Craft beer: An overview

Abstract

The purpose of the work was to provide an overview on craft beer. Details and issues concerning history and legal definition market, fiscal policy, innovation, safety, healthiness, consumer profile, and sustainability are supplied. The term “craft brewery” generally refers to a brewery able to produce low volumes of beer, often made with traditional ingredients—for emulating historic styles—but also with the addition of nontraditional ingredients as a distinctiveness sign of the master brewer. In many countries, the importance of the company size is related to the opportunity to take advantage of reduced excise rates for low production volumes. In several countries, another important requisite of a craft brewery is represented by its independence from other alcohol industry members. Even in the presence of a great heterogeneity of the size of craft breweries in the various countries, their number in the world is around 17,000. Craft beer is mainly consumed in restaurants and bars. Innovation of craft beer concerns aspects, such as ingredients, alcohol content, aging, and packaging, and the profile of the typical craft beer drinker is that of a young man, with a higher education and a medium‐high income. Craft beers are often not filtered/not pasteurized and, for these reasons, they are beverages rich in health compounds but with a reduced shelf life. As in the case of larger breweries, the environmental impact of craft breweries is mainly represented by water consumption and production of liquid and solid wastes.

Autochthonous Biological Resources for the Production of Regional Craft Beers: Exploring Possible Contributions of Cereals, Hops, Microbes, and Other Ingredients

“…The selection of biological resources used as inputs in beer production is an important process to achieve a desired segmentation and diversification in the competitive market of craft beer [133]. This review paper encompasses the potential exploitation of biodiversity belonging to the main classes of raw beer materials (i.e., grains and malted cereals, hops, microbes, and adjuncts), with a specific emphasis on autochthonous resources.…”

“…This work proposed a detailed dissertation about the innovative paths already explored and documented in the scientific literature. Each ingredient has peculiar characteristics [133,142], and thus, benefits and limitations affecting its concrete applications and scale-up to brewery points. From the field to the stein-there are different weaknesses and strengths affecting future development.…”

“…Finally, the design of beers connected with specific geographic contexts, and the need of regional supply chains for cereals, hops, and microbial resources, could contribute to the reduction of the production and supply costs and the environmental impact of craft beer, in line with the sustainable development of food systems, increasing the economic driver of biodiversity preservation [17,133,[151][152][153][154][155].…”

Production, Consumption, and Potential Public Health Impact of Low- and No-Alcohol Products: Results of a Scoping Review

“…The results are presented within these categories. Additionally, several reviews were found which encompassed broader overviews of the selected topics and sometimes covered several themes at once [ 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 ]; thus, their findings are presented where appropriate. Along with the key findings of the papers, we also examined the definition of low- and no-alcohol products and the funding sources for the research (see Table S4 ).…”

“…Most of the reviews refer to regulations when defining beer products; for example, EU regulations require 0.5% alcohol by volume (ABV) or less for non-alcoholic beer and 1.2% ABV or less for low-alcohol beer, but they acknowledge that these regulations differ by country. Other directions of research are related to low alcoholic or alcohol-free beers within the niche of craft beer [ 13 ] and dry hopping as a technique to produce non-alcoholic beer [ 14 ].…”