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TOM ACITELLI : The Audacity of Hops: The History of America's Craft Beer Revolution , Chicago Review Press , Chicago , 2013, 416 pp., ISBN 9781613743881 , $19.95.
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Craft beer is booming. From humble beginnings in 1970, when there were 49 macrobreweries and 2 craft breweries, to 2012, when there were 19 macrobreweries and 2,347 craft breweries, craft beer has grown by leaps and bounds (Elzinga, Tremblay, and Tremblay, 2015, p. 245). Craft beer started when Fritz Maytag, heir to the Maytag fortune, purchased the struggling Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco--a brewery that made an odd style of beer, steam, which few outside of its limited distribution network within the city had ever tasted. Today, the industry generates millions of dollars and has reached every state and multiple countries.
Tom Acitelli, in his well-written, well-paced, and downright intriguing book, The Audacity of Hops, tells the complicated, fraternal, and heart-wrenching story of craft beer's pioneers. Starting at the beginning, with Maytag's purchase of Anchor, Acitelli walks through the development of the craft beer movement with an emphasis on the individual producer, "Big Beer's" attempts to dominate the marketplace, and the cooperative nature that has allowed craft beer to proliferate. Several themes permeate both the book and the history of the craft beer movement: risk-taking, cooperation, competition, rule breaking, and consolidation. Without each of these elements, which roughly correspond to each phase of craft beer's history, craft beer would not be as successful or as threatening to "Big Beer."
Fritz Maytag and other craft beer pioneers were at heart risk-takers. They were willing to invest both time and money in an industry that had become...