Haha! Next thing they’ll be doing a piece on how hot dog manufacturers and apple pie distributers are foriegn owned! The only thing still American in this great country is mom.
OR IS SHE?!
Did you actually read the article? It’s the governor of Missouri (home state of AB) who is opposed to this deal. I did not see any other politician mentioned.
I strongly suspect that the main reason for his opposition is that AB is a major employer in this area, and that they have also been a good corporate citizen over the years. Despite InBev’s comments about keeping North American headquarters here, I suspect (and presume the governor, and many other Missourians also suspect) that an outside buyer would lead, over time, to AB being less integrated into the area, both as a solid employer, and as a corporate citizen.
Taste much?
Yes, I do. (Though I admit I am not a supertaster.)
Budweiser tastes good (and the American beer drinking public apparently agrees with me, but then, they’re just clueless sheeple, right?). I know that it seems far cooler to rag on Bud, just as indie movies and indie music are cooler than mainstream.
For all the snobs around here, I’d be mildly surprised if most of you could tell Budweiser apart from your favorite overpriced European import Lager in blind tests 7 of 10 times. (And I’m talking Lager vs. Lager here, of roughly the same “heaviness”. Yes, most of us can tell Guinness and such apart from typical beers.)
I don’t drink lagers, I drink ales, and I tend to favor the ones brewed locally, thank you very much. ^_^
Generally speaking (and this includes my own father, when he was younger) people buy and drink Bud and Miller to get drunk, not for any kind of actual taste.
It’s like trying to say that all wines taste alike.
Ahh yes, drinking Bud and Miller marks you as a drunkard, whereas ale is the Drink of Kings - the Drink for Sophisticated People. And of course, it should be locally brewed, because the people in your town certainly know how to brew it much better than the folks a town or two over. Why, those Shelbyville-ans might secretly water down their ale with Budweiser!
One more thing to think about as I drink myself into a stupor tonight.
You might be right, but I don’t like lager.
I know I can tell it apart from Pete’s Wicked or Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
Edit: Damn, Athryn, beaten to the punch.
McDonalds sells billions of burgers. Popularity does not correlate directly to quality.
As a snob, I don’t drink lager unless I want to get pissed on the cheap. If I take my tastebuds into account I’ll always go with something Belgian and expensive.
And I think you’re being disingenious when you’re discarding the fact that beer is the cheapest alcohol typically available and that getting proper drunk is a major reason for drinking beer.
Exactly. Given the choice between Bud and Water I will probably just take the water, but I am not much of a drinker. However if I really want a buzz for some reason I won’t be suppressing the urge to vomit if Bud is the only thing available. Unlike Coors, which conjures up feelings of projectile vomiting.
As long as I can keep getting Yeungling, I’m all set thanks.
America’s oldest brewing company. I’ll kill a thousand Dutchman and buy the company myself before you get our precious copper colored lager.
Local = fresher, less travel time (vibrations) to get to you, less carbon footprint. And they honestly just taste better. I just don’t like lagers, and don’t like mass produced beers.
From the attitude in your posts, I don’t think I’m the one being a snob here. :p At least I’m willing to explain myself as opposed to your histrionics. :D
Vibrations affect beer? That’s a new one for me.
Local = fresher, all other things equal. But transporting beer from 1 of AB’s 12 breweries to wherever you are probably takes about a day. Other factors, such as how fast the inventory is rotated, are likely to have far more impact on freshness. I strongly suspect that the Budweiser at your local convenience store, liquor store, or grocery store is fresher than the average local micro-beer.
Not liking lagers is fine.
Not liking “mass produced” beers? Your taste buds can distinguish whether the beer came from a big brewery or a small one? Uh, ok… Perhaps you are a super-duper taster.
My taste buds may not be the equal of some others here. But my nose is quite good at picking up the whiff of bovine manure.
Wow. That’s some pretty strong knee-jerk anti-elitism, Phil. Some people can and do prefer non Budweiser beers. It might be for the image, it might be for the taste… but what evidence do you have that it’s the former? Hell… nobody was insinuating that Bud-drinkers are uncouth boors until you came in entered the thread & accused everyone of being a snob.
To be honest, you seem to be the one reacting to image rather than actual facts.
I went on a tour of the main AB brewery in St. Louis once. After the tour you go into their tap room and sample the beer which is diverted right off the line. It’s crisp, aromatic, and wonderful.
I wonder what Sam Adams straight off the line tastes like.
Before my first post:
Yes, clearly I was reacting to phantoms.
