“I have been chosen! Farewell my friends! I go on to a better place.”
- Green alien, Toy Story
For all the anger directed its way, you’d think Wicked Weed Brewing told everyone New England IPAs were bullshit. For all the mockery on display, you’d think BrewDog tripped on its shoelaces on live television. For all the scolding on display, you’d think Lagunitas bottled a beer called Donald Trump Has Some Good Ideas.
To be clear, none of these things have happened. No, these craft breweries just sold to a larger parent company. And if your immediate reaction to that factual truth is, “THAT’S JUST AS BAD,” then friend, this column is addressed to you.
There are, of course, arguments to be made for both sides of the “selling-out” debate. There are those who see, selling out as the same as a deal with the devil. There’s a loss of integrity implied.
On the other side, though, I think you have to acknowledge a larger company acquiring a smaller one and letting it continue to do what it does -- rather than, say, buying out a competitor to shut it down -- is commerce’s sincerest form of flattery. We like what you’re doing so much that we want you to do it for us. Craft beer isn’t charity, and the lights gotta stay on somehow.
Even if you see corporate beer in its acquisition of craft beer brands as a circling vulture, at least it’s still interested in the meat. When you’re a chunk of meat that can’t even draw a crow’s interest, that’s when you’re really dead.
Y’know, let’s lighten this up. Remember those little green alien guys from Toy Story? The ones that go, “Ooooooo” at everything? They look up from the bottom of the bin, and they see the claw as their ruler. It selects one at a time to go to some unknown, fantastic world beyond the horizons of the machine. Sure, sometimes the winner is a sadistic little turdlet who breaks all his toys, but if the claw machine stopped giving up toys altogether, sooner or later no one would play. And then all the green aliens lose.
Do you like Ballast Point’s Sculpin and its variants -- Pineapple, Habanero, and the new Unfiltered? Owned by Constellation Brands (think Corona) since 2015. Are you hopheads really going to stop drinking Lagunitas just because it sold the rest of its ownership stake to Heineken, after giving up half almost two years ago? Are Wicked Weed’s sour ales going to be any less tart and funky now that Anheuser-Busch InBev owns the company that owns the equipment?
Acquisition of craft beer by macro beer has been going on for decades now, arguably starting in 1994 when Anheuser-Busch purchased 25% of Seattle’s Redhook. A-B has acquired a lot of brewers since then: Elysian, Breckenridge, Golden Road, and most notably Goose Island. Bourbon County Stout’s doing all right, though, give or take that 2015 bad batch.
Founders Brewing sold a minority stake to Spanish brewing conglomerate Mahou-San Miguel, but I don’t see the hype for KBS diminishing significantly. Duvel Moortgat owns Brewery Ommegang, Boulevard Brewing, and Firestone Walker without noticeable hatred, but then maybe it’s just a firing offense when American macros acquire American craft brands. If so, nobody tell the purists that there’s no such thing as an American macro anymore.
I mean, the Boston Beer Company and its Sam Adams label comes close. Yuengling too -- but both of those very large brewers have been protected by the Brewers Association’s shifting definition of what “craft beer” can be by rule. Are you really going to get hung up on Lagunitas or Goose Island’s 500,000 barrels annually because of who signs the paychecks, when Sam Adams turns out 4 million and still gets to call itself “craft”?
I’m not arguing that macro is God and acquisition is always a move to a better place. But I think the purity test should come down the road a bit -- not when the brewery is sold, and just because it’s sold, but after the new owners have put their mark on the operation. Is the beer still good? Does the brewery still innovate? Or have they turned into shadows of their former, independent selves?
Craft beer should still endeavor to succeed independently. Look at Sierra Nevada, Bell’s, New Glarus. That’s how high a brewer can get on its own wings. But getting a boost isn’t the worst thing in the world. Failure is the worst. Shutting it all down is the worst. The claw doesn’t have to be your ruler, but man, be okay with it when a good brewery gets lifted up.
