The Big Three should die

[Nomofett]

But I grew up in the states and I was talking about the states, I just brought up Japan at the very end as an example of how harmful it can be when companies get too much power, and in the U.S. they also have that power. Not to mention overseas since some of the big three are not US companies. But anyways, yeah the harm they do is more hidden in the states but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Every point I made was referring to the states, not Japan [except the one paragraph I talked about Japan obviously ]. I do think they have harmed American society in many ways.

 

[Xernex]

Quote from same article:

^ this is the rule followed around here.

And or control the taps as the example I gave earlier of first hand knowledge from my local pub.

Ahh - I'll admit there has been quite a bit of time since I was in the game - and the company I worked for has upped the number of SKU's they sell by at least 10 fold - which does put a huge strain on the smaller distributors, or even more the self distributing guys.

The area I covered was a college town, and the ALE was heavily involved in the area, and on our backs constantly so we typically walked a thin line on the rules

 

[SEndorf]

"well no, first I didn't say they should be out of business, there is no should or should not, I was simply saying that things would be better if they were"

So....they should not be out of business, yet "things" would be better if they were out of business?
No thanks. Not playing.
Impossible to articulate a logical argument with these posts. It just creates as you say, silly distractions.

 

[Paps]

He stated that he did NOT say that they "should be out of bisuiness"
and also that he did NOT say they "should NOT be out of business"
He DID say that he feels that it would be better if they were out of business.

Basically he is admitting that he doesn't have godlike powers to zap a business into or out of business but personally feels like the world would be a better place if the big 3 fell off of it. It's not a train of thought that's hard to follow.

 

[SEndorf]

They should not be out of business, but it would be better if they were out of business.
Ridiculous ..
Apparently my train of thought has been derailed. Kudos for you that makes sense out of this.

 

[Nomofett]

Thanks Paps. Yeah, It's not a hard concept to get SEndorf, I think most people would easily understand it.

But even if you got lost on that part you never addressed any other point that I made, so please next time refrain from fallacies and stick to debating/discussing points. Thanks

 

[rmyurick]

It's the "big two" now--AB Inbev and Molson Coors.

 

[bford]

Can they do that? I swear we weren't allowed to buy shelf space in NC

I'm pretty sure they aren't supposed to be able to do that, but they have a lot of weight to throw around and they've certainly done it in the past.

They still get caught buying and influencing bars and their taps.

 

[paperairplane]

The word monopoly does not mean what I think it means. Apparently.

 

[applescrap]

Suppose BMC does fold. And Heady Topper, Dogfish, 3F, Boston Beer Co, Russian River then decide to fill the void with an identical light american lager, would it then be a more enjoyable, I mean better, product?

This is a good point. It also brings to light the fact that Coors won the Great American Beer Fest best lager again this year as it has done in the past gold medal.

View attachment 1469285746714.jpg

 

[Gabbs1228]

Just enjoying a 95*f brew day of a hoppy amber ale with a very cold bud light. Not bad for a very long and very hot day. But to each their own. View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1469322555.013485.jpg

 

[Nomofett]

Suppose BMC does fold. And Heady Topper, Dogfish, 3F, Boston Beer Co, Russian River then decide to fill the void with an identical light american lager, would it then be a more enjoyable, I mean better, product?

I think that if they folded the void would be filled by a higher quality product. I think there would still be some demand for a light American lager, but without hundreds of millions of dollars telling people that's what beer is I think there would be more variety and more people would try different styles of lagers at least.

But to more directly answer: yeah, I think it would be better. I think Coors can win the award that was just mentioned is because not many people make, or focus on, that style. Looking at the entries received for that category shows that it's one of the less popular categories

 

[ajw85]

I think that if they folded the void would be filled by a higher quality product. I think there would still be some demand for a light American lager, but without hundreds of millions of dollars telling people that's what beer is I think there would be more variety and more people would try different styles of lagers at least.

But to more directly answer: yeah, I think it would be better. I think Coors can win the award that was just mentioned is because not many people make, or focus on, that style. Looking at the entries received for that category shows that it's one of the less popular categories

I'm interested in hearing what your definition of 'quality' is

 

[Nomofett]

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quality

 

[Nomofett]

But seriously, in that context I meant higher quality as more flavorful, deeper, not just something light that people drink for a buzz or to cool off. Something less like water and more like beer

 

[Stillraining]

But those characteristics are exactly why it is so popular. You can toss a six pack down and still function and also not feel bloated and sugared out.

My Shops fridge is always full of Bush..My boat is always full of Bush...Yet I brew good beer all the time. When I'm working in the shop or on the boat exactly what I want a very watery, crisp mostly tasteless beer. I actually love the stuff to be honest. If I could brew it I would.

Dang I could go for one right now..

