Craft Beer Creativity: The Neverending Story  

Craft beer lovers love to try new brews – it’s one of the most attractive aspects of the craft community – and craft breweries love to innovate. But is there a saturation point to creativity in craft beer? How many variations exist? Is creative craft beer the reality version of the Neverending Story?

Perhaps there is no threshold to creativity in brewing, considering research that proves beer is helpful in the creative process.  According to Life Hacker, creativity is when you brain is able to create something original by connecting pre-existing ideas. Because one of the effects of alcohol is that the brain pays less attention to surroundings, allowing more relaxation, the brain is able to work in a manner that produces more creative ideas.

In addition, the brewers themselves, those impressive chemists and innovative thinkers, are not only creative due to their (assumed) beer drinking, but are prone to be more intelligent, according this study regarding evolutionary drinking behavior.

“Since the consumption of modern alcoholic beverages…is evolutionary novel, the Hypothesis would predict that more intelligent individuals are more likely to engage in it, and the empirical data from the UK and the US confirm it.” – Psychology Today

This one-two punch of creativity plus intelligence, which is so often the seedling for many breweries and beers, gives hope that the craft beer world will never be creatively stagnant. Rather, the symbiotic relationships between beer drinkers, brewers and homebrewers will continue to infuse the craft community with new, sometimes novel, brews.

With that settled, lets cheer to the past, present and seemingly bright creative future of craft beer.