Once again Bud, et. al. have announced plans to buy up a craft brewery.
This time is Breckenridge Brewery out of Colorado. In the last few years, they have also purchased Chicago-based Goose Island, Blue Point in New York, Oregon-based 10 Barrel Brewing, Golden Road Brewing in California, and Elysian in Seattle. Also, they have announced plans to acquire Four Peaks Brewery in Arizona and Camden Town Brewery in London.
Why are they gobbling up all these craft breweries? The same reason they do everything… Money! Sales of their big flagship brands have gone flat, as customers discover they can buy brews that actually taste good. So they counter this by buying up some smaller brands (that taste good) and adding them to the product line. It’s amusing that they seem to have failed at brewing their own craft-style beers. These huge beer companies should have ample resources to make a few micro-brews on their own, but, We guess, that if you put Anheuser-Busch on an IPA, people figure it’ll taste like Bud. On the other hand, if you let the little guys make their own beer and sell it without all the AB hype, people think they are sticking it to the man, or something, and enjoy the refreshment.
Let’s hope AB-InBev doesn’t ruin these brews, or worse, shut them down if they aren’t profitable enough.
Our guess is that they will make sure there are enough “secret ingredients” added to insure that drinkers of these “Craft Beers” will be docile and start doing what they are told by the Global Beer Industrial Complex. We can only pray that it won’t ruin the flavors.