Mikkel Borg Bjergso does not own a brewery. Never has. He turns up at someone else’s kit, somewhere in the world, brews something extraordinary, puts his name on it, and moves on. By most popular definitions of craft beer, the man is a problem. By mine, he is the definition.

For a long while, people smarter than me have debated the concept of craft beer. Sometimes hoppy, sometimes black, even fizzy sometimes. From a small brewery? Or a big one? Of course, the moniker came from the stupidly clever blokes Pete Slosberg and Jim Koch, as a neat way of differentiating their offering from the BMCs of the North American beer market. We have adopted a clever bit of marketeese to help define our options in choice. Perhaps the word is not fit for purpose.

So here is how I see it.

It is not the size of your equipment, or the amount of hops used, or the locale the product originates from, or the attitude you take your product to market with. I do not believe you can define it by what is in your glass.

Nothing to do with the size of your stainless, or even whether you have a brewery at all (Mikkeller, Epic, High Water), more how you use it. I am sure some gentlemen will understand that.

I visualise it as something like a swing: on one side the pure crazy artisan, and on the other the supreme master of his stainless, the engineer. This pendulum passes through a midpoint, whether that is the perfect brewer, I am still dwelling on.

A brewer, who we must remember is a human being (honest), comes with a totally individual make-up. Some are artsy, random, intuitive and holistic; others stoic, logical, rational and sequential. That reflects in their pleasures and choices, and I believe it reflects in their beer and their comfort with flavours.

You will see brewers of each make-up gravitate toward each other at occasions, but also rely on the others for their strengths. I watched it happen at a beer festival not long ago: two brewers at the same bar, one sketching a recipe on a napkin, the other pulling out his phone to check water chemistry. Both making exceptional beer. The napkin man could not explain his process; the spreadsheet man could not stop explaining his. They agreed on exactly one thing, which was what was in the glass.

I believe the holistic approach, understanding every ingredient, its origins, and ultimately the flavours and what they give to a beer, is a large part of it. Their willingness to share with that big world of brewers, learning and just spreading the love, is a part. So is their propensity for risk, both financial and reputational. It is much harder for Fuller’s to take a risk than it is for Jamie at Brodies, and that is nothing to do with volume of beer, just established reputations.

And this is where it gets uncomfortable. If craft is about mindset, what happens when AB InBev buys Goose Island and keeps the brewer? Is John Hall’s philosophy still craft when the cheques come from Leuven? I do not have a clean answer. I suspect the mindset survives the acquisition for a while, perhaps a long while, and then it does not. But that is a question of culture and time, not ownership on paper, and it is a far more honest question than “how many barrels do you produce.”

So ultimately I believe it is more a case of “he or she is a craft brewer,” and thus their product is a craft-brewed beer. It is not brand or marketing; it is wholly and solely about the mindset of the brewer and how he or she approaches beer.

Beer is about people. The people who make it, and the people who drink it. The rest just gets in the way.