I tend to get testy whenever someone who works in the craft beer business takes to praising insipid High Life or bland Banquet. That’s because craft beer exists as an explicit rejection of the mainstream, which at one point 40-odd years ago was an effective monopoly of one principal beer style manufactured by a tiny handful of producers.
Theirs was a revolution of uniformity. Ours was a counter-revolution of choice. It’s as simple as that. But if you side with the empire of wet air, and your favorite beer is ice-cold Michelob Ultra, that’s absolutely fine by me. Have at it, and drink as much as your bladder permits.
We have no disagreement, because as always, my testimony is intended for those who are inside this tent by choice. When it comes to the wider world of beer, and you know better, please spare me those self-abasing paeans to low common denominators; rather, act like you know better.
Got it? Love my position or hate it, at least I have a position, one that I’ve been buffing and polishing for four decades. An example is “The Beer World According to Spike,” as first published in the April, 1999 edition of Walking the Dog, the official newsletter of the F.O.S.S.I.L.S. homebrewing and beer appreciation club.
The distributorship that employed Spike at the time was Clark County Beverage (Indiana), which had previously bought out Spike’s original employer, Floyd County Beverage (or was it G & K?)
(Related reading: Local craft breweries “standing the test of time.”)
The rumors proved to be absolutely true, and a short time after I wrote this piece, Clark County Beverage was absorbed by Monarch Beverage ― subsequently to become one of the Midwest’s largest wholesalers, itself to be devoured more than two decades later by the nationwide Reyes conglomerate.
Then as now, it is my view that not one of these mergers and buy-outs did the first damned thing to make the world safe for better beer … but then, just as now, isn’t that the way the monopolistic capitalist system was intended to work? Beer buyouts and mergers aren’t about that elusive “free” market, are they?
Happily, noting that while “Spike” is a composite fictional character drawn from several experiences, he’s at least partly real, and has done well for himself during the past quarter-century. He’s an intelligent, multi-talented guy who has succeeded in two separate, completely different post-wholesaler careers.
No one asked me, but I’ve...Read more
