Boozin’ Blog

It should come as no real surprise that Inbev shareholders have approved the deal to buy Anheuser-Busch. Only two more hurdles remain - approval by Anheuser-Busch shareholders and regulatory clearance – but there’s little doubt that the big beer buy will go through.

It’s interesting that this was the year Anheuser-Busch starting pushing the idea of “American lager” and “American ale.” Although the marketing plans were in place well before the first offer from Inbev some are already pointing to the brewer’s use of American as a cynical attempt to make beer drinkers overlook the foreign ownership. I suspect that this perception will deepen with time as people look back at 2008 as the year Inbev bought A-B and the same year that American began to appear prominently on the advertising and labels for Budweiser.

Actually they began using American because they decided that with Budweiser American Ale they would define the idea of “American ale” in the same way that Budweiser has come to represent “American lager.” They have a pretty strong argument in the lager category. Although Budweiser appeared on the scene around thirty years after lager began being sold in a commercially viable way in the US it has since become one of the best known exemplars of American lager.

But I’m not so sure is that’s possible to do with ale. There are so many different types of ale that it seems unlikely any one can serve as the quintessential ale. Can one particular ale serve to represent the family of beers that includes IPA, stout, barley wine and hefeweizen? This is also true of lagers but American’s are not nearly as familiar with different lager types as they are ales.

Also, while the craft beer “revolution” is roughly as old as was the lager business was when Budweiser lager appeared, Americans are more educated about beer and more familiar with style variations now.

Anheuser-Busch is facing an uphill battle if they hope to define ale for Americans.

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