We’ve only been living in this post-craft beer world for a week and it’s already devolving into accusations of fake news and alternative facts.
Golden Road Brewing, an L.A. brewery that was purchased in 2015 by AB InBev as part of the company’s “High End” line, announced plans to open a brewery in Oakland in March. More recently, the president of Golden Road, Meg Gill, spoke with Oakland residents — including people who are against letting a company like AB InBev into a community that focuses on local business.
According to Nick Miller at the East Bay Express, “she suggested more than once that Golden Road wasn’t really even associated with Anheuser-Busch, even telling a group of residents on Wednesday that “non-factual opinion columns” are trying to paint Golden Road as part of Anheuser-Busch, and that such reports are — her words — “fake news.””
Fake news. So here we are beer lovers. Truly, nothing is sacred from the tricky language used in politics.
Fact: Golden Road is indeed owned by AB InBev. Also fact: It will most definitely be encroaching on two independent breweries, Temescal Brewing and Drakes Dealership, in the nearby area. Also fact: Golden Road has the money to make a blow-out beer garden extravaganza that will take business away from the independent breweries.
According to permits dug up by Nick Miller at the East Bay Express, Golden Road plans to open a 7,000-square-foot brewery and beer garden with beer, food, fire pits, and structures built out of shipping containers.
If a craft brewery owner wants to take a big paycheck from a huge company, well, that’s their decision. Money is nice. Just don’t try and say it’s fake news that you’re owned by AB InBev after selling.
Just another day in this post-craft world, I guess. In other beer news:
You don’t get meaner the more beer you drink, you’re just a mean person
Psychologists at the University of Missouri conducted a study that tested whether our personalities change as much as we think they do when we get drunk. Some people thought they were funnier when they drank, others thought they were meaner. Turns out people simply think a lot of wrong things about themselves when they drink.
“Participants felt like they were really affected by alcohol,” Rachel Winograd, a clinical psychologist who helped run the study and the owner of an amazing last name, told Newsweek, “whereas observers didn’t perceive such drastic changes.”
You’re also not as cool as you think you are when you drink. Science says it’s time to be more aware.
The next target market for mega brewers? Non alcoholic beer
By 2025, AB InBev aims to make 20 percent of its beers 3.5 percent alcohol by volume or less. Heineken, the second largest brewer in the world (and now the owner of Lagunitas) is getting into the non alcoholic beer market as well with Heineken 0.0.
Everyone, it seems, is kinda over traditional beer drinkers. Especially those mean craft beer drinkers in Oakland. That, or the two companies smell money and are seizing an opportunity. Probably the latter. But if you like the taste of light beer and adjunct lager yet don’t want to drink, this is terrific news.
