I thought I would share this article with my fellow beer lovers, small guys vs big guys sorta thing.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/thepourfool/2011/09/14/why-i-dont-drink-budweiser-and-why-im-not-alone/

I don’t do a lot of blatant op-ed pieces here in The Pour Fool, although , to put a fine point on it, the entire thing is my opinions. But as far as telling you that you should do this or think that, I stay as far away from that as possible.
But today I’m making an exception.
I don’t drink Budweiser and never have. I’ve tasted it three times (a total of about 3 ounces), first while at the University of Maryland, once again in Myrtle Beach, SC, in 1984, and then again in Seattle, in 2005, at the urging of their distributor’s rep, who - correctly - observed that tasting a thing 21 years ago wasn’t giving it a fair shake. It tasted exactly the same: like a wet piece of the cardboard that comes in new dress shirts – and that’s not an original observation. I first read it on the website of the world’s foremost beer critic, Britain’s Michael Jackson. He had almost nothing positive to say about Bud. I don’t either.
Serving Suggestion #1

Budweiser has always been far more about marketing than beer. The founder of Anheuser Busch, Adolphus Busch, refused to drink his own brew, calling it “that slop” (he was German, of course, so it came out “dot schlop”) and stuck to wine. AB first made its massive incursion into every American beer market not because Americans were clamoring for the fantastic beer but because the uber-financed new St. Louis brewery actually paid the rent for tavern owners who agreed to sell Bud and kick out all their competitors. (The source for all this – principally, along with a ton of my own research – is an article from Chicago journalist and author Edward McCleland, writing in Salon.com, which you can read here.) When AB started, there were over 100 small breweries making virtually the same beer as Bud, the mild, aggressively-inoffensive, watery Pilsner, a style that originated in Czechoslavakia as a ladies’ beer; a wimpy alternative for the delicate palates of proper Czech ladies who couldn’t stand the big German Alts and Lagers or the muscular Belgian ales.
In 1960, the number of other regional beer producers peaked out at 175. When Bud dumped mega-millions into the emerging steamroller of television, it was the death knell for all those regional breweries. By 2005, that number of ”traditional American breweries” was 21. Today, it’s shrunk further, with over 80% of all tavern sales of those “All American” Pilsners controlled by AB, Coors, and Miller, now merged into Miller/Coors. TWO companies selling 4/5 of all American Pilsners. Competition? A doomed effort from the git-go, especially when AB was quite willing to seek out any whiff of copyright infringement and eager to invest millions to swat any new trad brewery that dared to become successful.
Alternate Serving Suggestion

But yesterday morning, courtesy of a one-line link posted on Google News, I got what amounts to, for me, Christmas In September. Msnbc. com reposted an article from 24/7wallst.com entitled “8 Beers Americans No Longer Drink”, a listing of brews whose market shares have declined radically in recent years. For those of you not inclined to follow the link, here’s the list and how much market share they’ve lost:
1. Michelob: down a whoppin’ SEVENTY-TWO PERCENT from 2006 to 2010
2. Michelob Light: down 64% for the same period
3. Bud Select: down 60%, same period
4. Milwaukee’s Best: down 53%, same period
5. Old Milwaukee: down 52%, same period
6. Miller Genuine Draft: down 51%, same period
7. Milwaukee’s Best Light: down 34%, same period
8. BUDWEISER(!): down 30% for the same period
What does this list really say? That Americans are rejecting mass-produced crap beers in record numbers. Miller/Coors, at least, is perceived as still being an American company, although that, too, is a smoke screen. The parent company is SABMiller, based in London, England, an arrangement that was quietly consummated a few years back. Anheuser Busch was loudly and publicly sold to InBev, a massive Belgian beer conglomerate, about five years ago, which means that the exact percentage of our 80%-dominant “traditional” American pilsners, those tavern staples, still owned by firms in the good ol’ USA is…zero.
Invented It. Didn't Drink It.

