It reminds me of 10 Barrel: "The AB-InBev “Why Don’t They Like Us” Tour Continues."

I'm coming late to this one, but better late than never.

The AB-InBev “Why Don’t They Like Us” Tour Continues, by Dan (The Full Pint)

 ... In these articles, we’ve learned that the corporate giant is organizing a dog and pony show (why the long face), in which they are prancing out these figureheads to beer bars in what I’d like to call the “Why don’t they like us?” tour. I say the corporate giant is behind this, as I would hope these newly minted millionaires would be satisfied with the business decision they recently made, and didn’t decide to go on this PR tour on their own. I don’t recall Ben & Jerry scrambling for street cred after selling to Unilever. Dr. Dre didn’t go back to Compton and pander to the homies after selling Beats to Apple for a few billion. Frankly, this is downright embarrassing to watch.

That's spot on.

Once you've sold out, at least have the decency to wear a suit and "own" your defection. See the zombie ... be the zombie.

I wrote the following words in November, 2014, and they're worth standing by. Just substitute the latest brewery name to go, and adjust the cited figure from 3,000 to 4,000-plus.

See? It's easy.

---

Who gives a flying fuck?

10 Barrel's dead as Monty Python's parrot. Find a cheap preacher, pay your respects and bring flowers. Then move on.

10 Barrel's just Zombie "Craft" now.

It's Trojan Ten Barrel.

Don't confuse me with someone who gives a fuck.

You see, back before the beer narcissists were born, we had a revolution to take beer back from the grimy corporatist likes of AB-InBev, which has been, and always will be, the foremost enemy of better beer in this world, as we know it.

Obviously, AB-InBev has the ample resources to buy its way to alleged respectability. Just as obviously, this is the fundamental problem, because money cannot buy authenticity. Even more obviously, drinkers of better beer have hundreds -- nay, thousands -- of legitimate small breweries to choose from, ones that have not been irrevocably bastardized by association (and ownership) with a company that's the closest thing to a Great Beer Satan as we're likely to see in this world ... as we know it.

If you doubt it, do some cursory research on AB-InBev's repellant company history as a symbol of everything wrong with beer and capitalism. It ain't pretty, and I'm sorry if it steps all over your sense of entitlement. Appeasing it does not change the paradigm.

You see, selling one's soul isn't about gray areas. When you sell your soul, you sell your soul. That's what this is about, and whenever possible, in a probably doomed effort to hold onto what tiny bits of soul I may as yet possess, I try not to hand my money over to those who've sold theirs. It's as simple as that. Better beer owes its existence to pride, ideas and principles .. to its very soul.

Sacrifice the soul and you're handing over the revolution to the very same soulless vampires it was fought against in the first place.

It's as simple as that.

10 Barrel's unfortunate demise signals yet again AB-InBev's dull intent to buy what it cannot create. Fortunately, 3,000 other breweries remain that are small, local and real. Pick a few, enjoy their beers, and give your soul some nourishment. Be local. Case closed.

Rest in peace, 10 Barrel Brewing. I'm sure your beers were great, but you're dead now. Who gives a fuck?

Let's have a better beer, shall we?

__

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.

It does not get more "WORD" than this: "The Short Life and Ugly Death of 10 Barrel Brewing."

We can join The Pour Fool in recalling what it means to stand up for matters of principle, and to remember how we got to where we are today.

Or, we can sing along with Ray Stevens, and circle jerk some narcissism.

As for me, this probably is the best piece of beer writing I'll read this year. Kudos. My effort pales by comparison: Diary: On the Gooseislandization of 10 Barrel Brewing by the aesthetic assassins at AB-InBev.

The Short Life and Ugly Death of 10 Barrel Brewing


... I cannot and will NOT – EVER – enable and validate the ongoing attempt by the world’s largest and most soulless “brewery” to buy what they already KNOW they can never earn on their own merits: credibility within the rapidly-expanding world of American craft brewing. No matter how wonderful and popular 10 Barrel may become in the future, the whole enterprise is now tainted. I’m not planning to even taste their beers, ever again, even if Tonya and Jimmy keep their jobs. The simple fact is that Anheuser Busch and now AB/InBev has a long and sordid history of crushing all competition, manipulating markets and distribution arrangements, and even resorting to outright bribery – the infamous “Tied Houses” of the early 20th Century – to achieve the supremacy they enjoy in the world’s beer markets. It was never about the beer, which its founder, Adolphus Busch, flatly refused to drink, calling it “that slop”. Anheuser Busch is and always has been about marketing, promotions, omnipresence in the marketplace and throwing money at every problem because that was the one and only resource they had in greater supply than any other brewery on the planet.

Diary: On the Gooseislandization of 10 Barrel Brewing by the aesthetic assassins at AB-InBev.

Who gives a flying fuck?

10 Barrel's dead as Monty Python's parrot. Find a cheap preacher, pay your respects and bring flowers. Then move on.

10 Barrel's just Zombie "Craft" now.

It's Trojan Ten Barrel.

Don't confuse me with someone who gives a fuck.

You see, back before the beer narcissists were born, we had a revolution to take beer back from the grimy corporatist likes of AB-InBev, which has been, and always will be, the foremost enemy of better beer in this world, as we know it.

Obviously, AB-InBev has the ample resources to buy its way to alleged respectability. Just as obviously, this is the fundamental problem, because money cannot buy authenticity. Even more obviously, drinkers of better beer have hundreds -- nay, thousands -- of legitimate small breweries to choose from, ones that have not been irrevocably bastardized by association (and ownership) with a company that's the closest thing to a Great Beer Satan as we're likely to see in this world ... as we know it.

If you doubt it, do some cursory research on AB-InBev's repellant company history as a symbol of everything wrong with beer and capitalism. It ain't pretty, and I'm sorry if it steps all over your sense of entitlement. Appeasing it does not change the paradigm.

You see, selling one's soul isn't about gray areas. When you sell your soul, you sell your soul. That's what this is about, and whenever possible, in a probably doomed effort to hold onto what tiny bits of soul I may as yet possess, I try not to hand my money over to those who've sold theirs. It's as simple as that. Better beer owes its existence to pride, ideas and principles .. to its very soul.

Sacrifice the soul and you're handing over the revolution to the very same soulless vampires it was fought against in the first place.

It's as simple as that.

10 Barrel's unfortunate demise signals yet again AB-InBev's dull intent to buy what it cannot create. Fortunately, 3,000 other breweries remain that are small, local and real. Pick a few, enjoy their beers, and give your soul some nourishment. Be local. Case closed.

Rest in peace, 10 Barrel Brewing. I'm sure your beers were great, but you're dead now. Who gives a fuck? 

Let's have a better beer, shall we?