THE BEER BEAT: Dollars and cents remain the most rational arguments against AB InBev.

Consider it equal time.

The author makes excellent points about the nadir of debate and dialectic, and the tribalism, and the chest-thumping.

Still, my fundamental stance v.v. AB InBev and other manifestations of Monstrous Chainthink remains unchanged, and for reasons that aren't at all emotional.

Rather, it's factual. Lots and lots of people with no connection whatever to beer or brewing already have done their homework as it pertains to what independent local business means; where the money goes, and where it stays. Two of them are here:

American Independent Business Alliance

Business Alliance for Local Living Economies

My rule of thumb: To know these principles is to be able to walk the walk when making beer choices.

Yes, it's a matter of shift, and no one's playing to be perfect, because when it comes to philosophical concepts, perfection simply doesn't exist.

There'll always be exceptions, but life is about the everyday. In the main, as a consumer, I'd like to know exactly where my money is going. Whenever possible, I'd like to see my money directed to indies.

It's as simple as that. If I couldn't get good beer without my money going to multinationals, then I'd either submit or stop drinking. However, this isn't the case.

Yet.

Dialectic Lost – We Can’t Talk about Beer Rationally Anymore, by Oliver Gray (Literature & Libation)

... There’s no dialectic where people are trying look at big beer’s practices objectively or taking a real critical eye to the BA, to figure out whos and whys and hows. There’s certainly never any talk of collaboration, because obviously, you never work with an enemy. There’s hardly even any exploration in why a thing deemed so bad is actually bad; I only need two fingers (one and two) to count the number of well written articles directly about AB-InBevs strategy. The rest of the bad will stems for theoreticals and hard headedism.

Downtown business owners: Would you rather Jeff Gahan "brand" you with his cult of personality, or "brand" yourselves with your own collective identity?

Business First rarely matters, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day, even if the teasing headlines written to titillate fawning suburbanites send readers in search of a handy barf bag.

This section of downtown is forming its own business association, by Joel Stinnett

A new downtown business association is looking for help in steering its future.

The S. 4th St. District Association will host "Cocktails & Conversation" at 6:30 tonight, June 19, at 8UP Elevated Drinkery and Kitchen, 350 W. Chestnut St.

The event will be a chance for business owners to exchange ideas, according to Jeanne Hilt, director of marketing and communications for Louisville Downtown Partnership. She said the association will also be looking for volunteers for its board of directors and taking suggestions for its bylaws.

"This is a chance for us to really promote the district," Hilt said. "It's a collection of people who want to make this district the best it can be."

Imagine the cheek; business owners proposing ideas to government rather than the other way around.

Hilt said business owners have already been discussing ideas to propose to Louisville Metro Council and ways to promote the district.

"We have a lot of music in this district with Mercury, The Palace, radio stations and Fourth Street Live," Hilt said. "That is just one of the many great things in the district we can highlight."

It's your time and money, but have you ever noticed how they always want to take credit for it?

If ever the old axiom is true, it's right here, right now: If you want it done right, you'll have to do it yourself.

Do you really want your efforts to lift the city summarized by a logo with an anchor?

ON THE AVENUES: There has never been a better time for an Independent Business Alliance in New Albany.

Independent locally-owned small businesses are mistaken to think that this hurdle can be cleared by disengagement, or by waiting for this or any other city government to dictate the terms.

Rather, independent locally-owned small business owners must evade the intended diversion of time spent micromanaging periodic events and instead put their mouths where their money is by heeding the advice of the American Independent Business Alliance and embracing a simple but eloquent truth: "There truly is strength in numbers."

THE BEER BEAT: Indie, not craft, because "There is absolutely NOTHING 'independent' about AB/InBev."

It gladdens this curmudgeon's heart to see another principled columnist -- in this case, The Pour Fool -- embrace a personal change in terminology.

I haven't gone cold turkey on the "craft" descriptor, and find myself using the word here and there (usually in quotation marks, as intended to emphasis the escalating irony), but zero tolerance is a worthy goal to which we might aspire.

