Crafting New Lifestyles and Urban Places: The Craft Beer Scene of Berlin

Abstract

The paper is concerned with the development of the craft beer scene in Berlin. Collections of people, spaces, places and practices form this vibrant cultural scene. Products and services emerged around craft beer over the last decade have become part of new urban experiences and shared social, economic and cultural practices in Berlin. These practices and consumption spaces present a particular understanding of esthetic, taste and lifestyle. They are part of an urban transformation shaped by global and local strategies of urban revitalization and gentrification processes. It is argued that the study of craft beer phenomena helps understand the processes of urban change and the ways in which new urban identities are constituted around social class, lifestyle and cultural consumption. By focusing on a case study of Brlo brewery and a current urban development project, the Urbane Mitte in the central districts of Berlin, the paper explores the impact of craft beer phenomena on its physical and social surrounding, processes of urban change and the formation of new urban communities in the context of Berlin.

Keywords:

• Craft breweries
• urban change
• cultural consumption
• new/creative classes
• Berlin

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Didem Leblebici for her assistance in producing the maps for this paper and Rainer Ohliger for his helpful comments on earlier drafts of the paper. She is also grateful for the support she received from Research Institute, Berlin International University of Applied Sciences to conduct the research for this paper.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 The number of breweries presented in Figure 3 is based on the list provided by the VLB Berlin (2020). The beer brand Lemke has three sites where brewing occurs; all there locations are shown on the map. There is also a fluctuating number of (gypsy) breweries in Berlin who are present as a brand but do not have their own production sites. These breweries are not presented on the map.

2 Stone brewery, one of the top ten craft beer breweries in the USA, founded its first and only brewery in the European continent in Berlin in 2016. Stone distributed its beer produced in Berlin facilities to 17 European countries. When it became financially not sustainable Stone left Berlin and the European market in 2019.