A few years back the Brewer’s Association, an organization I have been a member of for years, decided to put pencil to paper and develop a definition for a craft brewery.  If you are interested you can follow this link http://www.brewersassociation.org/pages/business-tools/craft-brewing-statistics/craft-brewer-defined for the detailed definition, but the gist of the definition is that a craft brewery is one that produces less than 2 million barrels of a certain type of beer per year.  There are a few important rules, however. For example if a large brewery owns 25% or more of the craft brewery then that brewery no longer qualifies as a craft brewer.  Redhook and Widmer are two such breweries that got booted from the club by this definition.  You are also not a craft brewer if you use adjunct to dilute the flavor of more than 50% of your production.  It’s OK to use adjuncts as long as they don’t dilute flavor or if they do dilute the flavor of the beer the brand cannot be a huge seller.  Go figure; if Duvel were an American beer it would not be considered a craft beer by this particular rule.

The annual Craft Brewers Conference was recently held in Chicago (April 8 -10) and this year’s meeting was memorable for several reasons.  This event is a professional meeting put on by the Brewers Association and is a combination of technical and business talks related to craft brewing and a trade show featuring the things that commercial brewers need to make their breweries operate.  The event began with an opening reception at the famous Field Museum in Chicago.  The main floor looked like a small beer festival and featured great beers brewed by members of the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild and food from local restaurants.  This was a wonderful first night to an awesome meeting … I wonder when the next big party will occur in this beautiful museum!

I have had one of those weeks that simply leaves a smile on one’s face.  It all began with trips to two companies that are expanding their capacities to brew beer; that always makes me happy.  Later in the week I received an order from a lab mate from UC Davis’ graduate brewing program, and now brewery owner, for more capacity for fermentation space for his growing brewery.  Very cool!  All the while I awoke to depressing reports about the US economy and the on-going debate over health care, but I kept my head down and chugged along.

I, like many people around the world, spend much of my time at work communicating by e-mail.  The other day I had the pleasure of sending a business related e-mail to my good friend Tom Flores.  Tom and I are both employed in the brewing industry and started our careers together homebrewing in his mom’s kitchen when we were in high school.  Tom and I used to have all sorts of really great conversations about the deeper topics that brooding collegiate youngsters find worthy of discourse.  I fondly remember many hours spent discussing our fantasy of having our own pub and one of our great ideas was to have a chalk board that would be used to define a daily topic of discussion.  Bear in mind we lived in the DC metropolitan area where much of the nation’s storied past was born in taverns.  The idea was to encourage interaction among patrons discussing real issues.  Pretty idealistic!

I recently answered a question in my Mr. Wizard column related to beer and health.  In my answer I acknowledged that I am not a health expert and that I based my answer on information from talks given at technical meetings over the last decade by medical professionals and brewing scientists.  This question was playing in the back of mind yesterday when I was enjoying a bold cup of coffee at a local café.

Progress is a funny thing.  I recently read a blurb in a local newspaper about a new brewery opening in Springfield, MO.  This is the town I call home and the brewery I am proud to work for is called Springfield Brewing Company.  Our brewery set up is pretty sweet and we have an automated brewhouse that gives us the ability to define what we want to do in the brewhouse and our control logic coupled with in-line instruments and automated valves follows the routines we enter into our control system.  If we enter something stupid in our control system the automation does what it is programmed to do.  Automation in breweries has not eliminated the human element from brewing and brewers are still required to brew even when automated systems are used; a pretty basic observation.  This is no different than fancy calculators replacing long hand math and the fanciest calculator does not mean that the user does not need to understand math, although many math students of today are lulled into ignorance when using calculators.

I made my annual pilgrimage to the GABF on Wednesday, September 22nd.  Thursday is the day we set up our booth and things started off normally.  We take our own keg cooler to make our booth resemble our bar at Springfield Brewing Company and this year we added some extra love to bring our pub to the GABF hall by adding a wooden façade to our booth and hanging some really cool chalk board signs that "Cat" Scalzo, one of our servers, made.

The Beer Summit in Washington last week made for some interesting talk about what people choose to drink.  As usual folks who drink light beer, especially when brewed by a large brewery, get lambasted.  I was talking to a friend who works for a big brewery this morning and he made two interesting comments.  The first was his advice for craft brewers to chase the giant light beer market and pick up some low hanging fruit!  He was serious about his business advice and I am surprised that more craft brewers don't have light, but flavorful beers in their portfolios.  I guess some just cannot understand that some beer drinkers actually like beers with very little flavor.

Welcome to my BYO Beer Blog.  I am Ashton Lewis, known by BYO Readers as Mr. Wizard.  My journey as Mr. Wizard began back in 1995 when BYO was founded.  Not really wanting my name on my column, perhaps fearing that my mouth-loving foot may hinder my ability to get a job in the US brewing, I chose to use a pseudonym. 10 years later my name was attached to my column, a book compiling many of the Question & Answers followed and now 14 years after having a homebrew Q&A column I am beginning a Beer Blog. Part of my job involves travel and with that travel I try to visit places that either brew great, serve great beer or both.  I will give this my best and attempt to glean factoids of interest to BYO readers in my travels.

Ashton Lewis wears many brewing hats. He is the Master Brewer at Springfield Brewing Company and Process Engineer for Paul Mueller Company in Springfield, Missouri where he designs brewing systems for commercial breweries large and small. As pictured here, Ashton is also BYO's own "Mr. Wizard" columnist and has answered hundreds of brewing questions since the magazine launched in 1995. He hold a master's degree in brewing science from University of California - Davis.