As an aside: My current desire to get back into the pub business is being predicated toward what I consider to be "better" beer -- much of it "indie," some "craft"; some retro chic and classics.

At any rate, Pour Fool rocks.

“INDIE BEER”: Change is the Best Weapon, by stevefoolbody (The Pour Fool)

... But the term “indie” – short, of course, for “independent” – is a claim that AB/InBev and the BudMillerCoors brands they now control can never plausibly make. There is absolutely NOTHING “independent” about AB/InBev. They’ll work out a rationalization for it eventually, of course; something along the lines of “Hey, we’re independent! Nobody owns any part of our company but us!” But that claim is so patently ridiculous that you’d have to have the IQ of lawn trimmings to even consider it. “Craft” does, in fact, describe the process at Bud’s breweries; maybe not in the same sense as at Dogfish and Stone and Jolly Pumpkin and Lawson’s, but it is inarguable that brewing is a “craft” and that AB does practice that craft, even if it is in a fucked-up, mechanized, soulless, billion-gallon batch, freakazoid manner. “Indie” means what it says: A small, independent, self-perpetuating business enterprise that relies on no corporate sugar-daddy for its survival. It is certainly true that not all of us involved in the “craft beer culture” can agree on what a “craft brewery” is but one thing about which there is NO argument is that a craft brewery is NOT a subsidiary of any larger corporate entity, being kept afloat by their owners’ deep pockets. It’s about the pride in ownership and creativity that has been the hallmark of America’s craft breweries since the whole phenomenon started. It is about not having business and aesthetic decisions influenced by board rooms full of gabardine-clad, Windsor-knotted, bean-countin’ shit-weasels, as is absolutely the case with AB.

A little more than a year ago (February 16, 2016), I was on much the same tangent.

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Craft Beer is dead. Long live Indie Beer. It's about "supporting local small business rather than a global entity."

To me, "craft" beer's conceptual basis always has been, and should remain, localism.

The inevitable rejoinder: "You're not using local ingredients, therefore you're not local." However, just as there are many styles of beer, there are differing ways of principled thinking.

The finished value of any product can be the result of individualized local creativity rather than widespread, industrialized production; accordingly, a substantial local component is present even if local hops are not. After all, beer doesn't often brew itself.

This isn't the most important point, because an independently-owned local brewery is an independently-owned local business, and the positive economic factors for independent local businesses in their communities are one and the same.

Sorry, but if you're buying Goose Island at Wal-Mart, you might be missing the point in multiple areas. Let's work to make shift happen -- indie breweries, indie middlemen.

Often I've pointed to organizations like AMIBA and BALLE, and asked skeptics to visit their web sites and consider the information therein. My impression is this seldom happens, probably because it takes less time to post a selfie with Bourbon County than read a few pages of economic facts.

Bizarrely, unfamiliarity with the economic realities of independent local business might be expected of consumers in general, but often it's something not understood by folks who own their own small businesses. Must we cut our own throats?

Meanwhile, I like this vibe coming out of San Diego. May it take root, and convince readers to go back to first principles.

Craft is dead. Now we drink Indie Beer: As Big Beer creeps into town, locals want to change the lingo, by Ian Anderson (San Diego Reader)

The term Craft Beer may be in need of a makeover. The Union-Tribune reported this week that Bend, Oregon's 10 Barrel Brewing Co. has proposed a 10,000-square-foot brewpub in East Village. In response, local beer industry podcasters have doubled down on a push to describe independently owned breweries as Indie Beer companies, rather than craft.

A couple of individuals have tried to coin the term Indie Beer before, but they had different reasons.

Not because 10 Barrel hails from Oregon but because in 2014 the company was purchased by AB InBev, the conglomerate responsible for one-third of the planet's beer supply, including core brands Budweiser, Corona, and Stella Artois. It owns 10 Barrel brewpubs in Oregon and Idaho and recently announced plans for one in Denver.

The podcasters' believe consumers who patronize 10 Barrel brewpubs mistakenly believe they are supporting small business rather than a global entity ...