Beer & Me

I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle here. A fallacy has been creeping into the national psyche. More frustratingly I’ve had to watch it happen.

A very few years ago everyone seemed to know that the prohibition of alcohol in the United States ended on December 5, 1933. The fact that it was in April earlier that year when only breweries in “wet” states were allowed to make and sell 3.2% beer was little more than a footnote.

Then Anheuser-Busch started latching on to the date as a marketing tool. “The Return of Beer,” they called it. It’s understandable. Summer’s just around the corner and a cold Budweiser is a lot more appealing then than in December.

Now that other St. Louis brewer, Schlafly, is holding a Repeal of Prohibition party in April. Ugh!

That’s it. I’m calling for Thanksgiving this Thursday. Turkey and cranberries at my house, everyone! Bring your fireworks for Fourth of July celebrations in the backyard after dinner.

Admittedly there’s quite a gap between them but there’s no denying that Schlafly is this Midwestern city’s second biggest brewer behind Anheuser Busch Inbev.

And the gap is growing smaller.

There are a couple of recent news stories that put an interesting light on the comparison of these two breweries. The first came out a few weeks ago when ABI announced a stunning 95% loss in profits for the fourth quarter of 2008. No, it’s not a typo. Almost universally the second line of the stories with this stunning news explains that the loss is the result of accounting for the purchase of Anheuser-Busch by Inbev. So, it’s jut an accounting thing, right?

Keep reading. Further down we learn that the mega beer company still lost 2% in sales last year. This continues a trend that we’ve been seeing for a while now - big beer continues to lose sales despite all of their efforts to turn things around.

Now, let’s look at Schlafly’s sales. They are going gangbusters. The regional brewer enjoyed significant growth in 2008, so much so that they are expanding their brewing capacity to 11,000 barrels more than the 24,000 they produced last year.

See, when Inbev bought A-B, Schlafly became the biggest locally owned brewery in St. Louis. It might still be the second biggest brewer but that distinction of locally owned is important to St. Louis drinkers. They might not have been given a vote when the Busch family was considering Inbev’s offer but they’re voting now with their dollars.

A-B and beer geeks like me rarely agree on what’s good beer. Usually the mere fact that a beer is brewed by Anheuser-Busch is a mark against it before it is even opened.

But three beers brewed by the beer giant recently impressed me. I waited a few days before posting my reviews but even so I found myself gushing about these beers. They aren’t really all that but they are major improvements from the makers of Bud Light Lime and Michelob Ultra. So I wound up heaping more praise on them than they deserve.

They do disprove my theory that a big corporation, specifically one with a board of directors can’t make good beer.

No doubt you’ve heard the news by now – Anhueser-Busch finally acquiesced to being taken over by Inbev. After the Belgian beer giant upped their bid by four or five billion – but what’s a few billion among friends? – the board at A-B decided that was their price.

It’s been a remarkable few months. Back in the beginning of 2008 three companies dominated US beer sales – Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Coors. At the end of 2008 none of these companies will exist! Miller and Coors’s respective foreign masters decided to join their American interests into a single company called MillerCoors and now Anheuser-Busch Inbev, or as some are already calling it A-B Inbev, will replace the once mighty brewer of Budweiser.

By the way, if you want to get an in-depth look at the brewer that was Anheuser-Busch, CNBC is airing a show that should be pretty interesting this Friday.

If you’re one of the many Budweiser fans concerned about the fate of Anheuser-Busch then you’ll be glad to know that at least one brewer in St. Louis is prepared to take a proactive stance against Inbev.

Schlafly Beer, a craft brewer in St. Louis, has started a fundraising campaign with a goal of buying Inbev. So even if the beer giant does eventually buy out A-B at least, ultimately, Budweiser will remain an American beer! Go, contribute now!

By the way, Schlafly makes some really excellent beer, too. If you ever have the chance you should try some.  They make a nice oatmeal state and a beautifully hoppy American pale ale.

In a letter to Inbev this week Anheuser-Busch told the Belgian beer giant thanks but no thanks to their unsolicited bid. The letter points out many reasons that the bid was rejected but they all boiled down to “We are SO worth more than that!”

Is it a real rejection or a negotiating tactic? Conventional wisdom is that this will now enter the hostile takeover phase. I don’t pretend to know what the next step will be but I fully expect that this time next year Inbev will own the American brewer.

I also fully expect that most beer drinkers in America and Europe will notice very little difference.

In case I haven’t mentioned it I live 90 miles south of St. Louis, the home of Anheuser-Busch.

Busch country.

So as you might imagine things are reaching a fevered pitch around here. You’d think that a foreign government is threatening to take over the country; not the run of the mill big beer business deal that this really is. I can usually calm the hysteria a bit when I point out that Coors is owned by a Canadian company and Miller a South African company.

Even so, people are still freaking out. And this headline, Inbev tone turns more hostile in bid for A-B, in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch didn’t help any.

But we all need to calm down. First, it’s just beer, ok? We all love it but life will go on if something about beer changes. Second, Budweiser and the other big brands brewed by Anhueser-Busch aren’t going anywhere. And odds are they’re going to be brewed in exactly the same breweries in exactly the same way as before.

Interesting side note: It occurred to me today that if this deal does wind up going through the Boston Beer Company, Sam Adams’s brewer, will be the biggest American owned beer producer.

So by now everyone has heard the rumor…well, I suppose it is more than a rumor at this point. I’m talking about Inbev considering taking over Anheuser-Busch. My initial reaction was mild interest. One mega brewer taking over another; ho-hum.

But there has been another reaction that frankly surprised me. It borders on jingoism. It may be finding its voice in a new website – SaveBudweiser.com. The idea isn’t so much a fear that the A-B brands might be compromised which was my only concern, if concern is the right word. No, it has more to do with the taking over of an American company by an overseas competitor.

This is really fascinating given that A-B and the other long-time brewers were until recently considered to be foreign invaders themselves. But sometime during the last two or three generations they’ve gone from unwelcome German beer mongers to the equivalent of apple pie.

I know *yawn,* right?

It’s a daily ritual – actually more than daily – for me to log on to Google, type “beer” into the search bar then click news. I sift through the hourly, daily, and weekly headlines to make sure that I have not missed anything then opine over at beer.about.com about whatever stories caught my eye. And for the most part I think that this is perhaps one of the coolest thing in the world for which one could be paid.

Then I hit a headline like this one - “Bud Light to remain official beer of NHL.” What can one say about that? And does anyone care? There are going to be sports, they are going to be on TV and a mega-brewer is going to sponsor both realities. We all know that and none of us pay attention. I mean, really, do you have any idea which brewer sponsored the 2006 MLB season? Neither do I but I bet it hit the headlines on the day it was announced.

I don’t like Anheuser-Busch beer. But I have to admit that I’m getting to like the people that work at Anheuser-Busch. It’s hard not to. They are very attentive to me and send me free beer. (Seem contradictory? It isn’t. They import some decent beers and have sent me a few samples of these.) But I’ve managed to maintain self-respect by always being completely honest in my assessment of their products despite whatever perks they dangle before my eyes.

But now I’m trying to write an article for my site htpp://beer.about.com about a visit I recently made to their brewery in St. Louis. I promised to send the URL of the final piece to the woman that coordinated my visit but I find myself strangely shy to do so. I know that she expects an honest account and, being A-B, they know that press is still press. But I’m shy to send my writing to them strictly as a writer! It’s as if they are going to whip out their Strunk and White and rip apart my inability to use commas correctly.

Crazy, right? Is it because they’re huge; because they have a lot of money; or because I’ve grown to like them for the free perks they send me? Hard to say.