What, you couldn't find an actual beer writer to fetishize multinational beer companies?

Esquire helpfully informs us ...

Aaron Goldfarb is the author of How to Fail: The Self-Hurt Guide, The Guide for a Single Man, and The Guide for a Single Woman.​

How very compelling, considering the article he wrote is about beer, not sex. Qualifications, anyone? In "It Doesn't Matter Who Owns Your Favorite Brewery," Goldfarb celebrates the fact that beer is entering a golden age of multi-national stewardship.

In fact, I predict the beer industry will begin to resemble the liquor industry. You know, the industry where an Italian amaro-maker like Campari can also own an American, family-run bourbon distillery like Wild Turkey, as well as SKYY Vodka and about 20 other international brands. Where Diageo seems poised to own just about everything you can possibly pour down your face. Or where a Japanese company like Suntory somehow manages to own Jim Beam and Maker's Mark bourbon-wise, Laphroaig and Bowmore in the scotch realm, and even a brand that makes cupcake vodka. Have any of these brands grown worse? I doubt it.

Have you ever heard about the straw man fallacy?

It never, ever was about the fear that AB-InBev (with Goose Island and others Trojan crafts) or Heineken (Lagunitas) would destroy the quality of the "craft" brands they buy.

Rather, it's always been about following the money: About them using such brands to leverage shelf space, or conduct price wars, or use in many varied ways gleefully developed throughout their multinational corporate histories toward the objective of "winning," which in multinational terms, is about eliminating, weakening and neutralizing competition.

You see, Aaron -- you wouldn't know this, so let me help you -- this thing got started back in the day so as to save beer's soul, which had gotten sucked clean out of it by ... yes, by the same multinational companies you fetishize.

It's time we admit craft beer is a business, no better and no worse than any other multi-billion dollar business. Sure, its products can get you drunk and make you hug people more than normal, but in the end, it's still a business that needs to make a lot of people a lot of money. There's nothing wrong with that.

Go back to writing dating books. Please.

As noted yesterday: Now more than ever, what matters to me is supporting brewers who function as independent local business persons. I know from a quarter-century of experience that these are the folks keeping the ethos real, and the money local, where it recirculates and helps other local businesses. It's just a matter of personal taste. Multinationals like Heineken have enough money. I'd rather have more control over where mine is spent.

It's time to put the genuinely local and "micro" back into this thing we all love.

Baseball's craft beer market explodes ... everywhere except Louisville Philistine Field.

On July 27, we attended a Minnesota Twins game at Target Field in downtown Minneapolis. Here I am, enjoying the scene with a can of Summit IPA.

Behind us was a concession stand featuring local and regional beers. Out in right-center field, there was another area with good beers on draft. I bought a Surly. After the game, we walked to Fulton Brewery, which is located roughly two hundred yards from the ballpark.

Meanwhile, Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati continues to attract attention for its Reds Brewery District, and at the Slugger Craft Beer page at Facebook, Joel Z. makes an astute observation.

Too bad that the powers that be at the Bats/Slugger Field are still refusing to follow the example set by their parent club.

Joel, that's because they're incurable, unrepentant Philistines, even if certain local "craft" beer luminaries habitually apologize for them.

Have you ever looked for the word Philistine in the dictionary?

Gary Ulmer's photograph is there.

The Best Beer in Baseball, by Kevin Schaul, Kelyn Soong and Dan Steinberg (Washington Post)

Several years ago, craft beer started taking off at Cincinnati’s Great American Ballpark. From 2011-2012, sales went up by 20 percent. From 2012-2013, they were up 47 percent.

So when it came time to create a new hangout in a highly trafficked spot on the third-base concourse, the ballpark went all-in on craft-style beers. The new Reds Brewery District – an 84-foot-long bar with more than 50 taps – included more than 20 craft offerings when it opened this spring. There were local beers from Cincinnati brewers like Christian Moerlein, MadTree, Blank Slate, Fifty West, Rhinegeist, Mt. Carmel, and Rivertown. There were national options from well-regarded breweries like Founders, Bell’s, West Sixth and Great Lakes.

