Photo credit: The Guardian.
From the moment in March of 2011 that the papers were signed formalizing the purchase of Goose Island Beer Co. in Chicago by what was then called Anheuser-Busch InBev, I began referring to Goose Island (probably the first American brewpub I ever visited, and adored) as Zombie Goose.
That’s because it had ceased to exist in the form we previously knew it, henceforth to be utilized by a corporate monolith to shift money to its shareholders, away from genuine independent brewers. It wasn’t Goose Island any longer. As with Monty Python’s parrot, Goose Island was no more. It had ceased to be. Expired and gone to meet its maker, a late brewery, stiff and bereft of life, and so on.
Problem was that a subculture had come into existence dedicated to the unquestioned proposition that possession of Goose Island’s annual Bourbon County Stout release, and a subsequent diaplay of one’s hoarding on social media, was the be-all and end-all of beer aficionado-dom.
I questioned it, and I’m sure there remain BCB fetishists out there who curse my name each year when they gleefully display their booty on Instagram.
At the time, Anheuser-Busch InBev’s malicious tactics in opposition to craft beer were about as obvious as the sun’s ascent each morning, and I needn’t recount any of it here. The monolith’s intent in acquiring Goose Island, and its subsequent purchase of a dozen more breweries like Goose, was to control shelf space and prevent visibility on the part of less well-heeled competitors.
This was how Anheuser-Busch InBev came to be what it had become. It’s how the Busch mafia eliminated post-war domestic breweries to consolidate market share. All of it was clear; give Anheuser-Busch InBev your money, and Anheuser-Busch InBev will use it to stifle craft beer.
The very existence of Bourbon County Stout froze a generation of enthusiasts in their tracks, no doubt as Anheuser-Busch InBev intended. Look in the dictionary for “cognitive dissonance,” and there’s a picture of a picture of a supposed craft beer lover, directing a flame thrower against an actual craft beer, with a glass of Goose in his hand.
Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes.
I did it too, once, several years later.
A little ditty about Roger and Nadorff. Bourbon County Stout? Who cares?
