The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems

Salon checks in with a pair of neat articles on the state of American swill beer in the wake of Anheuser Busch's sale to Belgian-Brazilian beer superconglomerate InBev. The main gist is the question of what beer will assume Budweiser's mantle of the Great American Beer. Being a beer guy, I'm delighted to read anything on the subject, but I'm impelled to tackle of a few of the points made by Mr. McClelland and the Salon staff.

First is the idea that Budweiser is going anywhere. It's not. Just because A-B is no longer American-owned won't change the price of Bud, or the hegemony that it has in every bar, liquor store, and sports venue in the country. Will people make a spite-choice when it comes to their favorite beer? I suppose. But can you imagine a lifelong Bud drinker being so principled? Meh. I drink Bud Light when I'm out because it's cheap, it's always around, and almost any given bartender has the ability to lip-read the words in a loud barroom. It's as simple as that.

Are Americans actually looking for an all-American beer? I certainly hope so. Is domestic swill the answer? Meh again, although a can of Blatz is better than a bottle of Heineken any day, in my opinion. I wrote a column a few years ago that touched briefly on the Pabst phenomenon, and I remember being amazed, and a little perplexed, that they had swallowed up so many defunct regional beers (check out their lineup. It's actually funny. [And on a related note, check out this AMAZING half of an ad for Ballantine from none other than all-American man's man and Nobel Prize–winner John Steinbeck. Tremendous!]) The problem, at the end of the day, is that, as much as I love Ballantine and Naragansett (I actually do!), the one thing all of these old-time regional beers have in common is that they're not good. And since I'm too young to have grown up on Schaefer, the nostalgia factor doesn't make up for the lack of flavor.

I had a real problem with craft beers being dismissed as "twee." Cmon! Craft breweries are at the forefront of the battle to crack open the stranglehold that the big three brewers have on beer in America. I'm a firm believer in the idea of drinking locally, and there's no getting around the fact that craft breweries are today what the Pabsts and Blatzes and Pielses were 100 years ago. Out west, they've got Anchor and Sierra Nevada and Stone; down south they've got Terrapin and Sweetwater; the east coast has Brooklyn and Victory and Dogfish Head; and up here in New England, a hotbed of craft brewing, there's Sam Adams (still a craft beer!) and Harpoon and Magic Hat and Smuttynose. Those were all off the top of my head. The local brewery used to be a fixture in this country; there's no reason it can't be again. Drink up!