Beer Summit Soundoff
Sometimes I hate to blog about things that everyone else is talking about. But we cover American and craft beer news, and you may have heard some mention about the so-called “beer summit” that President Obama will be arranging.
If you live under a rock you might have heard about the “stoopidness” of the President's remarks about the Chicago police last week and how Police Sargent James Crowley arrested Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his own home. So the Prez sez “hey, let's all hug it out over a beer at the White House.”
Sounds good… beer is the solution to (and cause of) all of life's problems.
Do I care that this is even happening? No. The “Summit” was created to help get the Presidential Foot out of the Presidential Mouth. But the Wall Street Journal this morning alerted me to the REAL matter at hand… the beers being served at the beer summit are all foreign beers. Gates will be drinking Red Stripe, Crowley will have Blue Moon and Obama will be pounding Bud Light… none of which are American-owned beers.
Red Stripe is brewed by London-based Diageo PLC. Blue Moon is brewed by Molson-Coors in Canada and distributed by SABMiller, owned by South African Breweries, and as we have reported many times, Bud Light is now owned by Anseuser-Busch InBev NV, a giant Belgian-Brazilian company.
Come on Bam, you're the President of the US, drink American beer! How about sitting down with a six-pack of Sam Adams or some other American craft beer?
The WSJ adds an interesting quote to the “brouhaha” from the Genesee Brewery: “We just hope the next time the President has a beer, he chooses an American beer, made by American workers, and an American-owned brewery like Genesee.”
I concur.
(cross-posted and modified from Brian's Belly)