That aspect of “American Made” has, frankly, never meant that much to me as a consumer. I drive Volvos and drink Spanish wine and love me a good Belhaven Wee Heavy. But in terms of my own beliefs, I think American small business is the very beating heart of our society. In 1980, there were about a half-dozen American craft breweries. That number is now almost 1,500. And this is that small-business paradigm that, I firmly believe, is the eventual antidote to all questions of economic down-turns. Free enterprise doesn’t work unless everybody can dream and have a reasonable hope their dreams can come true. It was categorically impossible for any American brewery to compete, on anything like a level playing field, with AB and Miller/Coors. So our country’s aspiring craft brewers simply didn’t try. They embraced their own wildly creative interpretations of virtually every other style of lager or ale produced anywhere else on the planet. They ceded the ground of wimpy, fizzy yellow Pilsner to the mega-brewers and concentrated on…everything else.
It was, after 80+ years of AB’s ruthless suppression of every brewer who threatened to grown beyond local appeal, the one strategy for which AB and Miller/Coors had no answer. AB/InBev has tried, God Knows, whelping a bizzarre and increasingly-desperate roster of faux-craft beers, investing in minority ownership in both Red Hook and Widmer, and securing primary distribution for Kona, Goose Island, Fordham, and Old Dominion breweries. They produced their first ale, a few years back, after focus groups told them Americans were abandoning lagers in record numbers. It’s an okay ale but nothing that would even crack the Top Fifty lists of anybody’s Pale Ales faves.
Their most successful attempt to compete in our new, craft-centric beer world competes, oddly enough, not with the nation’s craft brewers but with their biggest mass-producer rival. Shock Top Belgian-Style White is a direct challange to MillerCoors’ long-time favorite, Blue Moon, the first of many faux-Belgian spiced ales to gain a toe-hold in the US. Shock Top, predictably, takes the idea behind Blue Moon and goes it one worse. I’m certain that some marketing exec at AB-InBev reasoned that, if people like Blue Moon’s spice character, they’d like it, uh, more if it was…more spicy! We’re Americans, after all: Less is NOT more – More is More. In this case, however, that thinking misses the point. Blue Moon is subtly and appropriately spicy. Shock Top is like drinking a Christmas fruit cake – one that’s been regifted a few times.
I’ve been on a personal crusade for locally-produced craft beer, dating back to the first conversation I had with Levy Restaurants, the concessionaire at what is now called “Century Link Field” – Seahawks Stadium, in other words – about the fact that 98% of their available beer taps at the stadium pumped AB products. They were almost rabidly aggressive in trying to tell me, at first, that they did have local craft beers, and finally getting surly about it and trotting out their non-AB beers – almost all of which were either imported or produced somewhere outside this state. I wasn’t even trying to get rid of the Budettes. I think people who enjoy Bud should be able to drink it at ballgames. But I don’t think it’s gonna kill them to walk an extra fifty feet, past all those evil “strong” beers, to get a bucketful. I think that public facilities built with our dollars should support our local producers in all areas of the food service, in at least some significant way. Simple. What I proposed – and eventually wound up down in Olympia to seek, was 30% of all taps at any Washington publicly-funded facility be devoted to Washington-produced beers. But AB’s hold on the NFL and Levy is black-hole-ish in its power. Today, the stadium does offer craft beers, maybe 10% of all taps…sold right beside Shock Top, in what I can only assume is the ongoing effort to win back some cred for InBev.
This list above is a slammin’ validation that the winds of change are blowing hard in American beer. Craft-beer detractors and InBev apologists will say, of course, “So? Even losing 30% market share, Bud is still waaaaaay more popular than any craft beer.” Quite true. But the trend toward craft brewing is moving forward at an amazing pace, while mass-producers are moving backward almost as fast. In Washington, we average a new brewery license application at a rate of slightly more than one a week. Back East, where the artisan beer movement has been slower to develop, new brewers are popping up even faster. And, as opposed to most other industries – even in a recession – breweries are failing at a much slower rate. Beer, after all, is a commodity that people want and can easily afford in recessionary times. Fine wine has taken a hit. Liquor sales have slumped in premium categories. Beer sails on.
Pretty Much Self-Explanatory

It’s Christmas In September at my house, folks. Of all the social mythos that’s arisen around our “traditional” beers, the “manliness” aspect is easily the most puzzling and blindly irrational. It’s always been part of the strategies of BudMillerCoorsPabst to infer that microbrew drinkers are effete, artsy snobs who like “bitter beers”, and to more sutbly question the patriotism of those who would abandon “our American beer”. How it’s “manly” to refer, as Bud fans always do, to craft beers as “too strong” is beyond me. And, thanks to the ultimate greed and bottom-line avarice of the owners of our mega-producers and their stockholders, they’ve managed to remove their own “American Made” claim altogether. When you drink any of those tavern staple beers, your dollars end up in England or Belgium. They may “trickle down” a bit to workers here but the real dollars are building the economies of Great Britain and Belgium, NOT Wisconsin, Missouri, Colorado, and Washington.
But even all those reasons are not why I don’t drink Budweiser. I don’t drink Budweiser because it’s BAD BEER. Period. Adolphus Busch knew it. I know it. And if you don’t know it…you’ve never sampled what Honest American Beer is really all about: small producers making great beer.
 
