Naples Illustrated

TOAST OF THE TOWN

Luxury Brews

Handcrafted beers and ales appeal to discriminating palates.

By Mark Spivak

Like many other things in life, beer used to be simpler. Most Americans drank Budweiser, Michelob or Miller, and those who wanted to splurge ordered a Heineken. This pattern continued until the late 1980s, when the explosion of craft brewing saved us all from beer boredom.

Craft brewers can be defined loosely to include microbrews, brewpubs and regional brewers. Their ascendancy came just in time—from 407 brewers in 1950, the U.S. total had shrunk to 83 by 1985. Last year, there were 52 large breweries in the country, while craft brewers had grown to an amazing 1,390.

Even before the craft movement took hold, regional beer producers had a respectable market share. Just ask anyone who ever drank Blatz, Old Milwaukee or Genesee. Many of our earliest brewers were immigrants from Germany or Eastern Europe, and they reproduced the style of beer that had been popular back home. Over time, however, the beer industry came to resemble many others. It was dominated by large players who turned out a standardized product.

You don’t have to go to one of America’s nearly 1,000 brewpubs to find a handcrafted beer or ale. The shelves of retail stores are filled with dozens of craft brews, and few of them are inexpensive. Among imports, the field is dominated by Belgian beers, such as Duvel, Chimay, Kwak and St. Bernardus Trappist Ale. Some of them are packaged in wine bottles with corks, and several fetch close to $15 for a 750-milliliter bottle.

The resemblance to wine is intentional. Within the beer industry, the conventional wisdom is that devotees of Pabst Blue Ribbon are not making the leap to craft brews. Wine drinkers are the target audience for upscale beer and the lifestyle associated with it. A search on Amazon.com reveals numerous books on the art of beer and food pairing, including The Brewmaster’s Table, by Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery, Jay Harlow’s Beer Cuisine: A Cookbook for Beer Lovers, and Stephen Beaumont’s Brewpub Cookbook.

Belgium aside, the largest selling craft brews in America are made by Samuel Adams and Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. Craft brews are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. beer market, and their success hasn’t been lost on this country’s largest brewers. Anheuser-Busch is making Wild Hop Lager, Jacob Leinenkugel is owned by Miller, and the Blue Moon Brewing Co. is a subsidiary of Molson Coors Brewing Co. The names of the beer conglomerates seldom appear on the labels of their craft brews, but the giants use all their resources to market these brands to the public.