PLEASURE BREWING
The business of craft beer
The local craft beer market is flourishing, following European and US trends
The craft beer revolution hit California about 40 years ago, before sweeping through Europe and filtering down to smaller markets such as our own. The Anchor Brewing Company’s Fritz Maytag, one of craft beer’s founding fathers, tells the story of buying up an ailing San Francisco brewery on a whim, then belatedly realising he was short on several fronts. He had a product that deteriorated before it was poured and, crucially, he lacked a publicity machine. What to do? Maytag used to drive his Porsche through San Francisco’s notoriously permissive Haight-Ashbury district to get to work at his brew house, and, on one such drive, had a eureka moment. The best way to get free publicity without a marketing budget was to get arrested, he decided. "I put this green, leafy stuff on my passenger seat and drove back and forth for about a week," he says in one of his brewer’s promotional videos. "Of course it was hops, but the guy arresting me wasn’t going to know that. The problem was, no-one ...
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