And long before this thread, I’ve seen this kind of reaction - oh the mainstream American beers are piss water! My [random European beer in a weird bottle] is so much better than that swill [and by extension, I am so much more sophisticated than those Neanderthals who drink the normal stuff].
Hey, I’ve even done it from time to time myself. But I think I’ve generally done so knowing full well that most decent quality, medium body lagers taste fairly similar, and beer selection (within mainstream lagers) is likely as much about image projection as anything else.
Let me just say one more thing and then I’m done. Budweiser, and other mass produced lagers, include rice as one of their main ingredients. Rice doesn’t belong in beer, and it one of the things that causes it to taste bland.
If I am going to drink beer, I am going to drink something I like, simple as that. :D
My [random European beer in a weird bottle] is so much better than that swill [and by extension, I am so much more sophisticated than those Neanderthals who drink the normal stuff].
Except that many of us simply prefer the local American beers that have flourished in the wake of the microbrew renaissance. You’re painting us all like we’re nose-tilted, poncy, euro lovers.
I don’t like fast food either, OH NOES I AM A SNOBBY ELITIST!
I would take you up on that bet. It needn’t be European; I like lots of American beers, too.
As for the popularity argument: McDonald’s is extremely popular, too. Like Budweiser, though, I suspect that has more to do with price than with quality, and suggesting that I couldn’t tell a glass of Bud from a glass of Victory or Harp or Sam Smith’s lager seems as absurd to me as suggesting that I couldn’t tell a McDonald’s hamburger from a good hamburger from my local pub.
I’m not trying to be snobby, but Bud is just not that good. It’s not as awful as some people make it out to be, but it’s definitely on the low side of mediocre.
This.
Except that many of us simply prefer the local American beers that have flourished in the wake of the microbrew renaissance. You’re painting us all like we’re nose-tilted, poncy, euro lovers.
I don’t like fast food either, OH NOES I AM A SNOBBY ELITIST!
Yup. Shiner, St. Arnold, Real Ale, Old North (think that’s the name), Widmer Bros., Pyramid, Bear Republic…I could go on even further to cement my smug beer elitist credentials, but I won’t. It’s not just that Budweiser lager is inferior to anything produced by these places, it’s that even Anheuser-Busch’s seasonal craft brews range from underwhelming to just plain nasty. For Christmas a couple years ago, I got a six-pack of cask-conditioned vanilla porter that turned out to be one of theirs (the name of the brewery was in such small print that I didn’t even see it until after I got home). In retrospect, I think part of the problem was that cask conditioning and vanilla are just not going to mix, but shouldn’t they have noticed that at some point as well? And underneath those flavors, you could still make out the thin, ricey Bud taste as the basis of the beer. Just horrible.
Yes. If we’re talking “battle of straight-up lagers” here, Harp wins.
Yes, you were. Those are all criticism of Bud, not the people who drink Bud. I would level similarly harsh criticisms against McDonalds, but it doesn’t mean that all who eat at McDonalds have no taste buds. Sometimes you’re just in the mood for crap.
And long before this thread, I’ve seen this kind of reaction - oh the mainstream American beers are piss water! My [random European beer in a weird bottle] is so much better than that swill [and by extension, I am so much more sophisticated than those Neanderthals who drink the normal stuff].
That extension is precisely the knee-jerk anti-elitism that I was referring to. That extension hadn’t been made by anybody in the thread, although Kalle came close in his response to you.
It is possible to criticize a product w/out criticizing the people who consume the product.
Hey, I’ve even done it from time to time myself. But I think I’ve generally done so knowing full well that most decent quality, medium body lagers taste fairly similar, and beer selection (within mainstream lagers) is likely as much about image projection as anything else.
One HUGE advantage that micro-breweries bring to the table is that they can provide me, the consumer, with a wide variety of slight variances within the same general theme. Although I usually don’t like lagers, I have been to restaurants that were able to find a lager I enjoyed because they were able to bring out a whole bunch of slightly different lagers & they were able to direct me to one that I actually liked, based on my reaction to their “standard” lager.
But I do find your dismissal of image projection to be bizarre. Yeah, when people make up “taste reasons” for disliking a beer & it’s actually an image thing, it’s kind of silly. But what’s the matter with intentionally projecting an image? I took up smoking while in Europe precisely because of the people I got to meet while projecting that image. (Yeah… other things had to go along with the smoking: clothes, accent, etc etc. But it isn’t hard to pick up the whole kit.) And then when I got back to the States… smoking projects a different image, so I quit after awhile. I don’t see anything bizarre or wrong with that.
Samuel Smith’s lager is also right up there. It’s not quite as tasty as their oatmeal stout, but it’s damn good.