NA Confidential: THE BEER BEAT: The Pour Fool nails it yet again, as "Budweiser Finds Another Sell-Out" -- this time, Wicked Weed.

Wednesday, May 03, 2017

THE BEER BEAT: The Pour Fool nails it yet again, as "Budweiser Finds Another Sell-Out" -- this time, Wicked Weed.

Like others before it, Wicked Weed Brewing has died.

That's unfortunate, indeed, but from the moment the ownership of Wicked Weed passed to AB InBev, this previously independent brewery was transformed into something else.

Now it's Wicked Trojan Zombie Afterlife Weed. We'll always have our memories.

Speaking only for myself, I wouldn't drink a WTZAW beer with Donald Trump's lips. There are hundreds of other choices, and no commensurate need to deposit money in the coffers of the enemy. It was nice while it lasted, but it's all over now.

Yawn.

At times like this, I turn to the Pour Fool -- because the Pour Fool gets it. In today's agitated WTZAW obituary, Steve Foolbody makes an excellent point, to which I'll confine my quotations -- but be sure to click through to the whole piece, and absorb the beautifully righteous anger.

I can only hope the shoe-gazers among the solipsistic beer narcissist contingent can someday feel some of that anger. The world would be a far better place.

Another One Bites The Dust: Budweiser Finds Another Sell-Out, by steve foolbody (The Pour Fool)

These acquisitions have ZERO to do with wanting to "support ALL breweries, EVERYWHERE". These are all about Influence. Leverage. Insinuating themselves into a culture which is, at least in LARGE part, a reaction to and rejection of everything AB has stood for…

The ugly news broke, just this morning, of the impending sale of Asheville, North Carolina’s Wicked Weed Brewing….to a company which doesn’t give two shits about WW’s beer, P&L sheet or anything else about it…except its LOCATION…

OKAY…here’s a little primer, as we get all set to watch another fine American brewery lose its “Indie Beer” status for good… With these breweries – these, in effect, TOOLS – they can legitimately pry open the doors to state governments in places where Indie Beer is strongest.

The Pour Fool proceeds to list AB InBev's Trojan Zombie Afterlife breweries by state.

Breweries by state: WA: Elysian; 32% of Red Hook / OR: 10 Barrel; 32% of Widmer Brothers / CA: Golden Road Brewing / AZ: Four Peaks Brewing / Texas: Karbach Brewing /VA: Devil’s Backbone Brewing / IL: Goose Island / CO: Breckenridge Brewing / NY: Blue Point Brewing / HI: 32% of Kona Brewing

Then he looks at brewing states by size.

THE LARGEST BREWING STATES, BY # OF BREWERIES:
1. California
2 – 4. Varies between Colorado,Washington, and Oregon
5. Michigan (No AB ownership)
6. Pennsylvania (No AB ownership)
7. New York
8. Wisconsin (No AB ownership)
9. Texas
10. North Carolina
11. Illinois

It's a fairly obvious pattern. AB InBev's acquisitions are about chess, power and shelf space, not necessarily in that order. He notes that breweries in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have been approached ... and among the targets coming into the multinational's cross-hairs?