Anheuser-Busch Sale: America’s Last Call for Bad, Corporate Beer
Anguish ripples through NASCAR’s burgeoning bleachers as fans ponder the possibility of a Brazilian-Belgian megacorporation buying out iconic Budweiser and a bunch of others under the Anheuser-Busch banner. Even barley growers are nervous that the sale will mean an end of a free lunch (isn’t Bud made from rice?). Not having consciously drunk a Bud for nearly 25 years (deliberately- it sucks), I could care less if A-B is devoured by a bigger fish. In fact, I think it would give Americans incentive to drink something other than Bud, Coors, or other corporate swill. Good for the taste buds, good for the economy.
One of my great memories as a kid was watching my Uncle Fooney (who recently passed on) and Grandpa Wagner make beer at the Superfine Brewery in Marathon, Wisconsin back in the early 1960s. I remember them working around the big copper kettles and the smell of fresh hops cooking. A few years later, the brewery was shuttered, bought out or driven out of business like most locally-owned Wisconsin breweries by the bigger, corporate brewers like Budweiser, Miller, Heileman, etc. Fooney and Grandpa never mentioned it or, if they did, I was too young to understand why such a great, little brewery had to go away.
Of course, I was right. The Superfine brewery didn’t have to go away and shouldn’t have. In fact, little breweries are popping up all over the country again after fifty years of lousy, overpriced beer like Budweiser and the pointless, destructive elimination of local jobs, local business and local pride. American microbreweries produce some of the best beer in the world now. Even with Bud still selling 50% of the beer in America (!), they apparently don’t make enough money to stave off the buyout predators. They’re not making enough money and their beer still sucks. Sound like good business to you?
So sell the whole darn thing off, I say. There are so many good and affordable beers in America, this will only mean good things for the American economy, NASCAR fans (drink American!) and most important, beer itself. Americans need something new to smile about and be proud of. And better beer made by hard-working, entrepreneurial Americans living in our own communities is the best way to start.