Beer through time · era 8 of 9

Consolidation and revival

Choice narrowed almost everywhere for thirty years, and then was rebuilt from below — by a consumer campaign in Britain and by homebrewers in the United States, for quite different reasons.

c. 1950 – 2000Approximate

BeerHQ’s own bracket for a change that happened gradually and has no start date.

Going in

Thousands of small breweries, most selling locally, most making beer particular to their region.

Coming out

A handful of national brewers in most markets, and the first generation of small breweries deliberately opposing them.

Why consolidation happened, and it was not conspiracy

Everything in the previous two eras pointed this way. Refrigeration, pasteurisation, packaging lines, rail and then road distribution, and national advertising all reward scale and punish the brewery that serves one town. Add wartime disruption and a generation of mergers, and the outcome is arithmetic.

In Britain the mechanism had a specific shape: the tied house. Brewers owned their outlets, so buying a brewery bought its pubs, and by the 1960s six companies dominated. Keg beer — filtered, pasteurised, carbonated, stable and consistent — was the format that suited national distribution, and cask beer was withdrawn because it was harder to keep, not because anybody preferred the taste.

In the United States the post-Prohibition industry consolidated further onto a small number of very large producers making broadly similar pale lager, in a market whose distribution structure had been designed to make anything else difficult.

CAMRA, and what a consumer campaign can do

The Campaign for Real Ale was founded in 1971 by four drinkers in reaction to the disappearance of cask beer. What makes it historically unusual is that it worked: a voluntary consumer organisation defined a product category, built an audience for it, invented the modern beer festival, and materially changed what British breweries produced.

"Real ale" is a campaigning definition rather than a statutory or scientific one, and BeerHQ treats it as such — precise, useful, and originating in advocacy. Beer excluded by it is not thereby defective. That is a distinction CAMRA itself has moved on since, its festivals now carrying keg and international beer.

The other British change of the period was legislative: the Beer Orders of 1989 capped the tied estates of the largest brewers and forced widespread divestment, restructuring the pub trade in ways still being worked through.

American craft did not begin in one year

The usual formulation — craft beer started in 1978 with homebrew legalisation — compresses several distinct things. Homebrewing was federally legalised in 1978, taking effect in 1979, which mattered enormously as a training ground: a very large share of early American craft brewers learned at home.

But Anchor had been rescued in 1965 and was already making distinctive beer; New Albion opened in 1976 before the legalisation; and brewpubs required separate state-by-state legal change through the 1980s, because the post-Prohibition three-tier system prohibited producing and retailing on the same premises. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in 1980 mattered more than any statute, because it demonstrated a commercial market for a beer that tasted of hops.

Cascade, released in 1972, is the other necessary component. American craft brewing is inseparable from American hop breeding, and the citrus-and-pine character that defined the sector for thirty years is an agricultural product as much as a brewing decision.

What people get wrong about this period

Was beer stronger in the past?Partly true
True for twentieth-century Britain, where wartime tax and grain policy cut strength for good. Not true generally — most historical beer by volume was weak.

Dated events in this period

1950–1990 Lambic declines, then is deliberately preserved
Spontaneous fermentation nearly disappeared under competition from sweeter commercial products before a small number of producers deliberately preserved the traditional method.
1955–1975 British brewing consolidates into national groups
A wave of mergers produced a small number of national brewers who replaced cask beer with keg products across large tied pub estates.
1965 Fritz Maytag buys Anchor Brewing
A failing San Francisco brewery was bought and rebuilt around traditional methods at the low point of American brewing diversity.
1971 CAMRA is founded
Four drinkers founded what became the Campaign for Real Ale, defining "real ale" and organising consumer pressure against keg-only national brewers.
1972 Cascade is released
The USDA breeding programme released a hop whose grapefruit-and-floral character was unlike anything in European brewing.
1978 Homebrewing is legalised in the United States
Federal legislation removed the prohibition on brewing beer at home for personal use, an omission left over from the repeal of Prohibition.
1980 Sierra Nevada Pale Ale goes into production
A Chico brewery built a pale ale around Cascade, and in doing so defined what American hops taste like to the rest of the world.
1989 The Beer Orders break the brewery-pub tie
Legislation limited how many tied public houses a large brewer could own, restructuring the British market and separating pub ownership from brewing.

Styles shaped here

Questions

When did craft beer begin?

There is no single date, and the usual answer compresses several things. Anchor was rescued in 1965, New Albion opened in 1976, homebrewing was federally legalised in 1978 with effect from 1979, and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale arrived in 1980 and proved there was a market. Brewpubs then needed state-by-state legal change through the 1980s. The legalisation mattered as a training ground rather than as a starting gun.

Why was CAMRA founded?

Because cask beer was disappearing. Post-war consolidation left six companies dominating British brewing, and keg beer — filtered, pasteurised and stable — suited national distribution far better than cask, which needs a competent cellar. Four drinkers founded the Campaign for Real Ale in 1971 in response, and it succeeded to an unusual degree for a voluntary consumer organisation.