The Pour Fool rules: "FUCK Budweiser: Your Basic Early Morning, Fed-Up Rant."

From the glorious article.

The Pour Fool induced a Vulcan mind meld, and now the contents of my own cranium have been reproduced in full, living color -- except, of course, the Pour Fool wrote these inspiring words himself.

He just might be my favorite living beer writer.

FUCK Budweiser: Your Basic Early Morning, Fed-Up Rant, by Steve Foolbody (The Pour Fool)

People don’t come out of the womb with a hankerin’ for Budweiser. Kids, in particular, love big flavors. They grow up eating nachos and Cheetos and burgers and pizza…NONE of which leads logically to drinking watery, flavorless adjunct Pilsner, that is so swamped by those food that you might as well be drinking water. People are programmed to drink BudMillerCoors. They find it in their family fridge and watch Mon and Dad and their uncles and aunts mindlessly slugging the stuff down and think, “That’s what beer is“. That knee-jerk repetition kept those wimpy-ass beers unchallenged for over a century…until beers with real flavor came along and craft brewing flourished and people found out, “Hey! I don’t have to settle for that insipid shit, anymore!” And AB/InBev is on the way out and they don’t even know it because we like these new, carefully crafted, great-tasting beers BETTER…and we are NEVER going back.

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Alltech recalls two of its ales, and the Pour Fool speaks of pumpkins.

Just the facts ... and I'm sparing readers my take on all things pumpkin, which pertains to one of the two beers being recalled, and although the Pour Fool doesn't hesitate to provide his point of view, which isn't what you might think.

The Pumpkin Beer Thing: A Short View

I could list a slew of pumpkin ales that don’t commit that most common mistake of Pie In A Glass but I’m not going to.

Now, the Alltech Bourbon Barrel Ale recall -- that's a shame.

Check your fridge: This Kentucky brewer is recalling two ales, at Business First Louisville KY

Alltech Inc. has recalled two of its ales because of problems with flavor and color.

The Herald-Leader reports that there are no health are safety problems with the two brews, Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale and Kentucky Pumpkin Barrel Ale. A spokeswoman for the Nicholasville-based company told the Herald Leader that "these particular batches did not meet our stringent quality standards for flavor and color."

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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.

The Pour Fool on Dick Cantwell's principled resignation from Elysian.

It's been a few months, and The Pour Fool follows up.

The Pour Fool on Elysian and AB InBev's "malignant tentacles."

Folks, a "craft" brewery absorbed by AB-InBev is just as dead as if a nuclear bomb were dropped on it. Huzzahs to Dick Cantwell:

"In his resignation, Cantwell affirms what everyone already knew about him; his integrity and standards and the unwavering dedication that he’s always shown to the craft brewing culture that he helped create."

The Pour Fool rocks it.

Dick Cantwell: Corporate Brewing STILL Sucks, by stevefoolbody (The Pour Fool)

Dick Cantwell has resigned from his position as partner and brewmaster at Elysian Brewing in Seattle, in the wake of the company’s tragic sale to AB/InBev, the Belgian/Brazilian mega-brewer which acquired the brewery as part of a broader plan to insinuate itself into the craft beer community and win back younger drinkers who have abandoned the company’s flagship beers, Bud, Bud Light, and the foundering Michelob.

Following are a few relevant postings from earlier in the year.

Pop open a Trojan Goose and enjoy this explanation of why you shouldn't.

Trojan Cigar?

The PC: Budweiser explains the Doctrine of Trojan Geese Transubstantiation.

Elysian and Sub Pop: "Corporate Beer Still Sucks."

Trojan Cigar?

At first it seemed like a nice, conventional public courtship among capitalists.

Anheuser-Busch interested in buying Tampa’s Cigar City Brewing, by James L. Rosica (Tampa Tribune)

TAMPA — If you can’t beat ’em, buy’ em.

Despite its snarky Budweiser ad during the Super Bowl poking fun at craft beer, Anheuser-Busch has been steadily buying craft breweries around the country.

Could Tampa’s own Cigar City Brewing be next?

Founder and owner Joey Redner on Friday confirmed that the beer company’s representatives have reached out to him about buying his Tampa-based business.

