Preserves Online: Craft Beer Online

Friday 20 July 2012

Craft Beer Online

The "Beer Revival" of the past 30 years is a phenomenon attributable to one of the first (if not the first) "open-source" collaborative experiences in modern history. The community of homebrewers, beer enthusiasts and craft brewers made the pioneers of the democratization of process. It is only anecdotal knowing that Steve Jobs was a member of the "Homebrew Computer Club," from which the seeds of the Mac Computer would emerge (visit Homebrew and How the Apple Came to Be). The fact is, homebrewers were already fashioning their own revolution before a communication technology emerged that would later enhance the means by which revolutionary ideas and the process of democratizing innovation would be accelerated. Are homebrewers and beer enthusiasts the true heroes of this and tomorrow’s day and age?

The professional craft brewing, homebrewing and beer enthusiast community continues to be on the unequivocal cutting edge of beer’s creative destiny. If you look back at the last 30- year history of better beer, beer economics, beer enthusiasm and the beer marketplace, it is a mirror image of how the rest of the world has embraced, reacted and adjusted to the pace of all that it is involved in. Choice, diversity, information, education, grassroots activism, quality, personality, passion, flavor (both in the real and metamorphic sense), etc. These terms are new to most, but they were the foundation of craft beer—30 years ago