Two bad tastes that taste bad together

There aren’t many companies in the big leagues of the beer game in the United States.  Truth be told, after the recent mergers there are only two major players in the game today: Anheuser-Busch InBev and Miller Coors.  Those two companies make up more then 80% of the beer sold in the USA.  You might think that’s enough for them, but they wouldn’t agree.  They want a piece of the Craft Brewer’s pie too!

The cold hard truth is that Americans are starting to pay attention to their taste buds, and they’re throwing their “Buds” in the trash.  The first half of this year, the big beer business was down 2.7% in sales while the independent market grew by 9%.  There is no way the mighty corporations would stand for this.  You might expect them to begin a smear campaign against independent breweries (like claiming the quality standards are bad) or running ads depicting people frowning as they drink “bitter” beers, but they haven’t gone down that road – yet.  Instead, they are doing something a bit more devious.  They’re pretending to be independent.

Beer. Do a body good!

Miller Coors announced the formation of a new beer in their line-up, but this isn’t just another Coors Ice Light Lager blah blah blah.  Nope.  They are forming a “separate” company that is going to be run “independently” of the corporate magnate.  It will be called Tenth and Blake Beer (named for the streets in Wisconsin and Colorado that house the company’s breweries) and they will be taking pains to ensure that you don’t know they are owned by Miller Coors by creating a unique marketing company to handle everything from the ads to the labels on the bottles.  DON’T BE FOOLED!  This is NOT an independent brewery!

If you want to ensure that you are only getting the best of the brews available, make sure to listen to the Talkingship Flagship podcast in which Nerves and Jitterbug review a new INDEPENDENT beer every week.

Sorry, Miller-Coors. You FAIL!