Chapter 14: Instagram Versus Reality: Chatting Craft Beer Communities with Roy Herd of the Blunt Chisel Brewery

This chapter takes the major themes emerging from the two academic chapters on beer communities and discusses these with a rural craft ‘nano’ brewer in Fife, Scotland. The discussion touches on the value of online communities for learning to brew and advertising to customers. However, this is tempered with a realisation of the divide between the homebrewing education community and the commercial necessities of running a small brewery, and the limited value of glossy Instagram photos to smaller brewers in selling their craft beer. This chapter reinforces the importance of localism and face to face selling for nanobrewers, and the value of establishing symbiotic relationships with other local producers and sellers.