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America is good at finding things to fret about that really aren't worth the trouble. For instance, for the past few days, every front page has sported ominous headlines about some plunge in stock prices, along with dire musings about what this portends.
Has the level of the Dow-Jones or the Standard &
Poors ever directly affected you or me? It's no more
relevant to daily life than President Bush's ringer
percentage; as J.P. Morgan once commented about the stock
market, It will fluctuate.
Another bogus worry surfaced recently when Heileman Brewing Co. proposed that the Coors acquisition of Stroh brands be blocked on anti-trust grounds.
We have anti-trust laws because there was a fear at the turn of the century that one company, or several firms acting together, might gain a monopoly in a vital industry, and thus gouge the public.
It is hard to argue that brewing is all that vital; from 1920 to 1933, America managed without any sort of brewing industry.
Further, even if Anheuser-Busch did succeed in its goal of making sure that your purchases were limited to Bud, Bud Dry, Bud Light, Bud Premium, Bud Cheap and Bud Alcohol-Free, that wouldn't keep you from drinking any other kind of beer you liked.
Real beer is made from barley and hops, which you can grow in your yard if necessary -- which it isn't, since homebrewing is quite legal and there are many suppliers of two-row malt, lager yeast, hop cones, bottle caps, etc. If you brew your own, though, it won't taste quite like the store-bought stuff, since your beer won't have rice, corn, sulfuric acid, propylene glycol and the other adjuncts that many commercial brewers use to adulterate beer.
(Note that beer ads always sell image, not taste or quality. Bud Light guys are tough and independent; Silver Bullet folks love to party hearty; Millerlites are has-been jocks. The industry spends more on marketing than it does on ingredients, which clearly demonstrates its priorities.)
As recently as the start of this decade, there was good reason to fear an end to competition in the brewing industry, and Heileman's contention might have made some sense. In 1970, there were 154 breweries in America; that was down to 82 in 1982. It looked as though a tradition of diversity in American beer would end ingloriously with a few image-conscious light brews which all tasted alike.
But look what's happened since then. By 1987, America had 120 breweries, and that number has doubtlessly risen since then.
These new breweries do not mass-produce national brands.
Many serve local markets and fill niches that the big
operators have abandoned: all-malt lagers, ales, wheat
beers, stouts, porters, and scores of other varieties that
had previously been available only from foreigners. Others
are brew-pubs
-- what they brew is not bottled or
canned, but is sold on draught only on the premises.
Boulder Beer, established a decade ago in a shed on a goat farm, was a harbinger. Now brew-pubs are sprouting in cities, and many ski towns are getting their own little breweries. This trend continues a tradition that somehow got interrupted -- Colorado once had two dozen local breweries; three in Leadville alone, and others in such spots as Fairplay, Telluride, Trinidad, Bonanza, Granite and Silverton.
Many of the resurgent beers will appear at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver this weekend; if you've got the time, they've got brews which will demonstrate that beer can offer a rich and interesting taste, rather than ice-cold calorie-counting fizz.
The American brewing industry is more competitive than it has been for decades, no matter what Heileman charges in its request for an anti-trust suit. And with good beer, why should anyone care about the stock market?
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