Now What Do I Do? Greg Says “Hop Yard Rocks”
Jeff and Greg of Craft Beer Radio just got back from an all expense paid junket to Idaho to witness the Anheuser-Busch hop harvest. The trip was put together by A-B and it brought together craft beer writers and two craft beer podcasters to see for themselves just how much A-B cares about beer. And more importantly (it seems) prove that A-B can make real craft beer.
A few months ago on one of their Craft Beer Radio shows, Greg said something to the effect that if only A-B would make good beer (craft beer even) he would welcome their attempts and if they really did make good beer it would be good for the craft beer industry. I don’t doubt that Greg would be happy with good beer no matter what its source, but A-B making craft quality beer may not be the best thing for the craft beer industry—that remains to be seen (and argued about, see my previous articles).
Take a listen to the special hop harvest episode of Craft Beer Radio. Listen to Greg’s description of the A-B beers he was served at the lavish beer dinners thrown by his corporate hosts. At one point Greg takes issue with the description of A-B’s Hop Yard as “an IPA on training wheels.” He basically said that the craft beer crowd has misjudged the beer, trying to put it into a category it doesn’t belong and if it was judged on its own terms craft beer people would have to say that the beer is pretty darn good. I fully agree that you should “drink the beer in the glass” and not complain that a perfectly good and drinkable beer is crap just because it’s “not to style.”
Which brings me back to the question I ask in the title: “Now what do I do?” I haven’t been able to find any of this A-B craft beer in my local beer shops so it’s a little difficult for me to enter the discussion on the level of “how does the beer actually taste.” So I should just shut up, right? Don’t answer that.
Part of me just wants to ignore the whole big corporation versus the “little guy” issue and focus on finding and drinking quality beer, but I can’t shake the nagging thought of what happened to small town “mom and pop” businesses when the big discount retailers moved in a threw up prefab megastores on the edge of Hometown America in a freshly clear-cut lot.
I think of A-B as a huge elephant poised on a diving board high over the wading pool that is the craft beer industry. If the elephant jumps, what’s going to happen to my nice little wading pool? (Somebody hand me a real craft beer.)
Hey Donavan; I’m glad I wasn’t the only one slightly disturbed by A-B’s version of a K Street Scotland golf trip.
These A-Bers are insidious. I couldn’t help draw the analogy of Wal-Mart inviting local shopkeepers to their monstrous distribution centers and treating them to international produce and feedlot meats (a whole world on every plate!) while they watched a mountain of cotton socks be sorted and bagged. Then the shopkeepers walk away saying “well, we can learn a lot from each other” a month before they close for lack of business.
I think it’s hard not to be pessimistic about their dive into the market and their exorbitant bribery of some of the craft beer elite. Clearly trying to cushion the blow by constructing a focus group of previous craft beer diehards they were able to pick their brains for new marketing ideas for the price of a few plane tickets and dinner plates.
It all left a bad taste in my mouth. The A-B boys proudly pushed the very macro nature of their macro brewery into the faces of the craft beer literati and watched them walk away with smiles on their faces and songs in their hearts.