Why Drinking Budweiser Hurts the Craft Beer Community

To me it's pretty obvious.

When you chose to buy InBev/MillerCoors, who own 4/5 of the U.S. beer market, you are funding their lawyers and lobbyists who in turn work to pass laws against the craft beer community, such as the three-tier distribution law.

In addition, you are not spending this money on a local craft brew, which does nothing to help a local craft brewer grow and create new great beers.

But why should we even support craft beer? Here are just a few of the reasons: craft beers are good for health, have a great variety, taste great, made with better and fresher ingredients, provide jobs (craft brewers provide over 110,000 jobs), and create community. You won't need much convincing after you step into a local craft brewery and witness the dozens of people socializing, learning about the ingredients, the process, and the various styles.

Besides Budweiser and Coors, don't be fooled by "crafty" beers, such as Blue Moon, Shock Top, and Goose Island - examples of brews that are not made by independent companies—their parent companies are MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch InBev—yet which market themselves as craft beers.

What business can be defined as an American craft brewer? The Colorado-based Brewers Association has three criteria: It must be small, independent, and traditional. More specifically, the brewer must produce no more than 6 million barrels of beer annually, less than one-quarter of the business can be owned or controlled by a company that’s not a craft brewer, and the products must be made with traditional ingredients such as malted barley.

Facts about craft beer in the US:

The craft brewing sales share in 2013 was 7.8% by volume and 14.3% by dollars (a 15% increase over 2012)

2,822 total breweries operated in 2013, the highest total since 1887 (with 2,011 breweries)

Craft beer shipments are now exceeding the shipments of Budweiser, the brewery’s flagship lager, and proclaimed “King of Beers.”

The good news is that craft beer is becoming ubiquitous. However, this is leading AB InBev to go on a craft beer acquisition spree, infiltrating from within and creating an identity crisis for the craft beer community.

Sources:

That Craft Beer You’re Drinking Isn’t Craft Beer. Do You Care? 
BREWERS ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCES 2013 CRAFT BREWER GROWTH