 

[worlddivides]

In response to Nemofett...

I lived in Japan for 10 years, and while I definitely agree that Japan has problems with its laws: such as homebrewing being illegal (i.e. technically you can brew "beer" as long as it is below 1%, which is technically not classified as alcohol, such as amazake that is sold to children and is oftentimes around 0.8% ABV) and how they make such difficult hurdles for craft brewers to even be able to operate (which recently have been lowered, but not nearly enough), I will say that the Japanese macrobrewery beers are on the whole excellent.

I hate Coors with a passion and I very strongly dislike Miller. I can enjoy a Budweiser (but not a Bud Light), but not as a common thing to drink. But that's just my personal tastes. I can't say "they make low-quality beers" because it is entirely subjective.

But on the other hand, Kirin Ichiban Shibori is my #1 favorite draft beer in the world (assuming it as actually draft and not the canned version, which is still good but nowhere near as good). Sapporo also makes amazing lagers. Asahi Super Dry is excellent as well. Yebisu and Suntory's The Premium Malts are also excellent beers. Many Japanese macrobreweries also make excellent amber ales and stouts too (such as Asahi Black and Kirin Stout).

Sure, Japan is not a great place for variety, but I will say that their macrobreweries make very good beers. If you want IPAs or sours, you're going to need to get imports from North America or Europe, but at the very least, the country makes excellent beers, and I see them as much better than the horrifically disgusting Coors Light, Bud Light, Miller Lite, and so on. But at the same time, Japan has a wide range of disgusting "happoshu." Then again, because of Japan's laws, some of the world's most respected breweries' beers (including much of Belgium's) get classified as "happoshu" under Japan's tax law. I guess that's another unfair part of the Japanese brewing system.

But I can say that I certainly would not want Kirin, Sapporo, Asahi, Yebisu, or Suntory to "die." I'm actually a fan of a lot of beers they make, Kirin being my personal favorite when it comes to excellent lagers. And, while I'm not a fan of Budweiser, Millers, or Coors, and I certainly don't like the incentives programs and other dirty things they've been doing, I don't see how we would be better off for them to be gone. And I can't see how anyone could honestly think we would be.

 

[Nomofett]

Yebisu I can drink sometimes, but never by choice. But I do agree they are better than Coors and Bud. And yeah, hopposhu is strange, most small craft breweries he are technically hopposhu because the guidelines are so strange, something like dry hopping can define a beer as hopposhu, that's how they get around the insane quantity restrictions, but it's still taxed at beer levels.

I would be fine without them, Hitachino, Baird, and Minoh (among others) make better lagers IMO. And as far as Coors and Bud there are many ways we would be better without them (yes, I honestly think that) craft beer would not have the deck stacked against them with laws, regulations, unfair monopolistic business practices, etc.. Not to mention the misogyny they have have perpetuated over the years. And the general homogenization they are hugely responsible for for beer flavors. I could list many other reasons I want them gone, but you get my gist. Basically they do heaps of damage to more than just the beer industry.

 

[Mismost]

One has to wonder how many raving lunatics there are out there in the world.

Not raving lunatics, just folks who have the only opinion that matters!

 

[GrogNerd]

Not raving lunatics, just folks who have the only opinion that matters!

yeah, that's a spam post

stealing the 3rd post in this thread and adds some stealth links

you had to have noticed the links when you quoted it

 

[ThatVideoKid]

As someone who lives 20 minutes from a Budweiser plant, they provide a lot more jobs than craft beer, so I certainly don't wish them death, but I don't drink it. And you would think that in a small state with a large regional plant, that the shelf space would be all bud. I'd say most stores are about 66% craft to 33% BMC.

Also it's not all about quality as you seem to believe.

It's not just their big money influencing people to buy their beer and squeezing out small brewers. Let's be honest. No craft brewery, even the biggest of them, can even come close to their pricing. I prefer to think of how capitalism works to be a cost-quality ratio. You seem to think it should be 100% quality. That's quite laughable honestly. If the best brewer in the world is selling their beer at $30 a bottle, should they be putting inferior breweries selling their beer for $10/6? Hell no! Really rethink how you think about this issue, especially given how craft beer is flourishing despite BMCs best efforts. They can't stop this and they never will.

 

[unionrdr]

Yeah, you can't fight the pricing 100%. And since craft beers use more malts & hops, they cost more to produce, making for a higher consumer cost. You can't avoid that either...not completely. It's only craft beer's quality & diversity that I think is driving their popularity.

 

[applescrap]

But those characteristics are exactly why it is so popular. You can toss a six pack down and still function and also not feel bloated and sugared out.

