Big Beer, Part 1

I drank a beer the other day that inspired this post, rather, two posts, but really it had been cooking for a while.

I'm a fan of beer. I love beer, maybe not as much as I love coffee, but it's close. I've even made my own beer, which is so microbrewery that it makes my friend Ryan look like a legit company.

One thing I basically avoid is Budweiser, as any craft-beer fan/snob willingly does. I did have some Budweis, from Budvar in the Czech Republic, while visiting Prague, and it was good. They have an agreement with Anheuser-Busch that their Budweis and American Budweiser won't appear in the same country. That stable of countries is shrinking for the brewery from Budweis, I'm sure. It used to be continental Europe had no Anheuser-Busch, but I think they're slowly letting it in. It probably has something to do with the Belgium-Brazilian conglomerate InBev's acquisition of Anheuser-Busch a few year's back.

So...off topic for a second...

The alcohol market in America is massive, and the industry for beer is around $95 billion.

Anheuser-Busch has pretty much always had the largest market share, but they've been on a splurge since the '60s, and really going crazy in the last decade. They've grown from 16% in the mid-sixties to just under 50% nowadays.

They have almost half of an almost hundred-billion dollar market. They're one of the main suppliers of advertising cash. One person I remember hearing during a documentary said that it makes sense that they have to spend that much money--they have to convince people to drink beer as horrible as they make.

If you look in the beer aisle of your local supermarket you'll see huge swaths of Bud, Bud Light, and many other brands from the monster.

While A-B was out gobbling up market-share, American beer-lovers developed their tastes and began looking for other options. The fastest growing section of the alcohol market is microbrewery and craft beer. It's getting so crazy that A-B went bought up popular local brands (like Rolling Rock) and filled the bottles with their own beer, and then started a series of craft-beer-like brands that do their bit to make you think they're truly microbrews. One way to tell, though, is that they're far cheaper than other micros.

Watching an interview with the founder of Dogfish Head Brewery discuss how they're making that particular batch--the passion obvious as he stands above a glass chamber filled with hops and the beer is slowly filtered over and out the bottom--is fun and refreshing. Now, contrast that giddyness to the CEO of A-B, a robotic looking weirdo talking in monotone about their "master brewers concocting specialty brews, you know, adding a little of this, a little of that," and you get the creeps. You know they're in their with their esters trying to make a chemically strange malt beverage.

A-B has also sued Dogfish Head for their use of the word "Punkin'" in one of their seasonal ales. A-B says it's too general. This is a case that Dogfish Head will likely win, but they'll spend buckets of cash on lawyers and court fees. Another aspect of how the "chiller effect" works, where major companies sue for reasons that are lost causes, just to tie little folks up in court until they go bankrupt.

InBev is obviously threatened by consumer's desire for better beer, and is looking to quash the little brewery.

Support your local or microbreweries!

There are a few things you can do, as intrepid beer drinkers, or non-drinkers who like to mess up supermarket manager's days:

1) Ask your supermarket to place the microbrews in a better spot on their shelf (unless that's not a problem)(it usually is);
2) If you have lots of time, you can demand from your congresspeople an end to the current three-tiered system of brewery/distributor/marketplace. This system screws everybody who's not InBev/A-B or Coors/Miller (in an effort to combat A-B, Coors and Miller merged);
3) Use your purchasing power to simply not support InBev or A-B.

That's the number one thing you can do without any real effort.

Here's a list of beers to avoid, and it is surprisingly long:

InBev had a long history in Europe, but since their acquisition, they became part of the problem.

Obviously, anything with Budweiser in the name (Bud, Bud Light, Bud Ice, etc)
Bass
Beck's
Boddingtons
Bohemia
Brahma
Busch
Franziskaner
Goose Island
Green Valley (fake microbrew)
Hoegaarden
King Cobra
Kona
Labatt
Land Shark
Leffe
Lowenbrau
Michelob
Natural Ice, Light
Old Dominion
Rolling Rock
Schooner
Shock Top
Spaten
St. Pauli
Stella Artois
Tequiza
Ziegen Bock (big in Texas)

And also, you can avoid the beers that they have a minority ownership in as well:

Modelo
Red Hook
Widmer Brothers

That list has a lot of beers I used to drink, but there's still lots of beers out there. Next time you're in the supermarket check out how much shelf real estate goes to Anheuser-Busch/InBev. Makes you think.

Also, I didn't get to the part where I talk about the beer I had the other day.