The cool thing about craft beer, aside from it tasting fantastic, is how it helps to build and strengthen local communities.  If summed up, the craft beer brand in its entirety is built around being local.  Craft brewers almost always start small.  From their infancy, craft brewers engage local businesses for supply and support, and employ locals to brew, sell and help run the business.  They sell their products locally and rather than invest in large national marketing campaigns, they opt to tell their story locally, one person at a time.

Unlike so many businesses that now outsource production to far away places, craft brewers do not.  Even with consistent growth year over year, brewing operations tend to stay within, or near to, the community of origin. As a result, the community becomes a big part of their brand.  Because of this, consumers develop a strong connection to their local craft brewer.  There is a certain sense of pride we all take in our local home town product – beer is one of the few remaining local products.  As a brewery grows, so does it’s surrounding community.  This means more jobs, more good beer, and a general increase in local goodness.

Entire cities, such as Portland, and Victoria to some extent, have become strong independent communities thanks in part to a thriving local craft beer scene.  In recent years pockets of Vancouver have developed into microcosms of beer excellence.  With Vancouver’s rapid increase in craft beer production, these microcosms will grow and strengthen our local communities.

Hoyne Brewing Co, one of BC’s newer craft brewers, is a great example of how craft beer builds better communities.   The Hoyne Brewing team is small group of dedicated local talent, engaging other local businesses while helping to make their community a better place one beer at a time.  They do most of their design work in-house and their PR is genuine and appreciated. Here is a pretty cool video that they just put together.

VOLTAGE – The making of a beer. from CASTE on Vimeo.

And another video highlighting the collaboration between local farmers and craft beer – I want a van full of hops too!

Cheers,

Erik