Since it is Oktober Fest season I went and restocked my beer fridge. Hacker-Pschorr Oktober Fest (A+) , Leinenkugels October Fest (A+) and Flying Fish OctoberFish (A).
 
that's funny you mention Fat Tire, I didn't know they didn't carry it in Virginia. Saw a Forty of Fat Tire at a gas station when I stopped to buy some Sam Adams.

Haha, yea all I have seen are the 22 ounce bottles. I feel like a teenager drinking those but I now pour them in a glass. It's great beer.


Tap-in Talking
 
We carry Fat Tire in 12 ounce cans at the golf course I work at. Good stuff and very popular.

I've been loving Mirror Pond pale ale by Deschutes Brewery.
 
I just opened a new one to me.

[h=1]Heavy Seas - The Great Pumpkin[/h] Approx. 8.5% ABV
We add the pumpkin during the mash at precisely the right time to create just the perfect balance of malt, hops, pumpkin and spice.

d6fdab29.jpg
 
MMMMMMMMMMMMMM BEER!

I love living in Colorado surrounded by great beers. Breckenridge Vanilla Porter rocks my world. Going to brew up a batch of Vanilla Bourbon Porter within a couple of weeks for the fall. I had a 6 of Lienie's Octoberfest this week which was excellent.

Life is to short to drink bad beer.
 
Hey dmb, you ever had any Duck Rabbit?
 
Hey dmb, you ever had any Duck Rabbit?

Yeah man. The Milk Stout will melt your face off!


Tapatalkin
 
Yeah man. The Milk Stout will melt your face off!


Tapatalkin

Nice! It's definitely one of my favorites. There use to be a place near my office that had it on tap.

Have you had Highland's Cold Mtn Winter Ale?
 
Was fortunate enough to get to try Brewdog Tactical Nuclear Penguin this weekend. 33% ABV. It doesnt taste all that good and costs around $120 a bottle but it was something I can at least say I tried. I did not pay for it.
 
Nice! It's definitely one of my favorites. There use to be a place near my office that had it on tap.

Have you had Highland's Cold Mtn Winter Ale?

That would be dangerous close to my work. I do like the Winter Ale. My favorite of theirs is the Oatmeal Porter. I think that is the next type of beer I am going to brew. Something with oatmeal in it. It will be great for the fall. I think they have bands at the brewery at night. How far is it from downtown?
 
beer is a favorite around here--only mass market brew in the beer fridge is Killians(wifes favorite) but do admit to drinking Coors light occasionally when spending a day in the sun tending the fire
 
In the land of great beers a friend of ours is expanding their brewery(going to be a 30barrel system)-so if you like different styles of beer check out www.osobrewing.com
 
That would be dangerous close to my work. I do like the Winter Ale. My favorite of theirs is the Oatmeal Porter. I think that is the next type of beer I am going to brew. Something with oatmeal in it. It will be great for the fall. I think they have bands at the brewery at night. How far is it from downtown?

Not far at all but hard to get into,especially this time of year. Have you been to the Beir Garden before?
 
Not far at all but hard to get into,especially this time of year. Have you been to the Beir Garden before?

No, what is that?
 
No, what is that?

That is where we will be going after our round of golf on the 30th now! I think they have 250 different beers on their menu or something. It's great.
 
That is where we will be going after our round of golf on the 30th now! I think they have 250 different beers on their menu or something. It's great.

Awesome! That is like Flying Saucer. I can't wait. Who said I have workshops on Saturday! HAHA

Edit: I just downloaded the beer menu. I will come with the ones I want to try highlighted. The have a ton of Fall beers! That is awesome.
 
That is where we will be going after our round of golf on the 30th now! I think they have 250 different beers on their menu or something. It's great.

We have a place called the beer kitchen here and its very similar. Allowed me to try some beers that are now my favorites.
 
I have been there many of times. We always preparty there before going to the Orange Peel.

Ok, scratch it off the list. I'm surprised you've never been to the Beir Garden before.
 
Ok, scratch it off the list. I'm surprised you've never been to the Beir Garden before.

I might have, but don't remember it. HAHA

I used to go to Brew Grass up there, but haven't be able to get tickets for the past two years.
 
I might have, but don't remember it. HAHA

I used to go to Brew Grass up there, but haven't be able to get tickets for the past two years.

It sold out this year in like 20 minutes dude. Sucks. It's turning into the next Bele Cher
 
It sold out this year in like 20 minutes dude. Sucks. It's turning into the next Bele Cher

i know. I love that thing! It was so much fun, beer and bluegrass. Can't get better than that!
 
Headed to a beer tasting. New Oregon and Full Sail breweries will be there.


Tapatalkin
 
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