My Shops fridge is always full of Bush..My boat is always full of Bush...Yet I brew good beer all the time. When I'm working in the shop or on the boat exactly what I want a very watery, crisp mostly tasteless beer. I actually love the stuff to be honest. If I could brew it I would.

Dang I could go for one right now..

I agree with your points here. I wish i would have got a keg of something light this summer. I go back and forth between craft beers and lagers in my sanke. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood for a 7% IPA.

You can Brew it! check out my thread called more fermentation temperature reproach. I make a pretty strong argument there. Surprised the pitchforks didn't head my way.

 

[worlddivides]

Yebisu I can drink sometimes, but never by choice. But I do agree they are better than Coors and Bud. And yeah, hopposhu is strange, most small craft breweries he are technically hopposhu because the guidelines are so strange, something like dry hopping can define a beer as hopposhu, that's how they get around the insane quantity restrictions, but it's still taxed at beer levels.

I would be fine without them, Hitachino, Baird, and Minoh (among others) make better lagers IMO. And as far as Coors and Bud there are many ways we would be better without them (yes, I honestly think that) craft beer would not have the deck stacked against them with laws, regulations, unfair monopolistic business practices, etc.. Not to mention the misogyny they have have perpetuated over the years. And the general homogenization they are hugely responsible for for beer flavors. I could list many other reasons I want them gone, but you get my gist. Basically they do heaps of damage to more than just the beer industry.

I think that's just an example of subjectivity right there. While I have enjoyed a few beers by Hitachino Nest (technically the brewery is Kiuchi, but their ales are "Hitachino Nest") such as their Espresso Stout and Dai Dai Orange IPA, they actually don't make any lagers. Baird does make lagers, but I don't think their lagers are as good as Kirin's or Asahi's (although they are decent). I've only have two or three beers by Minoh before (a white ale and a stout, I believe) and they didn't really leave much of an impression on me, so I can't comment on them.

But, as should be extremely obvious here, it's completely subjective. I would rather have a Kirin Ichiban Shibori than a Baird Numazu Lager. One is not objectively superior to the other, though from my point of view, I think the Ichiban Shibori is vastly superior (at least for my personal tastes).

So, as I already said in my previous post, I agree with you that the Japanese brewing industry and brewing law has a lot of issues, but I do not agree AT ALL that we would be better without these macrobreweries. I think what Japan needs is for the laws to change so that it's easier to start a craft brewery and run it (along with other things such as making homebrewing legal, even though it seems the police don't enforce those laws. My friend homebrewed like crazy in Japan and gave away his homebrews to a police friend of his. Maybe the policeman didn't know it was illegal, but I think he just didn't care. After all, there are homebrewing supply websites in Japan selling the equipment, grain, hops, yeast, etc.). The laws over the past 20-30 years have gotten looser and helped out, but it still has a lot longer to go. For the US, what we need is just for the craft breweries to not be bullied out of liquor stores or grocery stores. The macrobreweries have just as much of a right to be there, but they don't necessarily have "more" of a right to be there than the craft breweries.

 

[applescrap]

I think that if they folded the void would be filled by a higher quality product. I think there would still be some demand for a light American lager, but without hundreds of millions of dollars telling people that's what beer is I think there would be more variety and more people would try different styles of lagers at least.

But to more directly answer: yeah, I think it would be better. I think Coors can win the award that was just mentioned is because not many people make, or focus on, that style. Looking at the entries received for that category shows that it's one of the less popular categories

I disagree. There were 55 entries. Some of those other Brewers had to have been pretty good, no?

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying that these companies make the best beer. I'm just saying it is what it is. It's a lager.

View attachment 1469388805365.jpg

 

[Brownalemikie]

My take on the big 3: First let me say I drank Bud for about 30 years. That said, I haven't had a Bud for about 4 years......ever since micro breweries became popular. Now Bud reminds me of Alkaseltzer or charged water. Same with Miller and other mass-produced beers.

Me thinks craft brews are putting serious hurt on the big guys. Most of my friends and family are buying micro brew or brewing their own. JMO

 

[chask31]

American jobs and better distribution of craft beer acquisitions is a good thing. I don't love big corporations but they are a part of civilization now and we have to look at the good side of things. I'd love to drink a Four Peaks Hop Knot in New York!

 

[Nomofett]

ThatVideoKid: yeah, definitely all craft isn't quality, but I do think that in craft beer quality tends to matter more. In the big guys case it's drinkability for a mass market, make the least offensive beer. Like McDonalds.

Yeah, their pricing is lower, but I don't view that as an argument for them. WalMart has lower prices also, but I don't like them either. Craft beer isn't that much more expensive, especially if you look at ABV, how long it takes to drink one, etc... And I think it's not such a bad thing that it costs 50cents more a beer, we value cheapness too much, but that just gives us cheap products. I don't think it's laughable to say that quality should be the main concern. Of course price matters, but quality matters more. And craft beer flourishing means it's 12% of the market. Yeah it's a big market, but 12% is not so big.

