Beer Wars

Last night a few friends and I caught the screening of Beer Wars at Valleyview, a documentary that chronicles the barriers facing micro-brewers trying to compete against the corporate brands. Really though, the ultimate message was “Anheuser Busch has taken over the world and you are all screwed.”

The audience itself was worth the trip. This was, unfortunately, a one time showing, and the people who paid 15 bucks for it were excited and loud. One guy kept trying to make the film interactive by starting shout outs of beer names, Arrogant Bastard being the favorite. And as we left, the clinking of empty bottles was very clear. It was a good thing for us they added to the experience, since we found out after buying our tickets that the damn thing was showing on On Demand that night too, so we could have been watching it at home for a quarter of the price, while drinking ourselves.

It was a great film. The characters ranged from scrappy to pretentious, pathetic to ambitious. The danger with films like this, that are celebrations of artisan niches and creative ideas, is that they become flat and uninteresting as actual movies. But the director, Anat Baron, does a great job of showing the highlights and lowlights of the industry. Sam from Dogfish Head comes across as the hero, affable, intelligent, ambitious, but determined to never be cut-throat. Greg from Stone IPA is off-putting, overly philosophical and just a bit too serious about it, but with a slight aftertaste of friendliness. And we got to meet Rhonda, the marketing brain behind the success of Sam Adams, who quit the company to try and market Moonshot, a light beer with caffeine that no one wants to invest in, and who desperately tries to sell the idea to anyone she can including Big Evil Anheuser Busch. Anat Baron handles the complexity of these people and their dreams with a light handed objectivity. She’s neither too understanding nor too harsh. The narrative moves smoothly between their lives and the effect on them of the current regulatory systems, delving at the end into the political steaminess with a trip through the beer lobby experience,

But the real revelation for at least my segment of the viewing audience was the complete and total domination of the beer industry by Anheuser Busch. I mean, we’re not entirely ignorant. We knew, coming into the movie, that they were the biggest. I don’t think any of us understand the exact extent though, and this is the movie’s best most memorable point. Anheuser Busch holds approx 50% of the domestic market share in this country. There’s a visual the film uses again and again of a supermarket aisle of beer, which is meant to illustrate how companies battle for placement. They employ it throughout to demonstrate brands that AB is buying up. And there was an audible gasp from the audience when, towards the end, we saw the current total. Here, let me show you.

Anheuser Busch brews, imports, or distributes:

- all Budweiser (11 products)
- all Michelob (15 products)
- all Busch (3)
- all Rolling Rock (3)
- Natural Ice and Light
- 12 specialty brews of their own (the only one I recognize on our shelves is Landshark, which SUCKS.)
- 4 seasonal brews, including their rip-off pumpkin ale
- O’Douls
- Bacardi Silver
- Tequiza
- Hurricane
- King Cobra
- Red Hook Brewing
- Goose Island Brewing
- Kona Brewing
- Ray Hill American Pilsner
- Starr Hill Brewing
- Fordham Brewing
- Dominion Brewing
- Harbin Lager
- Tiger Beer
- Kirin Brewery
- Bass Ale
- Boddingtons
- Beck's
- Hoegaarden Brewery
- Leffe
- Stella Artois
- Löwenbräu
- Tennent's Ale
- Budvar Czechvar
- AND Monster Energy drinks.

So yeah, that’s practically a whole store by itself.

It was an enlightening movie, and the live panel discussion afterwards was entertaining. My favorite panelist was the beer historian, Maureen Ogle. Her basic take was “Yeah well, they’re going keep growing, buying brands, and stealing your ideas, that’s what corporations do”, and to laugh when the guys from Stone and Dogfish were all like “we don’t want to be the big guys.” Oh Sam, I think the 9 million dollar loan you mentioned again and again means you probably do want to keep growing.

The thing you should come away from this movie with is that not allowing small breweries to self-distribute is a bad thing, the three tier system is a bad thing, and AB is a monopoly. My one complaint is that they focused so much on “it’s the taste, it’s the individuality, it’s the love” instead of “these are unfair laws that should be changed.” Just because it’s a microbrew doesn’t mean it’s worth spending 12.99 a six pack on. However they should all have an equal chance to get into the market. Baron tried to make a point during the panel discussion that we should vote with our wallets, and show the distribution companies what we want. She's wrong, that won't fix the real problem. I mean, I know several pretty frequent beer drinkers. When they're at a bar or going to a party, they buy microbrews. But when they're buying beer to drink at home, they're buying based off price. You don't buy a 24 pack of Arrogant Bastard (can you imagine!), because at some point you have to pay rent. The only real solution here is to fight the legislation that's forcing these breweries to sell out for distribution.

And if you’re wondering what I’m talking about, go watch the movie. I believe it's On Demand.