Death to chains: "MillerCoors Buys Out Oregon Brewery With History of Sexism Scandal."

It probably comes as no surprise that a multinational brewer accustomed to unprincipled pillage would be utterly titillated at the prospect of such a beer.

From January, 2014:

"Mouth Raper," a Horrible Idea for a Beer Name, by Shannon Finnell (Eugene Weekly)

And you thought "Double D Blond" was eyeroll-worthy. Hop Valley got some bad press when Rebecca Rose of Jezebel wrote about a post from Beervana's Jeff Alworth that claimed the real name of Hop Valley's "Mr. IPA" is "Mouth Raper." Alworth cited an alias page from ratebeer.com as proof, and a commenter added that she'd looked up the brew on Untapped after seeing it on Twitter as "Mouth Raper," and all the reviews there listed that as its name.

This makes Indiana's legendary Leg Spreader sound positively quaint -- but has MillerCoors made an offer for Route 2 Brews?

MillerCoors Buys Out Oregon Brewery With History of Sexism Scandal, by Martin Cizmar (Willamette Week)

They Now Own a Majority Stake In The Maker of "Mouth Raper"

There have been two very hot topics in the world of craft beer over the past few years.

First, there are the buy-outs.

Today, Oregon had another one. The Brewbound blog reports that a majority stake in Hop Valley has been acquired by MillerCoors for an undisclosed sum. The purchase follows on the heels of 10 Barrel, Ballast Point, Elysian and Lagunitas being bought for massive sums of money. In the case of Ballast Point, a billion dollars.

But unlike those other breweries, there will be no mourning period for Hop Valley. They make very, very average beer with shiny packaging. It's the IPA your mom brings over for dinner because she knows you like hoppy beers and it says "hop" right there on the label.

Nikos Ridge, co-owner of Ninkasi, another Eugene Brewery, did throw a little shade, which will likely be the last you hear of it.

"We are always disappointed when a member of the craft industry becomes part of one of the big two macrobreweries," Ridge told the Register-Guard. "The craft industry was built on being the antithesis of big beer, and has been competing successfully with the global conglomerates for the last 30 years."

But there is a second big issue in play over the past few years: the increasing awareness of sexism in craft beer ...

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The Pour Fool: "AB/InBev Buys SABMiller: Corporate Cluelessness as Fine Art."

AB/InBev Buys SABMiller: Corporate Cluelessness as Fine Art, by Steve Foolbody (The Pour Fool)

There are times when I stare into the sky with humble earnestness and ask the biggest, most important question of all.

The Pour Fool and I -- were we separated at birth?

I went to the "Bluegrass Beer Geek" page at Facebook and posted the link to this amazing essay, prefacing it with this:

"The Pour Fool is a living, breathing deity."

Alas, only one reply was offered amid the hundreds of "see my latest big haul" photos.

"By 'living, breathing deity', do you mean 'child with too much free time and a keyboard, but poor Google skills'?"

No. I mean this.

This final point is the one I want everyone to remember: it is very possible, even likely, that we current American beer lovers - those who honor the ideals of "Drink Local", independent ownership, small business growth, individual achievement, choices, and better beer - can and should(!) be the generation of drinkers who drive AB/InBev into its eventual niche as a quaint remnant of the infancy of American brewing and a small curiosity section at the end of your supermarket beer aisle. Beers like Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Coors, Pabst, etc., will never disappear entirely because there will always be people who prefer them and that's as it should be. But the relative quality and economic consequences of those beers do not merit their being perennial Top Dog in the American beer marketplace. I'm asking, flat out, that people who truly love and care about craft brewing NOT, ever again, create a stylistic exception which says that a cold Bud Light on a hot afternoon or on your beach weekend in Cabo is allowable. I'm requesting, plainly, that you not reward those brands which sell out to AB with your dollars and your implied approval of their puppet status. I'm asking that you actively seek out locally or domestically-made substitutes for those "summer beers", those insipid Pilsners that are the mega-brewers' only working offering, from the rosters of your local brewers...and they're out there. The majority of American brewers, these days, offer at least a couple of hot-weather beers and many of those actually are Pilsners, but Pilsners done right, with flavor and body and hops and craftsmanship showing with every sip. I'm asking you to simply remove all the corporate beers, the mass-produced, cynical, watery pablum beers from foreign conglomerates, from your worldview. Ignore the entire end of your grocery store cooler that's devoted to the idea that we're all the same and that we value repetition and sameness over Choices and variety.

Spoiler alert: It's MillerCoors, so there is nothing about beer in this article.

With material this frankly revealing, it's hard for a writer not to be masterful. All he need do is stand aside, and let the speakers impale themselves on their own bilge.

The topic is the aptly named Miller Fortune, and Jim Vorel interviews two MillerCoors functionaries, one a Goebbels agitprop clone and the other a "brewer", who explain the development process. The marketing-driven double-speak spewing from their corporate lips is so hilarious that readers can't quite dispel the possibility of it being satire. Is it real, or is it the greatest comic skit about mass-market-think, ever?

Conceding the obvious -- one juggles whatever one is commanded to juggle by whomever signs the checks, or risks no longer receiving them -- do these two buffoons really believe that the jargon they're dispensing means anything at all to today's beer enthusiast?

Or, that it means anything at all, to anyone?

It's beer! It's liquor! It's market share! (shareholder orgasms all around)

Lamentably, Vorel stoops to the poor usage of "reached out," but apart from that slippage, he does a fine job of exposing the utterly vapid.

Big Beer Innovation: Q&A With MillerCoors' Brewmaster, by Jim Vorel (Paste)

... You will definitely see us approaching a much wider range of beer and cider innovations in the future. Everything we’re doing brand-wide is to reinforce the authenticity of the Miller name. We believe the success of the throwback cans isn’t so much nostalgia but because the image signifies authenticity and quality.

The PC at Louisville Beer: "Tom Long is Full of Something, and it Ain’t Craft Beer."

Tom Long has about as much to do with genuine craft beer as the Publican does with advanced cataract surgery.

Tom Long is Full of Something, and it Ain’t Craft Beer

Years before most of us were born, there was an Englishman named Eric Blair, who is better known by his pen name, George Orwell.

During a lifetime cut regrettably short, Orwell spent much of his writing career pondering abuses and misuses of the English language. Orwell decried the mutability of language and words, particularly when these bastardized word meanings were deployed unnaturally, to become instruments of bad intent, or sometimes even de factoweapons against freedom itself.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. (Orwell)

MillerCoors: Insulting the nation's intelligence as journalists masturbate.

Someone please tell Miller, Coors, Blue Moon, Leinenkugel, this business-oriented newspaper, the man in the moon pie, and anyone else interested in reality, as opposed to hype, that one cannot merely snap corporate fingers and decree mass-market as “craft.”

MillerCoors launches craft and import beer business

As with the famous definition of obscenity, we need not launch into a lengthy explanation of the meaning of craft to grasp that MillerCoors calling Blue Moon “craft” is like calling a shit sandwich a Philly Cheese Steak.

The Business "Press Release as News" Courier's typically unquestioning attitude toward publishing pure propaganda provides insight into the overall decline of journalism in America.

Give me a break, you shameless assholes. And I do mean all of you, too.