Craft Beer Revolution

Over the past 40 years, the craft beer segment has exploded. In 1980, a handful of "microbrewery" pioneers launched a revolution that would challenge the dominance of the national brands, Budweiser, Coors, and Miller, and change the way Americans think about, and drink, beer. Today, there are more than 2700 craft breweries in the United States, with another 1,500 in the works. Their influence is spreading to Europe's great brewing nations, and to countries all over the globe. In The Craft Beer Revolution, Steve Hindy, co-founder of Brooklyn Brewery, tells the inside story of how a band of homebrewers and microbrewers came together in one of America's great entrepreneurial triumphs. Citing hundreds of creative businesses like Samuel Adams, Deschutes Brewery, New Belgium, Dogfish Head, and Harpoon, he shows how their combined efforts have grabbed 10 percent of the US beer market-and how Budweiser, Miller, and Coors, all now owned by international conglomerates, are creating their own craft-style beers, the same way major food companies have acquired or created smaller organic labels to court credibility with a new generation of discerning eaters and drinkers. This is a timely and fascinating look at what America's new generation of entrepreneurs can learn from the intrepid pioneering brewers who are transforming the way Americans enjoy this wonderful, inexpensive, storied beverage: beer.

Foreword; John Hickenlooper
Prologue
1. The Pioneers, 1965-1984
2. Politics, Writers, Teachers, and Community Builders
3. The First Generation: A Boom and the First Beer War, 1984-1994
4. The Class of '88
5. Big Money Meets Craft Brewing, 1994-2000
6. The Second Generation: Innovation
7. Beer and the Media
8. Craft Brewers Resuscitate the Brewers' Association of America
9. Jailbreak: Big Distributors Embrace Craft Beer
10. The Brewers' Association of America and the Association of Brewers Merge
11. A Seat at the Table
12. The Third Generation: Many Models Emerge
Epilogue