| The largest brewing corporations in the world are the result of over a century of market consolidation and the homogenization of consumer tastes, beginning with German-American firms such as Coors, Miller, and Anheuser-Busch. By 1980, there were less than 100 breweries in the United States. As of today there are over 3,000 breweries nationwide, and the number has not stopped growing since the 1980s. The catalyst for this phenomenal growth can be found squarely in the cultural and legal forces that originated in Californian brewing industry. The Counter-Cultural movements of the 1960s, combined with the alternate business patterns originating largely in the San Francisco Bay Area and surrounding counties would lead to a massive change in the market structure of the American Brewing industry. The movement of brewing traditions and innovation in the United States, once an East to West movement, was reversed emphatically when the "Craft Brewing" movement begun in the Golden State. The first microbrewery and homebrew club in the nation originated in Sonoma and Los Angeles respectively, and the bill that repealed the Federal restrictions on homebrewing was drafted by California lawmakers and brewers. The early history of brewing in California held nothing remarkable vis-a-vis other parts of the nation, but today California is at the forefront of brewing as a business and as a gastronomic art, a position once held by the great brewing locations of the world, such as Germany, England, Belgium, and the Czech Republic. |