Of course, every article in America must include those accursed words. Damn it, Rosica, STOP "REACHING OUT" BEFORE I TEAR OFF YOUR ARM."

Meanwhile, Cigar City's owner says it's much ado about nothing, and all he wanted was a chance to drink some nice Scotch on the monolith's tab.

Cigar City selling to Anheuser-Busch? Not likely, owner says, by Laura Reiley (Tampa Bay Times)

TAMPA — It's a tempest in a beer can. At the end of 2014, Anheuser-Busch InBev purchased 10 Barrel Brewing Co. of Bend, Ore. In January, it announced it was purchasing Seattle-based Elysian Brewing Co. And now Anheuser-Busch, the world's largest brewer with 25 percent global market share, is sniffing around Tampa's Cigar City Brewing.

Joey Redner, the founder and owner of Cigar City, says yes, he took a meeting. But he says local beer drinkers shouldn't be worried.

Perhaps Redner saw the Pour Fool's open letter.

Cigar City vs. AB: An Open Letter to Joey Redner, by Steve Foolbody (Pour Fool)

 ... Sooner or later, some brewery owner is going to stare down the barrel of one of those prohibitive buy-out offers from Anheuser Busch or AB/InBev or whatever that pack o’ vermin is calling itself this week and they’re going to think beyond the planetary-scale impact such dollars will have on their own bank accounts and realize that pulling the trigger on this deal, while making that villa in the Bahamas a lot more feasible, is also going to sentence them personally and their staffs to forever being considered sell-outs and greedheads and douche-nozzles by many, many of the same people they saw come into their taprooms and growler stations when they were just starting out. It will permanently remove them from serious consideration when American craft beer fans speak of the country’s great breweries. Because the instant the last curlicue at the end of their signature trails out on that sales agreement, that brewery is no longer a part of that booming American phenomenon called “Craft Beer”. It cannot be. Because it is now nothing more than a regional outpost for corporate greed, bean-counting, arrogance, and Money Is Everything thinking.

Beautiful: "Pack o’ vermin."

So true ... so true.

The Pour Fool on Elysian and AB InBev's "malignant tentacles."

The Pour Fool rules.

During the course of discussing Elysian's absorption into the Evil Empire, I found myself chatting with an employee of Trojan Goose (Island), who freely noted the pride with which he served AB InBev, the single most destructive entity in the history of American brewing.

All I can say is this:

"I'd rather remembered for giving middle fingers to the corporate brewing oligarchs than rim jobs to their shareholders."

Read the Pour Fool. He waxes heroic.

Elysian and AB/InBev: Greed, Overweening Ambition, and the Whoring-Out of a Culture, by Steve Foolbody (Pour Fool)

 ... For those who want a basic primer on how I feel about AB getting its malignant tentacles into ANY part of what has been, for 30 years, the most uplifting, soulful, life-affirming, humane, and decent business segment in American history, this link will take you to my piece on their acquisition of Bend’s 10 Barrel, and this link will go to my Seattle P-I post on AB’s take-over of Chicago’s legendary Goose Island. There’s no need for me to plow all that ground again but just know, if you decide to click over, that every single thing said in those posts applies here."

Essential reading for the New Year: "Crowd-Sourced Ratings and Why They Suck."

Steve Foolbody goes into detail to make a point running somewhat parallel to my thoughts from a recent diary entry.

Diary: The Taylor Swift Theory of RateAdvocate.

 ... I do know that my own use of non-beer ratings aggregators (florists, et al) generally bears little fruit. One tires of seeing a perfect five-star review posted adjacent to a hideous one-star pan, leading to an existential despair over the unfashionability of objective criteria.

He fluently demonstrates just how subjective the entire process really is, and more power to him for doing so.

Crowd-Sourced Ratings and Why They Suck (The Pour Fool)

... Crowd-sourced ratings – for anything; beer, whiskey, wine, chocolate, movies, restaurants, you name it – actually do the people they’re intended to help about as much good as they’d get from opening the yellow pages or a beverage catalog or standing in front of a store rack, closing their eyes, and picking at random.

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.