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No two countries are the same. In Germany last March, the magazine Brauwelt and an association of small private breweries invited a dozen brewers to present special beers at a seminar. For instance, Hans-Peter Drexler from G. Schneider & Sohn talked about the strong and hoppy Schneider-Brooklyner Hefe-Weisse he brewed in collaboration with Garrett Oliver of The Brooklyn Brewery. Eric Toft—a Wyoming native who has been brewmaster at Private Landbrauerei Schönram for 11 years—served Saphir Bock, his well-hopped 8 percent ABV pale bock.

In the Czech Republic, American influence shows itself in top-fermented ales with Northwest hops. “Really, in the land of Saaz, did you ever think you’d taste beers made with Cascade or Chinook?” Rail asked.

He pointed out that Czech craft brewing includes the rediscovery of the styles that existed before Communism (and before that Nazi occupation). “Czech breweries are now going back and discovering beer styles that were produced here in the country’s ‘golden age’ of the 1920s and 1930s, as well as earlier beer styles like doppelbocks and Baltic porters,” he said. “Kout na Šumavě’s rich and chocolaty 18-degree dark lager is a great example. That development is not so much about Americanization as it is a very real ‘return to normalcy,’ meaning European beer normalcy.”

Pivovar Kout na Šumavě opened in 2006, mostly brewing classic hoppy, grainy pale lagers not far from the Czech-German border where traditional beers thrive, including Zoigl (community) beers from Bavaria’s Oberpfalz region and the eclectic variety available in the Franconian countryside around Bamberg.

Zoigl and other German odditites are much more likely to be threatened by social change within Germany than new beer styles developed elsewhere,” Pattinson said. Matthias Trum, who oversees production of the Schlenkerla smoked beers, agrees. “At the moment it is good for us, but 30 years ago it was a tough time in Germany for such a beer.”

Trum’s family has owned the Heller-Bräu brewery and Schlenkerla tavern for six generations, using 100 percent malt smoked over beechwood logs at the brewery to make Schlenkerla Rauchbier Märzen and Urbock. At 5.4 percent and 6.6 percent ABV respectively, neither qualifies as strong by American standards, nor are they hoppy. But they are intense. Trum talked about the education of young beer drinkers in Bamberg, how they must learn to appreciate smoky beers. He paused when asked if, based upon Jackson’s suggestion “Extreme Beers” might be defined by their intensity, he would call his beers “extreme.”

Trum slips easily into a discussion of history. For his thesis at brewing school he presented a paper on the historical depictions of guild signs as symbols, such as the six-point brewer’s star. Sitting in a tavern with roots that go back to the fourteenth century, perspective comes naturally to him.

If you were to call these ‘extreme’ then they’ve always been ‘extreme,’ this was the first wave,” he said. “We don’t make a fashion, like Coca-Cola has. I see a danger if you are only a fashion.”

At Schlenkerla, globalization means the rest of the world has discovered a localized way of brewing beer. In Fraserburgh, Scotland, where BrewDog opened in 2007, it means something else.

I see the craft beer movement as global,” BrewDog’s Watt said. “I think there will soon be more and more examples of progressive, boundary-pushing brewers popping up all over the world. American craft brewers are not trying to Americanize beer, they are trying to make the best beer they can and for me there is a huge difference.”