Friday 14 December 2012

As crafty as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Craftiness at Oxford University

Thanks to Magnus from my local CAMRA branch for the bottle of Versus Goliath, which must be the craftiest craft beer ever:






I don't think the labels and lid leave any room for ambiguity, though it turns out it's contract brewed by one of Germany's largest breweries.

"Craft beer" may once have had some some meaning in The States, but really it seems it's just marketing bollocks now.

4 comments:

  1. 8 weeks brewing??? LOL long time, normal it takes 8 hours. So how long takes fermentation and maturing?

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  2. The importer told me it's brewed by Arcobräu of Moos, which is big, but not in the top 10 of German brewers - 70 employees and about 85,000 barrels a year, according to Wikipedia.

    The branding is pretty sneaky though! It's probably true enough - though completely OTT - for the Seth Efrican original, but not for a contracted version.

    You saw the stuff yesterday from the BA about craft. I guess - their definition is that to count as craft you have to make less than 6 million barrels a year. Conveniently, just about the only brewers this excludes are AB-InBev, SABMiller, Coors and what-not. (-:

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    Replies
    1. Their are no South African original. All beers are brewed in Germany and Belgium ... and then shipped to SA.

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  3. Ed, this beer has the same packaging as the Kreechr Beer I posted about, back in September.http://baileysbeerblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/crafty-kreechr.html. On that occasion the beer was an unpasteurised strong, 6.5% abv lager, craft-brewed in Bavaria, (name of brewery and exact location, unknown), which was being marketed by an organisation called brewersandunion.com; a South African/Portuguese brewing co-operative.

    I was given the bottle to try by Tandleman, at GBBF, and still have the "I Drink Craft" crown cap. Presumably the "unknown Bavarian brewery" is now revealed as Arcobräu of Moos? I see I wrote at the time that the beer was rather good, but whether it's craft or not, who knows?

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