The longneck tail: a revolution in American beer.

• Author: Brooks, Jay R.
• Position: Industry overview

WHILE YOU WERE sleeping one off, a national crisis in drinking was averted. In 1980, good American beer was on the brink of extinction. Our most popular brands--Bud, Miller, Coors--were the laughingstocks of the world. Our brewing heritage had been all but stamped out, with hundreds of formerly thriving regional breweries gone. There were a few pockets of resistance, such as Anchor Brewing in San Francisco, but the days of decent American beer seemed to be over.

Then a backlash began. Over the past 25 years the microbrewery revolution has created a beer culture that is the envy of the world. More styles of suds are now brewed in America than in any other place. Along with the light-tasting lagers that still dominate the market, the new offerings include porters, stouts, barley wines, bocks, hefeweizens, pale ales, bitters, and Belgian-style farmhouse ales. American beers consistently win the highest proportion of awards in international competitions. Local and regional beer has re-emerged: There are more than 1,400 breweries in the United States, up from only a few dozen at the start of the 1980s. By any measure, this is an amazing achievement.

Even more amazing: The vast majority of Americans are scarcely aware of this. All those wonderful craft beers account for a mere 3.5 percent of total U.S. beer sales. They are able to thrive nonetheless, thanks in part to a phenomenon Wired editor Chris Anderson calls "the Long Tail" in a book by the same name. In a nutshell, small niche products are having a big impact on overall sales, especially online.

Beer has been with us for millennia. Bland brands aimed at the lowest common denominator are a more recent development. In 1870, when commercial refrigeration began to allow regional brewers to expand their reach, there were more than 4,000 breweries in America. As the technology spread, the increased competition caused the number of beer makers to decline, so that by 1910 there were only about 1,500

That much could be attributed to good beer driving out bad. But then the government entered the picture, crushing quality brew like a fiat boy crushing Budweiser cans on his forehead. Prohibition decimated the industry, and in World War II the military requested watered-down drinks so soldiers wouldn't be too inebriated to fight. The upside: They won the war. The downside: Many came home with a taste for milder beers.

With the advent of the Interstate Highway System, and of TV as a nationwide...