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Craft Brewery
Brewery”. The first edition was a loosely tied And so, the barrier to entry became the notion
together collection of academic articles and essays that “It’s just so crazy it might work” and the
that acted as a dry review of boilers and floor finances to afford the most minimal amount of
Image Credit: Allied Boilers
sealants of the 1990s, but the second edition was equipment. Buoyed by an industry (and indus-
transformed into an easy manual to start a brew- try association) that boasted double digit growth
ery by Dick Cantwell (Elysian, Magnolia). The Siebel numbers for 20+ years, banks were eager to throw
Institute of Brewing Technology even went so far loans at anybody who could write a passionate
as to hold a “How to Start a Brewery” course using business plan.
that book as a rough textbook. The course did not
teach people to make beer or run a business. It But when those breweries started, they were dif-
taught people how to start a brewery. ferent than the earlier ones. They were not built
by the originators and inventors, the people that
had traveled abroad and found new ideas to bring
home. They were started by their fans. They were
started by eager homebrewers who wanted to do
the same thing their heroes did, and when they
started breweries, they started homebreweries
instead.
Over the past decade and more, homebrew took a
natural step from Charlie Papazian’s creative recipe
starts into the concept of Extreme Brewing. You
can thank Beer Advocate for it. Though their tame
definition, “A beer that pushes the boundaries of
brewing” is an easy definition to apply to even, say,
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