No reason to believe that absolute power doesn't continue to corrupt Big Red Liquors absolutely.

I noticed somewhere that today marks the beginning of a Big Red Liquors (Bloomington monopoly package store chain) hagiographical/masturbatory fest of one stripe or another.

It's been more than six years since NABC's famous brush with Big Red, a story I've published several times. It's here:

Now more than ever, absolute power corrupts Big Red Liquors absolutely.

The Publican seldom holds grudges. This is one of them. Read my piece ... and then go pay tribute to the monopolist Philistines. But have an Elector first, because as long as I'm alive, you won't see one being sold by Big Red.

Reclaiming the horse racing biz with cheap, bad beer from multinational swill merchants.

Rick at The 'Ville Voice blog pointed to this story:

Cheap Beer — Is it enough to get you back to the track for night racing? [Churchill Downs]

The horse racing business in Kentucky is struggling, and the demographic for racing at places like Churchill Downs is shrinking. The most recent Kentucky General Assembly has spent time considering these issues in the context of competition from Indiana casinos and other vestiges of entertainment in surrounding states.

The track recently unveiled its first-ever night racing, and opening night was far busier than expected. The track apologized and vowed to do a better job by including "cheap beer" and shorter lines, and last night, the big promotional item was dollar Budweiser Selects.

So, to prove the importance of Churchill Downs to the local/state economy, the track's concessionaire features cheap beer from a multi-national brewing company headquartered in Belgium.

That makes sense, doesn't it?

Bats, Centerplate as oblivious as ever, but Browning's ale is on tap inside Louisville Slugger Field.

Yes, there is Browning's beer inside Louisville Slugger Field. Last night, ESB was on the main concourse by the sports card shop.


It's identified as "import"beer, which is highly suspect grammar, and costs $4.75. When I observed to the worker that it isn't an import, she responded that she isn't supposed to know were it comes from. When I asked her if she knew it was made less than one hundred yards away, she expressed cluelessness.

The other worker acknowledged that yes, it's a "microbrew," but could not explain why it's identified as an "import" beer.

It is served in a white Budweiser/Bud Light cup. It tasted damned good in the heat, but I was afraid to be seen drinking it from such a receptacle.

Does the Louisville Bats management mandate persistent shoddiness like this from Centerplate, the supposedly "professional" caterer it provides a monopoly on subpar food and drink offerings? And while I'm at it, why should there be such a monopoly in a publicly-owned facility? All of you slamming your long-necks of vapid swill on the counter might want to think about that as you expedite your money to corporate headquarters in foreign countries.

Judging from the "Rally" mascot that performed profoundly unfunny routines throughout the evening, to the bored sighs of even the children present, I'm thinking the answer is "yes." Years pass, and the Bats just plain don't get it, do they?

Beer-related despair for yet another year at Louisville Slugger Field.

It’s more of the same for beer fans at this year’s Louisville Bats games, which take place at Louisville Slugger Field. The excellence of the venue still sharply contrasts with the low-common-denominator character of concessions choices, with many of the food and drink trends noted at minor league ballparks across the country still absent in Louisville.



Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and … mediocre Dutch lager brought to you by one of the world’s largest brewing conglomerates?



If you don't favor the Dutch variety, there's always a mediocre Belgian one, and a mediocre German, and Mexican ... and Kona, a “Hawaiian” beer actually made by Widmer in the Pacific Northwest*. At least one reference credited it to "USA." Hardly a grand slam in the sense of geography, but then again, why confuse the pablum?



IPA from India? Nah, that’s just what the other side of the chalkboard said. Actually, it was Redhook’s IPA.



Just to get a draft Redhook, one must walk all the way from the main stands to the tent in center field, which is rather far away from the demographic most likely to purchase … but when Philistinism is the dominant motif, that’s what you get.

As always has been the case, it all comes down to revenue derived from product placement, and that huge Anheuser-Busch sign in right field functions much the same way that statues of Soviet soldiers did in Occupied Eastern European capitals: They reminded a person who was really in charge.

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* Original reference to Redhook in New England has been edited. See comment below.