Is the multinational behemoth that owns Budweiser—AB InBev—a threat to American beer? Democrats seem to think so. In their populist campaign manifesto for 2018, “A Better Deal,” they warn, “In the last year, InBev which owns Anheuser-Busch and is the world’s largest beer company, struck a deal to purchase SABMiller, the second largest. The companies have already announced that jobs will be cut as a result of the merger, and the resulting conglomerate will make it even harder for small, local breweries to compete.”
And that’s not all. Critics also mourn the loss of startup breweries bought by the Lager Leviathan. Once an independent brewery knuckles under to InBev, you see, it ceases to be, strictly speaking, a craft beer—even if the product is exactly the same. And that’s bad. One recent example is North Carolina’s Wicked Weed, which InBev bought earlier this year.
All this handwringing strikes The Scrapbook—which marvels at the selection of good beers now available in even the most modest of bodegas—as strange. Big Beer has been consolidating for as long as we can remember, and it hasn’t done them much good in their efforts to stop the little-guy upstarts. In 1980, there were fewer than 100 breweries in the United States, according to the Brewers Association. Now, after the decades-long explosion in craft beer, there are well over 5,000 American breweries, everything from brewpubs to microbreweries to the factories operated by the industrial big boys.
Since 2004, production of craft beers has nearly quintupled, driven mostly by microbreweries and regional brands. Overall beer consumption was stagnant last year, but craft beer sales grew by 6 percent, which means the dreaded Malt Monopolists, for all their market power, continue to lose ground to their small-scale competitors. Nor do they seem to be able to translate market dominance into inflated prices. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, since 1992 the price of beer has risen more slowly than overall inflation. By contrast, ground beef and bacon have climbed faster than overall inflation.
Despite conglomeration in the beer industry, we live in the golden age of American beer. Cheap beer keeps getting cheaper, and across the country, delicious, locally made craft beers proliferate for those who choose to enjoy artisanal alternatives. There are real choices for people of all tastes and budgets. It’s hard to find a better deal than that.
