When Craft Beer Becomes a Commodity

Last month, the folks at BridgePort Brewing launched their 30-year anniversary by highlighting a very specific part of their history–the brewery-defining flagship IPA.  The version of history offered by the brewery wasn’t so much a way of celebrating the past as hawking beers in the present, though.  So last week, I celebrated a shadow anniversary with three of the brewers who helped build the BridgePort: founder and long-time master brewer Karl Ockert and early brewers Ron Gansberg, now brewing tart ales at Cascade, and Matt Sage, currently of Indie Hops.  (John Foyston, Pete Dunlop, and Morgan Miller were in attendance as well.)  It was in one sense just a way of having a few writers get the rest of the story, and understanding the richness of those thirty years.

But excavating the past often leads people to start thinking about time in bigger chunks and in turn to pondering what lessons it holds for the future.  At the moment, brewery openings are exploding and established breweries …