Bye Bye Beer Thugs
In a nice blog post I just stumbled upon called “Bye Bye Beer Thugs” at The Drinkslinger, the writer talks about his love of craft beer in his youth, his turn to the dark side when he settled into Michelob Ultra for 10 years, and how the beer documentary “The Beer Wars” helped him sever his tied with Anheuser-Busch InBev once and for all.
So, I’ve been tasting for myself and I realized that for the past ten years I’ve been drinking (and selling) beer flavored water. […] This past year I also found myself in the position of selecting and purchasing all the alcohol for a small, local licensed establishment. […] I made the mistake last season of only carrying Bud and Bud Light and holy cow, did I hear some major beer bitching. “Bud? All you have is Bud?! That’s not even real beer.”
This season I have yet to purchase any Budweiser stuff to sell but circumnavigating the Big Bud people is not as easy as one might think. Since the 2008 merger of Europe’s InBev corporation with Anheuser-Busch, AB-InBev is now the world’s largest beer brewer with 25% of the global beer market. They own 1 out of every 4 beers! Besides the well known Bud, Michelob and Busch families, they own Stella, Bass, Beck’s, Kirin, Hoegaarden, Shock Top Wheat and even Rolling Rock! I was careful to select outside the AB-InBev family and last week we opened for the first time this season, offering a great domestic craft Pale Ale and a tasty imported lager. To my surprise, I heard quite a few “What? No Bud Light?” As if denying anyone access to watery flavored beer was an abomination.
Read his full post at The Drinkslinger
