Better and different…

“It’s a lifestyle that’s suitable for any small entrepreneur getting into a product that’s not fully mainstream, or different than the mainstream,” Darrin Earley, owner of Lot 30 Brewers, began when I asked him what a ‘craft beer lifestyle’ might be.

Sitting at a long, copper-coloured high-top table in the middle of the brewpub, with brewmaster, Anderson Sant’anna de Lima joining us, Darrin continued, “It’s focused on trying to make something better and different, while at the same time trying to make a living from it – which is probably the hardest part about a craft beer lifestyle.”

That statement produced a chuckle from the three of us.

“It’s infiltrated everywhere though,” Darrin went on, “Everywhere now seems to have some craft beer on tap. There is a lifestyle, and, I guess, it’s started to reach the more mainstream – at one point you needed to search for it, now you can stumble upon it seemingly everywhere.

“But you have to have a passion for the product and for working with people – and a lot of work – in order to get your different, hopefully better product into the mainstream.”