I see the use of industrial machinery as an extension of the ordinary use of tools that facilitates and is in turn demanded by scaling processes up. Pumps are necessary because at a certain point people can no longer lift the vessels, for example. Other machines make it possible to do more accurately and consistently what you could do by eye, like measuring for example. Humans using tools is craft. Humans using super-tools is craft too. If not, what makes the difference?
If you were talking about 'HAND-crafted' I would probably agree. What stops robots etc being HAND-crafted is that the process is automated. But even some automation is tolerated. You wouldn't say a microbrewery or a homebrewer that used one of those ATC 800 thingamajigs to monitor the fermentation temperatures was no longer craft, would you? More automation is just more of the same in the interests of greater consistency. Why would that make a difference to whether or not something is craft?
'Squirting chemicals' is pure rhetoric. All the ingredients in beer are chemical. H2O is a chemical. Fermentation is a chemical process. Small scale brewing is about controlling chemical reactions with the aim of producing beer just as much as industrial scale brewing is.
Do you really think it's true that macrobreweries care more about their share price than about the quality of the product? I think they care about both because getting the product right is a precondition of making a profit. They have to care about their product. The simple fact is that macro beer is how it is because that's what the market wants. That's what consumers want. If the majority wanted to drink SNPA, they'd give it to them. They're buying micros now because that's where the market is growing. They invest in advertising and all that because all the macros have pretty much nailed what ordinary people want to drink so they can't compete on the qualities of the products themselves but have to compete by creating an image.
