Friedrich Moser's 2019 documentary carries a title with a pun built in: Beer! The Best Film Ever Brewed. Behind the joke is a serious, ninety-minute look at how beer is made and at the people who have turned small-scale brewing into a community of its own.
What is Beer! The Best Film Ever Brewed about?
Two subjects run side by side through the film. One is the drink itself, treated as both an art and a craft: the knowledge, the judgement and the patience that go into a brew. The other is the craft beer community, the loose network of makers and enthusiasts who talk about beer the way others talk about food or wine. Moser moves between these two threads, letting the people who work with beer explain what they do and why it matters to them. Christoph Bichler, Peter Bouckaert, Julia Herz and Steve Hindi are among those who appear on screen. A co-production of Austria and Belgium, the documentary keeps its attention on process and people throughout its 90 minutes.
About the cast
As a documentary, the film has participants instead of actors. Christoph Bichler, Peter Bouckaert, Julia Herz and Steve Hindi are the credited on-screen figures, appearing as themselves. Friedrich Moser is the director.
Context & significance
Food-and-drink documentaries usually take one of two routes: they follow a single maker closely, or they map a whole scene. Beer! The Best Film Ever Brewed leans toward the second, treating craft brewing as a movement with its own vocabulary, values and arguments. That makes it useful viewing even for someone who has never thought about what separates one glass from another, because the film is as much about craftsmanship and shared enthusiasm as it is about the product. The Austrian and Belgian backing is worth noting too, since it places the documentary in European non-fiction filmmaking. Its reception has been strong, and it sits among the better-regarded documentaries in the catalogue. Viewers should expect an explanatory, conversational film about a trade, not a drama, and one that fits comfortably into a single sitting.
Watching Beer! The Best Film Ever Brewed on Ktime
Beer! The Best Film Ever Brewed can be streamed on K-Time, a Persian-focused service made for the Iranian diaspora. Reading this page costs nothing and needs no sign-up; to press play, log in to your K-Time account. Menus, search and your watch history are all presented in Farsi, so finding the documentary section takes only a moment.