"American" Beer

A few weekends ago, I attended my college reunions. It was phenomenal: a 3.5-day fun-fest of thumping music; hot, sweaty alumni trying to pretend to be hot, sweaty undergraduates; and beer, lots of beer. It's a general rule of thumb that the older the class, the better the beer. At the 5th reunion, there's Budweiser and Bud Light. At the 10th reunion, we added Hoegaarden to that, but only for one night. The 15th had Yuengling; I think the 30th had Magic Hat. But as for the majority of the weekend, we had two choices: the red tap or the blue tap: Budweiser or Bud Light. Neither option is ideal, but when in Rome, one does as the Romans do.

But now that I've reentered the real world, I'm very, very happy to be drinking beer that once again tastes like beer. However, my experiences over Reunions weekend segue into an interesting story that I found the day after memorial day. The advertising journal Ad Age reported that Budweiser was branding itself as the prototypical "American" beer with some super-patriotic beer cans. This despite the fact that Budweiser was purchased by the Brazilian-Belgian firm InBev to create Belgium-based Anheuser-Busch InBev N.V. three years ago.

America Rules

Now, Budweiser and Bud Light have long been associated with the "American Macrobrew" style that is as ubiquitous as it is devoid of flavor. I once drank a €1 Budweiser offered up by a bar in Europe as a palate cleanser between real beers. The point that Ad Age was driving toward was this: "The average consumer has a short memory," said Harry Schuhmacher, editor of Beer Business Daily. "The fact that Anheuser-Busch was bought by a foreign company was all over the news ... but then it died down and people went about their business."

Notes beer historian Maureen Ogle, in the Ad Age article, "Consumers drink beer, they don't obsess over who owns what." I'm reminded of the Beer Summit held by President Obama two summers ago after the Henry Louis Gates mess. The President drank Bud Light, Sergeant Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department drank Blue Moon, and Prof. Gates had a Sam Adams Light. Note: Biden, apparently, drank Buckler, a non-alcoholic beer (a choice that was "mostly ironic"). The Wall Street Journal tried to stir the pot, noting that Bud Light was technically foreign, as was Blue Moon (owned by Molson Coors, a Canadian company).

This is a "chocolate freedom"

But really, the best thing to come out of that article was the discovery that, while George W. Bush was still pissed off at "Old Europe," the White House referred to chocolate souffles as "chocolate freedoms." source for photo above.