Beer & Me

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.

Do you follow the business of big beer? Yeah, I probably wouldn’t either except that it’s my job to know about these things. Most of the time the news is pretty drab and boring stuff – Molson Coors sales were up a quarter of a point last quarter, Carslberg bought a brewery in Poland…yawn!

But this bit of news made me sit up and pay attention. Seems that Inbev – the beer conglomerate based in Belgium and responsible for such brands as Beck’s, Stella Artois, and Hoegaarden – is making noises that they might buy Anheuser-Busch! As startling as this new is it shouldn’t come as a total surprise. The two have been dating for a while with A-B exclusively distributing most of Inbev’s big brands here in the US. If the deal goes through one company would control a quarter of all of the beer sold in the world!