How is this snobby?  Coors is like q-tips. Craft beer is like comic books.  The only similarity is wood pulp.

Oh lordy.  Here we go.

They sell beer.  You sell beer.  When I buy beer, I am not buying community, I am not buying social advancement, I am not buying self-worth.  I am buying beer.  If I like your beer better, great.  If I like their beer better, sucks to be you.  I like fat, malty ales, which means I drink beers from smaller breweries or the local brewhouse.  If, however, I preferred light pilsener-style American lagers, Budweiser and PBR are fine examples of the style.

Unless you are going to argue that the American lager is not a "real" beer style, STFU.

Benevolent Misanthrope: Oh lordy.  Here we go.

They sell beer.  You sell beer.  When I buy beer, I am not buying community, I am not buying social advancement, I am not buying self-worth.  I am buying beer.

Word.

Discerning palates will know what they are buying and the whole facade will crumble.

Yeah, I am all about the tasty, awesome craft beers I've had in the last few years.  Can't stand your standard piss-tasting domestics.  But even beer snobby as I am, I thought that comment was HORRIBLY pretentious.

You can't drink community.  Unless you kill all the people in the community and turn them into pulp.

I think that might be illegal, though.

Let the market decide. I'd be perfectly happy if BudMilCoors put out actual craft beer. But, they won't. They'll put out something that has slightly more flavor than the crap they already make. Slightly more flavor (I.e., any flavor at all).

I sometimes have to pinch myself at how good beer drinkers have it in the US right now, the friggin' choice is unprecedented - even in a craphole little town in the midwest where I live you can get all sorts of good stuff at the grocery store, much less a liquor store.

This is where Canad is way behind. The old chestnut that American beer is watery crap is very dated. Try getting decent microbrew in those awful government holes where they sell beer. Horribly overpriced elk piss.

Meh.  Local craft brews are usually a lot of fun and what I choose, but if I'm somewhere where they only have the standard Bud, Coors, Miller (often seen at banquets, sporting evente, etc) a Blue Moon ain't half bad.

There's plenty of market for everyone.  Deal with it.

Some people used to take pride in buying local.

Used to.

I am no beer snob, but Blue Moon is shiatty beer. Marketing it as a "craft beer" is almost fraud.

alywa: There's plenty of market for everyone

Overall, sure. In your average store? No.

Microbrewers have a right to be pissed, because stores have limited shelf space, and when InBev comes calling it's tough to say "you know what? I've reserved that space for a local brewer." They can throw discounts at a purchaser and find all sorts of ways to win over a retailer, particularly a national chain or a very small store. Heck, they can practically GIVE away their craft beers if they know that it's taking up a rack of microbrewery competitors and that the store is always in full supply of Budweiser.

Most major supermarkets go by who pays the bills, and carry some local and/or microbrew beers but not necessarily a wide variety of their products (a local chain store carries one or two varieties of at least five various microbreweries, but ONLY the varieties with the most popularity). Convenience stores are a joke, unless you find one that actually has an interest in selling beer (one locally has at least one hundred varieties of microbrews, and that place is a godsend).
And when you start to see all of these "craft beers" from major brewers, and if you see even more of them (as you will) pushing for space in limited markets, good beer will be pushed off the shelf in favor of slick marketing and/or a few more pennies of profit and/or the best bulk distribution deal.

There are reasons why some people, even some politicians, have pushed back against monopolization of our business interests. Sadly, give the major manufacturers a couple decades of unchecked aggression, and they will likely be able to bury many upstart microbreweries. Not because they make a better product, but because they're big enough to take small losses in order to snuff out the competition. They are, literally, "too big to fail" in a corporate sense.

verbaltoxin: No they didn't.

For crap like clothes, you're probably right.

For food? That nostalgia still exists in many places.

Yes, populated areas have things.

nocturnal001: Word. Buy what you like. It was ironic hearing the Sam Adams guy saying how he realized how hard it was for the big brewers to make such a consistent light bodied beer day after day.

What's odd is knowing someone who was so in-tune with the flavor of Bud Light that he was able to identify a bad keg on one sip from a beer at dinner once.

I wasn't sure whether to marvel at him, or pity him.

Benevolent Misanthrope: They sell beer.  You sell beer.  When I buy beer, I am not buying community, I am not buying social advancement, I am not buying self-worth.  I am buying beer.  If I like your beer better, great.  If I like their beer better, sucks to be you.  I like fat, malty ales, which means I drink beers from smaller breweries or the local brewhouse.  If, however, I preferred light pilsener-style American lagers, Budweiser and PBR are fine examples of the style.