WorldDivides: yeah, it's 100% subjective, there's no such thing as objective quality or good taste. I know that what I think is good others may not, and that's fine. This is just ado versatile where we share our subjective opinions. I don't mock my friends and say they are wrong for drinking Asahi but I do think it's gross. Just like we don't always like the same craft beers. Most of Hitachino beers I'm not such ph a fan of, their lager is their best IMO, and yeah they definitely make a lager. It's in a can and a bottle. I can go 10 minutes to Seijo Ishii in the Hankyu Umeda station and pick one up like I did a few weeks ago. I haven't tried Bairds lager or Minohs Pilsner, but Minoh is usually standard, not great. I'm not a huge fan of most Japanese craft beers I've tried. Shiga Koen is good and a new one just opened in Kyoto that's ok, but it focuses on Belgian beers. Anyways....

yeah the police don't care. They say it's too hard to judge if it's more than one percent and not worth they trouble. It's like jaywalking. But it being illegal still dissuades many and stops things like having homebrew competitions. I do hope that the laws change, but the big guys here are fighting against that and they have lots of power. I can't respect anyone that actively uses their power to crush their competitors in an unfair manner, hence me wishing they'd go away.

Applescrap: 55 entries, yeah, one of the less popular. Look at how many entered vs the others. Even in that picture out of 8 shown only 2 had less entries. I'm not saying no one makes them, I'm saying they aren't a focus of most craft breweries. Also, I'm curious what the other entires were.

 

[ThatVideoKid]

Well yeah I'd say 12% is massively flourishing. You have to look at it in a timetable, not a datapoint. If you look at the last 5-10 years that 12% is a MASSIVE spike

 

[worlddivides]

WorldDivides: yeah, it's 100% subjective, there's no such thing as objective quality or good taste. I know that what I think is good others may not, and that's fine. This is just ado versatile where we share our subjective opinions. I don't mock my friends and say they are wrong for drinking Asahi but I do think it's gross. Just like we don't always like the same craft beers. Most of Hitachino beers I'm not such ph a fan of, their lager is their best IMO, and yeah they definitely make a lager. It's in a can and a bottle. I can go 10 minutes to Seijo Ishii in the Hankyu Umeda station and pick one up like I did a few weeks ago. I haven't tried Bairds lager or Minohs Pilsner, but Minoh is usually standard, not great. I'm not a huge fan of most Japanese craft beers I've tried. Shiga Koen is good and a new one just opened in Kyoto that's ok, but it focuses on Belgian beers. Anyways....

When I lived in Japan, I tried out all of the Japanese craft beers (and I still try out new ones that I see here in the states, and I occasionally come across really unique and original takes, such as mixing sake or shochu practices with beer - such as the use of koji or of shochu barrels and so on), but I always felt that Japanese craft beer wasn't as good as American craft beer, and I also felt that for the most part Japanese craft beer wasn't as good as Japanese macrobrews. That might sound like blasphemy to some, but I felt like that then... and I still feel like that now. I would rather have some of Kirin, Sapporo, Asahi, Yebisu, and Suntory's "premium" offerings (i.e. not happoshu or "dai-san no biiru" or beer legally classified as "liqueur," etc.) than any Japanese craft beer that I can think of off the top of my head.

Back then I would dish out the big bucks to buy American craft beer and smaller European brewery releases at places like Yamaya and at craft beer bars (especially Belgian beers), but I happened to personally really enjoy and appreciate stuff like Asahi and Kirin. Now, I can understand why someone might not like Asahi, but I don't think "because it's low-quality" is a valid (or honest) reason.

Turns out you were right about Hitachino Nest Lager. I checked online and saw it on their official website. It must be new because it was the only beer they had listed that I hadn't tried before (and also the only beer they had that wasn't an ale).

yeah the police don't care. They say it's too hard to judge if it's more than one percent and not worth they trouble. It's like jaywalking. But it being illegal still dissuades many and stops things like having homebrew competitions. I do hope that the laws change, but the big guys here are fighting against that and they have lots of power. I can't respect anyone that actively uses their power to crush their competitors in an unfair manner, hence me wishing they'd go away.

Right. It being illegal doesn't really stop you from doing it, especially since the police have little to no incentive to stop you. But on the other hand it does limit the homebrew supplies sold in the country, limits the number of people actually participating in the hobby, prevents things like homebrewing competitions from happening, and really hurts the #1 way that craft breweries start in many countries (in the US most craft brewers start out as homebrewers, while that is NOT the case in Japan. Even with Hitachino Nest, that started as the beer branch of a sake and shochu distillery).