All About Gwinnett's Craft Beer

What makes beer "craft"? All that means is that it is made by a local, small or independent brewer. To classify as a craft brewer, you must produce less than six million barrels of beer a year, which is only 3% of the U.S. annual sales. Many of the breweries starting to open are owned by local beer-loving citizens. The beauty of craft beer and why so many people are drawn to it, is that you can mix it up. If you walk into a brewery each one will have many different combinations of flavors. Brew-masters at each brewery are tasked with creating new, creative recipes.

If you are interested in seeing this process in person, many of our local Gwinnett breweries offer behind the scenes tours where you can see firsthand how the beer is made. If you’d like to take a deeper dive, check out our Sippin the Suburbs Pass to guide you through the entire line-up of breweries in Gwinnett, use the pass to check-in and acquire points to earn prizes!

The most common styles:

• Pale Ale: Medium bodied beer with low to medium caramel and carries a toasted maltiness flavor.
• India Pale Ale (IPA): a pale ale but with more hops.
• Sour: Intentionally acidic or tart. These are usually very fruity flavors.
• Stout: Typically, very dark and served in smaller sizes. A stout is dark because it is roasted for a long time. An imperial stout will have highest alcohol content.
• Lager: Most consumed type of beer. They can be pale, amber or dark.

Here are some facts about craft beer that make it unique and interesting:

• The legal limit of alcohol in a beer for the state of Georgia is 13.9%. Most craft beers will have 4-7% alcohol. It is very rare to find a beer as high as 13.9%, if you do it is usually a barrel aged stout.
• IPA got its name (India Pale Ale) because back in 1815 when it was shipped from England to India, they added hops to the beer as a preservative while in transport. American brewers have doubled down on this by adding even more hops for flavor, that has given our versions a distinct flavor compared to the English Style IPAs.
• Beer is divided into two groups: ales and lagers. The difference is in the way they are fermented. Lagers are fermented colder for a longer period and an ale is fermented warm and has a quicker fermentation time.
• The difference between craft beer and regular beer is the amount of production. Regular beer is mass produced so it contains less and cheaper ingredients to reduce the price. Craft beer is made with hand-selected ingredients to produce smaller, but higher quality batches.