Happy Independents Day!

**Sacred Profane (Biddeford, ME)** | A brewery committed to making just two lagers, a dark and a pale.

My fellow Americans, on this 248th anniversary of our republic’s birth, let us salute our independent breweries. There are some 9,000 (ish) of them in the US alone, thousands more worldwide. Some were born this year, others during the rule of Maximilian I. Some make mere thimblesful of beer, others small seas. It is a large and august assembly. On this day of celebrating our nation’s independence, it’s worth reminding ourselves about the value of a different kind of independence, the willingness to go it alone and forge their own unique visions.

Among the independents you will find every kind of beer brewed and process practiced: they include fierce defenders of tradition as well as restless experimenters, tinkerers making obscure styles on bespoke systems, or regional powers whose flagships have become national classics. We tend to focus on America’s small breweries, which at their most aged extend back less than a half-century, but independents like U Fleků, which I visited in January, have been keeping the faith for centuries. These breweries have preserved parti-gyle brewing and decoction mashing, and they’ve introduced everything from American IPAs to kettle-soured mango ales. So much of what is interesting in beer issues from their tanks.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with multinational beer companies, but they are optimized to create products that appeal to the broadest range of palates, meaning they are poor vehicles for oddball pursuits. They do not preserve diversity; they naturally evolve toward homogeneity. So let’s use the day as an opportunity to celebrate the independent folks, those makers of the weird, wild, and wonderful. Freed from the pressure to appeal to millions of customers, they can let their own personalities shine.

Preservation and Innovation

Big breweries can’t afford to make unpopular beers. As we’ve seen in recent years, they can’t afford not to make alcoholic seltzers and sodas and coffees, either. Little breweries offer the inverse set of strengths. They can experiment on a beer that has no obvious market. They make beer in small enough volumes and target consumer niches too insignificant for big beer to notice. This freedom to brew created the explosive evolution and change that defines our times. When you look at the developments that have characterized the craft beer era in the US, they all came from little independent breweries. We would never have seen a Strata and Citra double dry-hopped IPA if we’d left the market to Anheuser-Busch and Miller. We wouldn’t have seen Strata or Citra hops, either.

Paradoxically, brewing traditions are also protected by little breweries that refuse to modernize, mechanize, and follow trends. In the second half of the 20th century, as mass market lagers began to dominate the world beer market, independent breweries kept traditional styles alive. Imagine where we’d be if lambic breweries had closed up shop as they were teetering on the brink 50 years ago? The whole enterprise of using wild yeasts may have gone extinct. What if traditional brewing had died in Britain before Americans started their small-brewery revival? Would they have made pale ales and porter? Would they have found their way to IPAs? Many current styles exist solely because a handful of breweries making the last examples refused to abandon them. (In some cases it got down to a single brewery). We know what would have happened because styles did go extinct. Nobody makes Peeterman anymore. So many of the old ones did die out, taking traditions with them. Yet the styles that exist to today have champions in small, independent breweries, almost down to the last style.

On Independence

The past year hasn’t been easy in the beer business, especially for small producers. That has caused me to reflect on what independence means in a slightly different context. Each one of these independent breweries is on their own. They are flying without a safety net, and for the most part, without a blueprint. Should they go into debt to finance a new taproom? Should they put their sales and marketing behind older flagship beers or develop new brands? Should they make hop water, or is it too late? Should they try to expand into new markets or strengthen their positions at home? There are no right answers—sometimes decisions that work for one brewery fail for another.

Throughout it all, breweries are “independent”—they will live or die by the choices they make. It’s thrilling to start a business and offer your unique vision to the world. But it’s also scary and isolating. What if it doesn’t work? And, if it does work, how do you keep it working. Breweries never hit some kind of easy equilibrium where things just sail along. The market changes, new competitors arrive, a brewery might grow into a size it doesn’t understand—things are always in flux. These independents, the small and quirky and highly opinionated, pursue their visions with no guarantees. To be independent is to be at risk, always.

So today, as you undoubtedly hoist a cold one, spend a moment thinking about your local independent. In the long history of our country, we have never had more choice of breweries or beers, never had so many flavors or colors or expressions as close as our local beer aisle or taproom. It is truly a wonderful era—and we owe it to the indies.

Let’s raise a glass to them today—