amazing varieties of flavors and types offered by the more than 1,600 brands of specialty craft beers available to consumers.
