What is „Beer Revolution”?

It is said that the beer is as old as humanity but we won't start from there. We will give you a short but fascinating overview of how we got this far and why we call this a revolution.

It's a fact that historical beers in Europe are made by English, Belgian, Czech and German brewers. Many of these brewers have immigrated to the USA in the 1850's and on, where they have continued with their trade. Due to being excellent at what they were doing their popularity quickly spread and with the lager type beers they were brewing at the time they have conquered America. There were approximately 4000 breweries operating in all across America by the 20th century.

The 1920 Alcohol Prohibition Law has completely rewrote the brewer's plans. Brewery expansion has turned into a fight for survival, causing most breweries to go bankrupt.

Thus the success story came to a halt it did not stop completely: illicit trade became a flourishing business, and while these illicit beers were thin and barely enjoyable, they were still at least beer. This went on till the end of the 1900's.

At this point Americans got fed up and started brewing their own beers at home - hence the name of the revolution – creating something much better then lager beers, resulting in what we know as full bodied Craft beers! In many cases, home breweries were no longer just a hobby but rather family businesses that soon grew into large companies. In the end, craft beers became available in stores as an alternative to big-scale company beers.

Today, more than 3000 micro-breweries are operating the USA which has become the global leader with the most breweries and the biggest range of crafted beers available. According to this information one would assume that the most beer sold in the United States. Fun fact: the most beer sold is – where else- in China!

Now let's get back to Europe, more precisely to Hungary!

So the American reaction to European beer brewery has now became a retroaction in today's Europe.Completely independently from the American trend, in the early 1990's crafted beers have broken in to Hungary, due to non-refundable aid available for the brewing equipment, and in a matter of only a few years hundreds of breweries were opened in the country. We can only imagine the kind of equipment and technology that was used to brew beers at the time of changing regiments. Naturally, without a solvent demand and a market ready for such, most of these breweries gone bankrupted.

After the millennium, however, something has changed. More and more people began to look for unique products produced in small plants, called crafts, and beer was not an exception. Nowadays, this process has accelerated so much so that it became necessary for the truly high-quality craft beers to receive a different name, which is how the name "Kraft Beer" (from English craft beer) was born.

In 2017, 1.5% of Hungarian beer consumption is craft beer, while craft beer in America make up 14% of the total national beer consumption. Who needs further inspiration?