Macrophobia: AB InBev, MillerCoors and Craft Breweries

The age of Romanticism was defined by an emphasis on passion, individuality, and spontaneous creation over rote Industrialism. We’re in the Romantic era of beer. Working in the shadow of monolithic brewing entities like AB InBev, craft beer has reacted by seeking a return to more organic, creative endeavors.

As a result, what was once just a legion of “beer drinkers” has been splintered into increasingly at-odds factions. Hopheads are at loggerheads with Lagerheads, and craft vs. macro is beginning to sound increasingly similar to Liberal vs. Conservative. Why, beers and beer drinkers, must we be so bitter?

Part of the problem, if you want to call it one, is rooted in a deeply human desire to label and categorize. It’s how we make sense of the world, allowing us to create efficient systems like breweries, bars, kegs, refrigerators, and other less important things. Unfortunately, it’s tough to categorize human nature – there will always be an exception to the rule.

There’s a phrase called “negative capability,” coined by Romantic poet John Keats to describe “the ability to contemplate the world without the desire to try and reconcile contradictory aspects or fit it into closed and rational systems.” A Duck-Rabbit can be a duck, rabbit, and both, all at the same time.  

For example, there are people out there who can stomach both craft ales and macro lagers on a physical and moral level, and I’m one of them. Stay your pitchforks. I don’t stomp on the American flag while sensually sipping a bourbon barrel-aged ale, and my thick-rimmed glasses and manicured mustache don’t catch fire if I pound a Bud diesel in a parking lot.

Craft Beer: A Matter of Clarity

What is craft? From a business standpoint, it’s clear. Somewhat. To be “craft” a company must brew under 6 million barrels a year using traditional ingredients (Mike’s Hard Lemonade is not craft beer) and be at least 75 percent owned by a craft brewer (you can’t be owned by a macrobrewer). That definition is fairly fluid, however, and subject to change with the politics of the brewing industry. Last year, Yuengling wasn’t craft beer. Now it is the top craft brewer in the country.

Whatever craft beer is, it’s more than numbers. Maybe it’s the intention behind the beer – is it a vehicle for revelry or revenue? Is Keith Villa’s facial hair considered craft or “crafty?” Beer is always worth discussing, but what you drink – or brew – doesn’t necessarily define you.

With this mentality, I visited one of Budweiser’s twelve American breweries in Cartersville, GA, which can crank out up to 7 million cans and 5 million bottles daily. (The speed of the canning line was borderline intimidating. They double check packages for proper volume with lasers.)

On an average day the Cartersville brewery alone produces 20,000 barrels of Budweiser and Bud Light, amongst other brands. These numbers are insane, as is the level of organization it takes to keep such an operation running. It also takes human beings.

Pure Intentions

My main guide was Head Brewmaster Sarah Schilling, whose knowledge was deeper than any of the 30+ massive fermenters, and more expansive than the 900,000 square feet of the brewery.

Sarah has held just about every job possible at Budweiser, and it shows. She was so full of information that I scarcely needed to ask a question in the few hours I spent there, simply doing my best to absorb the encyclopedic exhibition of knowledge, while observing the outward opulence and inward efficiency of the brewery. Sarah lives and breathes beer. 

The tour culminated with a trip to the Budweiser tasting room, where a group of highly trained tasters sample the day’s brews at every step of the process – from the purified water to the wort, and the finished product – every day.

I was given the chance to taste Budweiser in every stage of its metamorphosis as well, from simple purified water to wort, and from unfiltered Bud to the finished product. Unfiltered Budweiser is a good bit more flavorful than market-ready Budweiser, and though consistency and quality control concerns keep it off shelves, it would likely resonate more with the craft palate.

Each day Brewmaster Sarah Schilling samples her products at every step of the brewing process to ensure consistency. 

The tasting experience and intense engineering at work was fascinating, but more interesting was witnessing a side of Budweiser most people don’t get to see – a human side. When you pull back the curtain, the people making the beer are normal human beings making a living in a pretty cool way. Many have been doing it for decades, long before the craft vs. macro rabble came to the forefront, and are just as dedicated to the process as the smallest microbrewer. No matter the size of a corporate entity, there are humans in there somewhere. 

Opacity and Veracity

Much of the difference between macro and craft lies in corporate culture. Although Budweiser brewers may be passionate about all kinds of beer, what they brew is at the mercy of their business strategy. CEO Carlos Brito is renowned for cutting costs and increasing efficiency, neither of which lend themselves to experimentation. There is no room for error, and thus, little room for creativity on a mass scale. 

But they do leave a little room, comparatively, in the form of the 15-barrel AB Research Pilot Brewery, where there are no such rules. Attached to the St. Louis headquarters, imperial stouts and DIPAs emerge from the primordial mash alongside Lime-a-Ritas and Johnny Appleseeds, crafted by equally talented zymurgical wizards. Why do we only see the latter on shelves?

To brew an IPA under the Budweiser label would require a massive overhaul of both image and existing infrastructure, all the way to ingredient sourcing and cost. It takes a lupulin army to produce a truly resinous ale to scale, and despite how well the beer may sell, it’s counterintuitive to their strategy, for now.

Efficiency also leaves little room for transparency, another distinguishing factor between little and big. If you can’t see what’s going on, you can only assume the worst; especially if what you can see is an increasingly massive corporate zeppelin blotting out the sun. Which is why it’s important to stay in touch – and that goes for anything and anyone. The purest intentions of beer drinking suffer when we get hung up on superficialities. 

There may be irreconcilable differences when it comes to micro/macro business, but that’s not what any beer is about. Beer is meant to be shared. It’s the grease in the hinges of fellowship and revelry. You can chug it and still be a connoisseur. You can sip it and note the “beery esters.” Beer styles are variations on the theme of alcohol, just as race, gender, creed, sexual preference are all variations on the theme of humanity. We’re all human, and at the end of our metabolic processes, beer is beer.

Rather than getting caught up in the light or dark sides, the color of the beer, or where it’s from, perhaps it’s time we all take a page out of Michael Jackson’s book and “lighten up.”