OnTap Magazine

O ne thing that almost goes without saying, is that the beer industry is not limited to one country or place. The people who make it work are part of a global community and there is cooperation between people from all over the world to further the interests of beer. At the heart of this global cooperation, stands the Brewers Association. This organisation has often led the world in creating an example of what a fruitful environment looks like for the craft beer industry to thrive in, and a major player in a lot of those recent successes is the outgoingCEO,BobPease.AttherecentBeer Bootcamp Symposium in Johannesburg, I had the privilege of talking to this remarkably experienced promoter of beer interests. Bob is credited as being the driving force behind the relatively recent and unprece- dented excise reduction to USA craft brew- eries. It essentially halved the excise paid by most small craft breweries in the USA. I was curious to hear about the man, the or- ganisation he ran and how they set about changing the minds of the American polit- ical establishment regarding their views on beer tax. He has a calm and unimposing demean- our. He is soft spoken and well-articulated with very well-thought-out logical argu- ments about the state of beer. At the sym- posium, he had delivered an informative talk on the state of the industry, and pre- sented a short history with key moments in the US craft beer movement. “There have been four or five, really key seminal moments in the development of the craft beer movement in the United States,” Bob recalls. “The first one was in 1978, when president Jimmy Carter signed a law, making homebrewing feder- ally legal.” In context, jumping back to 1978, the beer landscape was not primed for full-fla- voured beer and craft beer did not yet exist. The beers available on the market was in- dustrial light lager. At that point there were 42 breweries in the USA versus over 9,000 by the time of writing this article. “It was really the homebrewers that really helped fuel that development of the craft beer community and the craft beer market,” Bob explains. With young Americans at the time trav- elling around the world, being exposed to a variety of beers and flavours from outside the USA, such as the UK, Belgium and Ger- many, while also experiencing beer culture, they returned to find industrial light lagers and thought:, “there must be something more.” “So, some started homebrewing and then many of them went on to become professional brewers.” In the 1980s, the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, “created a market that did not exist before them.” It was during this time that the Americans first started to experience beer cultures that they had not known existed before. In the 1990s “things really started to take off,” he explains. This is now considered the first wave, when full-flavoured beer was being accepted. In the 2000s craft beer was around 2,000 strong. There were two organisations at- tempting to represent the interests of brew- ers in the USA. One was the Association of Brewers (where Bob worked and founded by Charlie Papazian) and the other was the Brewers Association of America. With only about 3% of the market, it was clear to some that there was not enough room for two associations and it was at this point that key personalities in the industry stepped in to broker a merger. These men were, Kim Jordan (New Belgian Brewing Company), Ken Grossman (Sierra Nevada Brewing Company) and Steve Hindy (Brooklyn Brewery). In 2005, these key craft beer industrypersonalities came totogether and “they forced a merger between [the] two associations to produce the Brewers Association.” Bob calls this the, “…second seminal moment in the development of the craft brewing community and industry in the United States.” Up until that point, the Association of Brewers had worked on education and events and the general promotion of craft beer through various mediums. They had done no political lobbying, despite heavy tax and regulation on the beer industry. The Brewers Association of America, on the other hand, was heavily invested in exactly this, so when the two associations merged it brought both these elements into the newly formed Brewers Association. Bob says the third seminal moment happened in 2011, “… when Anheuser- Busch Inbev acquired Goose Island Brewing.” This was an era where the craft beer market was really maturing due to a combination of factors, but the acquisition of Goose Island created a problem for the Brewers Association, because Anheuser- Busch Inbev was trying to continue to promote Goose Island as an independently owned business when in fact it was not. It brought into question the very meaning Great Divide Beer Rainbow In the 2000s, craft beer was around 2,000 strong ontapmag.co.za | Spring 2024 | 21