Beer at war twitters my beer mug

March 5, 4:43 PMBeer ExaminerCharlie Papazian

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All images and photos from Beer Wars Trailer.  Used
with permission.

Seconds after Beer Wars Movie producer Anat Baron twittered “Beer at War”  I began to reassess a previous post “For one night a beer war will sweep America.” 

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One night?  Well, yes the live event on April 16 will premiere the satellite high-definition feed to the big screen.  That will be for only one night, but now I’m wondering what’s with this idea that beer is at war.

Anat’s recent tweet “Beer at war” resonated with recent insigth I took away from having attended Beer Business Daily’s annual Beer Industry Summit.  This was strictly an inside the industry event, featuring speakers on the topic relevant to International large brewing corporations, distributors of beer, retailers of beer and those small brewers who use the distribution/retail networks to get their beers to their beer drinkers.  

The large international brewers include (SAB)Miller(Molson)Coors, Anheuser-Busch Inbev (ABI), Heineken, FEMSA (Mexican: Tecate, Sol, Dos Equis, Carta Blanca, Coca Cola, etc.), Grupo Modelo (Mexican: Corona, Modelo, Pacifico, etc.), Carlsberg, Diageo (Guinness, Red Stripe, etc.).  The pressure to increase share holder value by increasing profits is top of mind for these companies, make no doubt about it.   This is the principal reason for the continuing consolidations and mergers.  The end is not in sight.

At the Beer Industry Summit http://beerbusinessdaily.com/ several speakers emphasized that mergers and consolidation in the beer distribution network continues with no end in sight for the foreseeable future.  Why?  With big brewers seeking to gain more profit from their operations they look at efficiencies which distributor consolidation brings.  There’s a problem here, because many distributors like the lucrative business of distributing beer; receiving it from the breweries and reselling to retailers.   The problems don’t stop there.  Several big box stores want to increase their share of the beer profits.  Some have openly considered bypassing the distributor and getting their beer directly from the brewer.  Good thing? Bad thing?  We won’t get into that here.

Meanwhile small brewers look on from the edge of their seats.  They have fewer options to get their beer from their brewery to the beer drinker.  Being small is not without anxiety about the future.  In a world of rules, legislation, regulation, systems designed for large corporation commerce, sometimes small brewers don’t get attention.  Challenges?  That’s an understatement if you are a small and independent brewer.  

People have been wondering about the name of Anat Baron’s movie, “Beer Wars.”  Is it really a war?  If the movie is anything about my discussion above, perhaps she could have called it “Beer and High Anxiety?”   Beer Love it isn’t.  

In the big world of beer the conflicts and heightened tensions are very real.  At the level these “wars” are being fought, the beer drinker is hardly considered in the conversation.  I’ve been to enough of these kinds of meetings to stand by that statement.  I anticipate Beer Wars the movie will offer a glimpse of how the beer drinker fits into all this.  Where does your beer come from?   Does it matter who makes your beer?   Will it matter how your beer gets to you (if it gets to you at all)?  Who has the beer drinkers’ best interest in mind? 

In this day and age of increased transparency,  if independence, freedom of choice and open markets are threatened, American people get annoyed; very annoyed.