Beer on public radio

On today’s Marketplace program is a short piece on the burgeoning movement of canning beer amongst craft brewers.

What I’m about to say is a matter of some debate, but good beer — really good beer — often comes from microbreweries. They typically cost more, but conventional wisdom holds microbrews are better than mass-produced fizzy yellow stuff in part because they usually come in bottles.

Whose conventional wisdom, I wonder. Certainly nobody I know.

Anyway, it’s worth a few minutes of your time. Go and give a listen.

Oh, and if you can leave comments, see if you can straighten out the doofus who said “American beer aficionadi tend to drink their beer *from the bottle.*” (I can’t seem to leave comments on the story.)

Are big beer mergers good for craft brewers?

Speaking of Heineken’s purchase of FEMSA, Public Radio’s Marketplace had a story on how consolidation of brewing giants can help craft brewers.

Marketplace: Are beer mergers a good brew for biz?

Uli Bennewitz owns the Weeping Radish Farm Brewery in Jarvisburg, N.C. He also runs a butchery and an organic farm.

Everybody is wary of “where does this stuff come from?” There is clearly a move towards local, local, local. And I think that is an advantage for small breweries.

They also follow up with a bit of analysis on the Marketplace blog:

Maketplace Scratch Pad: One world, one beer company?

Paddy [Hirsch] recently visited Stone Brewing Company near San Diego, and they told him they loved it when the big companies merged. The mergers turn off beer-drinkers, perhaps in principle but also because something bad seems to happen to the flavor of a decent beer when it gets swallowed up by a mega-corporation. People start looking for alternatives.