Uh huh: "Are we seeing the end of real craft brewing?"

When an entire generation of beer enthusiasts looks at the demonic visage of AB InBev and sees not the face of pure and unmitigated evil, but a benign grandfatherly figure who provides them barrel-aged stouts brewed in zombie fashion by Trojan Goose ... then yes, it's all over.

The fat lady may now sing.

The only authenticity likely to matter during the years to come will be derived primarily from stubbornly independent on-premise brewing operations possessing genuine principles. So it goes, but no, it isn't going to be the same. That stale smell of money? It's the same great buzzkill, every single time.

Are we seeing the end of real craft brewing?, by Joe Sixpack (Don Russell at Philly.com)

LOOKING BACK on the takeover of a tiny Oregon brewery last week by Anheuser-Busch InBev, some years from now we may remember it as a turning point.

Or maybe we won't remember it at all.

But right now, it feels like the Day the Music Died - the day when craft brewing took the inevitable step from the adolescent innocence of selfless idealism to the maturity of just another bottom-line business ...

 ... For when we think of craft beer as just another business, it's not the aroma of malt and hops we're savoring. That's the stale smell of money.