Brewmance Pays Homage to America’s Master Craft Brewers

Adam Gravano

 

Beer not only predates the pilgrims in the Americas, but it played a decisive role in the pilgrims choosing to make landfall in Massachusetts — they were running low. With its long-standing history of production and consumption, with only a brief interlude for the national experiment in Prohibition, beer comes as close as any other beverage to being a national beverage. Despite this august history, the new documentary Brewmance – directed by Christo Brock -- picks up its story later, with the experiences of several brewers moving from their kitchens into breweries in the present and a story of the craft beer movement.

 

Aside from brief mentions, Brewmance doesn't discuss the history of home brewing. A single almost throwaway line from Jim Koch, founder of Samuel Adams and Boston Brewing Company, is all the viewer has to know that home brewing was not officially legal for Americans until 1978 at the federal level.

 

 

But Brewmance, thankfully, is not a dry – get it? – recitation of the history of home brewing in America. It's about craft brewing as it is in our time and how it tells its own story.

 

Post-COVID, with many businesses in the pub and restaurant trade having taken financial gut punches, this project is a sort of time capsule.

 

The brewers the movie follows are a quirky set: a Christian father-and-son duo repairing their relationship through a shared project make up one team, and a second team is headed by a former ska trombonist. These people are from completely different walks of life, but their shared love of making their own beer makes their narratives coherent. The movie's cast of more accomplished brewers is as star-studded an affair as one can get in the world of beer: Jim Koch of Boston Brewing fame, Steven Hindy of Brooklyn Beer, and Ken Grossman from Sierra Nevada just to name a few.

 

Because of this nostalgic feel, the movie and its endearing characters are the perfect film to watch while hanging out with a brew of one's own and wondering, “Just where did all these craft brewers come from anyway?”

 

 

Author Bio:

Adam Gravano is a contributing writer at Highbrow Magazine.

 

For Highbrow Magazine

 

Image Sources:

Courtesy of Brocklamation Films

Pxfuel (Creative Commons)

 

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