Tag Archives: etymology

On the origin of “craft beer”

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Not the origin of craft beer itself, but the etymology of the term “craft beer”.

Stan Hieronymous points out that Vince Cottone, way back in 1986 in his Good Beer Guide: Brewers and Pubs of the Pacific Northwest may be the original source…or not.

“I can’t swear I was the ‘first’ to use the term, but I also don’t remember any source I borrowed it from. Possibly CAMRA used it in the UK before me, and in fact I traveled there in 1984 and ’85. If they did use it their usage was probably very casual and I don’t think they made any attempt to define it or promote it as an something like an appellation. I know of no brewing company who used it prior to my book.”

When his book first appeared North America was home to scores of small breweries that opened only since 1980, not hundreds (or eventually more than 1,500). Consider that context. Also, that at the time Cottone wrote for many publications, both within beer trade and outside (such as theSeattle Post-Intelligencer and The Washington Post).

This is worth a read.

Craft beer: the 1986 definition

More beer etymology

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Some may think that cerebral topics like word origins and “the people’s drink” don’t go together (much the same way I don’t like chocolate in my peanut butter and vice versa) but I think it’s great.

Zythophile: Words for beer (2) – was ‘beer’ originally cider?

To rub in the point that ealu and beór were seen as distinct and separate drinks a thousand years ago, Ælfric, abbot of Cerne Abbas in Dorset, who lived from around AD 955 to AD 1010, wrote of John the Baptist in one of his “Homilies” that “ne dranc he naðor ne win, ne beór, ne ealu, ne nan ðæra wætan ðe menn of druncniað,” that is, “nor drank he neither wine, nor beór, nor ale, nor any other liquor that makes men drunk.” Ælfric, who was a conscientious writer, clearly felt he needed to differentiate beór from ealu, as well as ealu from win. Beór, then, comes through from Anglo-Saxon texts as strong and sweet, and different to, or separate, from ealu.

Fascinating stuff

Origins of the word “beer”

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Our friend Zythophile is at it again. This time with the first part of an article that explores the origins of the word “beer” with explorations of its equivalent in other languages. Etymology fascinates me; I think maybe I should have been a linguist.

Here’s an excerpt:

In Britain, as on the continent, that change from m to v meant that the old Brythonic (British Celtic) word for “beer”, *korm, altered its form, becoming *cwrf (pronounced “coorv”) in old Welsh, then cwrwf, before losing the f to become modern Welsh cwrw, pronounced “cooroo”. (Welsh being what is known technically as a “mutating” language, incidentally, certain initial consonants change when nouns are used with prepositions, and that includes hard “c”, which becomes hard “g”: I am grateful to a young woman called Kat for imparting the information that the essential order at the bar in grammatically correct Welsh would be “Dau peint o gwrw ac baced crisps, plis.” This is particularly important in the Lleyn peninsula, where you wouldn’t want the locals to think you were from Swansea.

Zythophile: Words for beer

He promises to actually get to the word “beer”, and “ale” as well, in a future article.