After watching Beer Wars last night (a wonderful documentary on the rise of Craft breweries in the US), I am fully convinced that Nel and I can become the new Dogfish Head.

The movie showcased a very interesting time line of the history of breweries in the US. Back in the 1900s there were 1000s of tiny breweries across the country, which mostly were shut down in the 1920s during prohibition (Boo!). After that fatal blow, small breweries tried to start up again, but were mostly out muscled by the big three (Anheuser-Busch, Miller, and Coors) who had more advertising dollars to spend. By 1978 there were only 45 breweries in the entire country! A sad day in US history. At that time Budweiser (Anheuser-Busch) owned about 12% of the market share…. by 2005 that number jumped to 49%. This was mostly due to marketing and A-B’s amazing ability to garner shelf space. Then the game changed.

Enter Sam Adams (aka, the Boston Brewing company). A began educating America about taste. Not only was America interested, it liked flavorful beer better. This opened the door for craft breweries everywhere… they began to pop-up like weeds in Big Beer’s garden. So the Goliaths started buying up all the smaller breweries that were invading their turf, but to no avail. As soon as they bought one, 2 more would appear in its place. The big three were scared enough to the point where they are now trying to create “craft beers” of their own (Bud Light Harvest Wheat, America Ale, etc).  Even still, craft breweries have flourished; there are about 1400+ now in the US.

Seeing the owners of some of my favorite brewers (Sam Adams, Yuengling, Dogfish head) speak about overcoming these obstacles, by basically starting to brew in their basement gives me hope. Perhaps I can make this work too. At least regionally. To start.

If you too, would like to spend 89 minutes immersed in the business of beer, check out their website here: Beer Wars. You can download or stream the movie directly from them.