Review- Movie, The American Brew

I recently purchased this DVD from the American Homebrewers Association website. I believe this 50 minute video originally aired on A&E. At $6, this dvd is hard to pass up.

The video was created by the "Here's To Beer" campaign and I believe funded by Anheuser-Busch . Since it is a documentary for television, it does start with some basics of beer, but quickly jumps into the rich history of American brewing.

I've recently been reading Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Brewing by Maureen Ogle, and a lot of the information in that book is included in this documentary. She is interviewed quite a bit in the documentary discussing the growth of the brewing industry during the turn of the century, the rise of the beer barons and prohibition.

For the beer geeks out there, you'll recognize a great deal of people in the film: Michael Jackson, Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewing Company, Randy Mosher, Charlie Papazian, Fritz Maytag of Anchor just to name a few. It does a good job of discussing the rise and fall of American brewing, the period after prohibition, and towards the end of the film, it discusses the rise of the craft brewing industry from companies like Anchor, Sierra Nevada, and even Russian River and Elysian Brewing Company.

I think it covers a lot in 50 minutes, and there are some good extras, with extended interviews with Michael Jackson and Fritz Maytag. Its very accessible to the less knowledgeable beer fans, but has enough "big names" to make it interesting to the beer geeks as well. And at $6, you really can't go wrong.