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100 Words: The Global Republic of Craftonia

The citizens of Craftonia, from Singapore to Stockholm, stand together in uniform opposition to homogeneity.

It is a land where the light comes from filament bulbs.

Edison Bulbs at the HubBox, Truro.

Where beer taps are on the back wall, brick is bare and wood is stripped.

Keg taps.

Craftonian cuisine is ‘dirty’, but not really, and it is usually a burger.

Bundobust window, Leeds.

There are no plain walls there: every surface has a caricature of a barman, a beer list, or a brief manifesto.

Beer list at the Beer Cellars, Exeter.

All the beers are IPAs, except the ones that are sour.

BrewDog IPAs c.2009 (old labels).

There are many breweries in Craftonia but most of them are Stone, BrewDog and Mikkeller.

We wrote this last autumn but decided against posting it, though we did include a version of it in our email newsletter (sign up here). We were moved to revive it by this post from Tandleman.

7 replies on “100 Words: The Global Republic of Craftonia”

Though they generally take kindly to tourists, I’ve found the inhabitants of Craftonia can be quite insular, even jingoistic. Most of the population are immigrants, yet many never travel outside.

Sure, if that’s your kind of bag. The craft beer bar look is still sufficiently unusual and modern that it still offers something a bit different to your average punter. Even though they’re increasingly common, your average town probably still only has 2 or 3 targeted craft beer bars.

However, I do 90% of my craft beer drinking in normal pubs. Same beer, cheaper prices.

When I do go into craft beer bars, its mostly just normal couples or groups of 25-40yo blokes on a night out who don’t necessarily want to drink 2-4-1 shots in Yates Wine Lodge with all the teenagers and see £3.50 for a half of something tasty as better value than £3.50 for a bottle of Budweiser in the bar next door. Don’t see many beards or [insert tired stereotype here].

Meanwhile 99.9% of the rest of the beer-drinking population just go for a pint in their local boozer.

Cheers for the insight, Syd, I didn’t realize that people weren’t allowed to blog about minority interests. Maybe from now on all beer bloggers should just write about Carling since so much more of it gets drunk in the UK than any of this weirdo real ale nonsense?

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