I enjoy all types of beer.  The issue I have with large breweries in the craft space is that they don't follow the same conventions as the small brewers, and therefore when I unknowingly pick up a craft brew from Miller or SAB, it invariably is not what I expected or wanted.

For example,  Goose Island IPA is not what people expect when they pick up a six pack of craft IPA. The reason it's not the same is because the large breweries demand a very low cost-of-goods-sold (COGS), where the small brewers will just raise prices in line with COGS.  So IPAs from large breweries are underhopped compared to IPAs from small brewers.

I love trying new beers.  Over half of the beer I buy is a new brand to me.  Before the large brewers got into the craft brewing game, I could just go pick up whatever looked like it might taste good based on the brewer and variety.   I definitely read labels now.

That doesn't mean I don't buy large crafts.  I got a six of Kona a few weeks ago.  It didn't disappoint because it didn't claim to be in an established craft category where expectations are already set.

xanadian: You can't drink community.  Unless you kill all the people in the community and turn them into pulp.

I think that might be illegal, though.



Say what?

Benevolent Misanthrope: Oh lordy.  Here we go.

They sell beer.  You sell beer.  When I buy beer, I am not buying community, I am not buying social advancement, I am not buying self-worth.  I am buying beer.  If I like your beer better, great.  If I like their beer better, sucks to be you.  I like fat, malty ales, which means I drink beers from smaller breweries or the local brewhouse.  If, however, I preferred light pilsener-style American lagers, Budweiser and PBR are fine examples of the style.

Unless you are going to argue that the American lager is not a "real" beer style, STFU.

The argument is how InBev has changed the formulas for some of the great brands they've taken over. (and subsequently ruined them)

 Do you remember drinking Beck's?  Have you tried it lately?  Pick up a six-pack and get back to us when you do.

People who dismiss the idea of selling things like "community" are basically saying they understand nothing about the history of effective marketing. Everyone likes to think they're the independent minded rebel who buys products based on purely on the measure of their quality, when the truth is we are all, each and every one of us, making purchases on a daily basis because those products have been marketed to us in a way that pushes emotional buttons in us so far below the level of our rational minds that we wouldn't even know where to look for them. The major brewers are who they are because they sell a lifestyle, not because they sell a good product. It's awesome that small breweries are making quality products, but if they plan on competing with the billion dollar ad budgets of the big boys based on that one thing alone, they are simply not going to survive. History is littered with superior products that died for want of a way to effectively give consumers that little positive emotional jolt when they bought them.

heypete: When I'm in the US and want a reasonably-priced, widely-available wheat beer I usually turn to Blue Moon.

both available nationally and light years better than blue moon:

 

heypete: Sure, I can get Chimay White, Stiegl Weisse, Hoegaarden, and other tasty wheat beers at many shops that sell beer, but its rare for restaurants and bars in the US to have such drinks (either on tap or in bottles) but they'll likely have Blue Moon. Blue Moon's also quite a bit cheaper than the good imports, so that's useful when I want a decent beer at a decent price.

/dear $DEITY, I drank so much wheat beer when I was in Austria a few months ago.

Lots of restaurants here sell Hoegaarden. Abita also sells a seasonal wheat beer that blows Blue Moon out of the water.

BunkyBrewman: Benevolent Misanthrope: Oh lordy.  Here we go.

They sell beer.  You sell beer.  When I buy beer, I am not buying community, I am not buying social advancement, I am not buying self-worth.  I am buying beer.  If I like your beer better, great.  If I like their beer better, sucks to be you.  I like fat, malty ales, which means I drink beers from smaller breweries or the local brewhouse.  If, however, I preferred light pilsener-style American lagers, Budweiser and PBR are fine examples of the style.

Unless you are going to argue that the American lager is not a "real" beer style, STFU.

The argument is how InBev has changed the formulas for some of the great brands they've taken over. (and subsequently ruined them)

 Do you remember drinking Beck's?  Have you tried it lately?  Pick up a six-pack and get back to us when you do.

Never liked it, even before it was Americanized.  But my point still stands - if you don't like it, do what I do.  Don't drink it.

Look - if people don't drink mass-produced beer and DO drink smaller brews, eventually the big brewers will start to make beer that tastes like the small guys' beer and put them completely out of business.  Is that what you want?  IS IT???