Yankee Brew News Archive

Opinion/Editorial: Do You Care? Do You Really Care?

Originally Published: 12/96

By: Donald S. Gosselin

Someone's got it in for me,

they're planting stories in the press.

Whoever it is, I wish they'd cut it out quick,

but when they will, I can only guess…

- Idiot Wind, by Bob Dylan

In what amounted to a cruise missile attack on the Boston Beer Company, Dateline NBC recently aired an alleged expose of the microbrewing industry. The teaser ads were a work of art -- a foreboding voiceover warned microbrew fans that they should not miss the episode. I wondered what Dateline was going to come out with, some cockamamie allegation about hops causing birth defects (they don't), or perhaps that all-malt beers are linked to lower IQ's (we understand the opposite to be true). But before I get into my opinion, let me first make this disclosure. The author of this opinion/editorial does NOT own any stock in the following corporations; General Electric, Boston Beer Company, Redhook or Anheuser-Busch.

There it is. It took Dateline NBC nearly twelve minutes to admit that their parent company, General Electric, was a shareholder in Redhook Brewing Company, which is also 25% owned by Anheuser-Busch. In the interest of fairness, I figured I'd lay my cards on the table a little bit sooner than NBC did.

Now for my take on this.

Never, in eight years of covering the craft brewing movement, have I seen such a blatant "hit piece" on a craft brewer. The Dateline story made much of the fact that the vast majority of Samuel Adams' beers are made, not in the tiny Jamaica Plain brewery, but in larger plants such as Rochester's Genessee Brewing Company and the Pittsburgh Brewing Company. Strangely enough, Anheuser Busch purchased a full page ad in the Boston Globe the very next day. The ad, which featured larger-than-life sized bottles of Michelob and Sam Adams Lager, asked the reader to identify which beer was actually brewed in New England. I guess neither Dateline nor Anheuser-Busch has ever picked up a copy of this newspaper, where Jim Koch's enterprise has always been described as a "contract brewery".

The fact of the matter is, Sam Adams' labels already give the drinker that information; "…under Special Agreement at Pittsburgh, PA." I guess that disclosure wasn't enough for Dateline. They made a big stink about Sam's commercials being filmed in front of its Jamaica Plain pilot brewery. If Dateline NBC really believes that Sam uses that tiny 7 barrel brewery to pump out a million barrels of beer a year, I'd like to offer them the following test designed to measure their grasp of reality:

1. Juan Valdez hand picks the coffee beans used to brew my morning cup of Colombian coffee. (TRUE/FALSE)

2. Keebler Cookies are, in fact, made by elves in green costumes who live in trees.

(TRUE/FALSE)

3. Green Giant frozen vegetables are grown in a valley zealously guarded by a fifty foot tall green colored man. (TRUE/FALSE)

It's ironic that neither Dateline nor Anheuser-Busch mentioned that Budweiser used to be labeled "Brewed by Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis Missouri at (city name, state name," e.g., Jacksonville, Florida or St. Louis, Missouri etc. etc.) That's right, Bud used to tell the consumer exactly where its beer was manufactured. However, Bud ceased that practice in the early 1980s. I don't remember anyone being upset over it. I don't remember anyone giving a damn where their Budweiser was brewed, so long as it was consistent. And believe me, Bud was always consistent.

I don't care much about what American brewery produces the Sam Adams Boston Lager that I so much enjoy. Judging by their sales in New England, I don't think you care either. What we really care about is that Sam is crafted by Sam's brewers with the best quality ingredients, hops and malts, that money can buy, that it is made in the great German tradition of Reinheitsgebot, and that its recipe does not include rice, corn or other "cereal grains". If Sam ever changes any of these practices or ingredients, Now that's a story!

As for Anheuser-Busch, they ought to knock it off, or risk alienating the very market they wish to recapture. In short--don't waste your money on attack ads--put it into the beer.