This paper is a senior thesis by Carleton students James Harren, Mayte Aldrett, and Emma Dempsey. They studied three local breweries, focusing on the motivations of brewers and brewery customers for creating and consuming local beer. By using a mixed methods approach that includes surveys, interviews, ethnographic observations, and website analysis, the authors find that, as indicated by the literature on alternative food movements, local beer producers and consumers are motivated by notions of economic justice, high-quality goods, environmental responsibility, and sense of place.