There's one arguement I rarely hear being made, and I feel it's a rather important one.
Imagine you're the head brewer at a local craft brewery, and you're in a conversation with the head brewer from a BMC company. Could you honestly tell them to their face that they don't make good beer? Not questioning your manliness or anything. They produce a consistent product on a massive scale, and they sell a lot. A LOT.
The point is that it's hard to make the arguement to someone who sells more beer in a year than you could make in a decade. If I were the head brewer I would laugh in your face and say "My beer is bad? Oh? Tell that to the
18 million barrels of beer I sold last year. Let me know how that works out for you."
Is the beer any good? Well... After a long day of hard work, the first sip is refreshing. But that's about it. I'm just saying that you can't really think that your opinion of one step in a long brewing process outweighs science, professional opinion, millions of product sold, and craft brewerys attempt to make their beer more marketable. If anything, I promote the idea of craft beer being more marketable. Maybe it will force the people who make similar looking, worse tasting beer to step it up.