Break Up Budweiser. (And Molson Coors too.)

Do you have a date (or year) when this reformulation occurred?

Do you personally prefer this newly formulated beer over the old version?

Cheers!

 

Yes I did completely, my apologies

You're right, it should be illegal in the soda industry too. It's not a product I have consumed for well over a decade so it doesn't ever occur to me.

I disagree with that notion. I believe that they have achieved their choke hold on the mainstream beer market in much of the world by leveraging a long series of literally illegal actions combined with continual mergers. I'm not impressed by the business acumen of someone who's strategy is to purchase the competition until they are the market

That's definitely true, but their is a tendency toward a more community minded and broader approach to the act and purpose of 'business' in the craft beer community. There are craft brewers I avoid for the same business reasons that I avoid corporate beer. But there are mountains of craft brewers that I wish I could support more because they are true assets to their community.

I agree that deregulation is probably a big part of the fix, but I also thinks it's pretty obvious that preventing mergers that create a company with large fractions of a given market is an easy way to avoid many of the problems we see with AB over the decades. There are actual options for an establishment if you don't have to worry about whether or not you can carry anything from a portfolio that represents 40% of the total market

 

It's vague as for when as well as kinda confusing "...the ratio of hops, grains and yeast" are the same, even tho' they dropped the corn grits adjunct? They were using hop extract by the early '80s - in the same "ratio" as the whole hops they likely used after Repeal? They really kept the IBUs the same from the '30s to the "craft boom" ? That's pretty unlikely.

---- Point Brewery Celebrates Point Special Lager

 

They (A-B, before AB-Inbev) rose to the top of the USA brewing industry in the 50's, when their strategy was to build capacity and provide what the consumer would buy in high volume. Their pivot on light beer (in the 70's? IIRC), when Miller was threatening their market position, is an example of their responsiveness to consumer demand.

The acquisition strategy (especially of craft brewers) started after they themselves were acquired, where they are fighting decline rather than growing to dominance. You can't really engage in some of these illegal tactics effectively until you do have market dominance, at least locally.

(The details are more complex than that, of course, but that is the broad picture, I think. Perhaps @jesskidden can correct any misconceptions I may have.)

 

Well, they were a bit late to market with their light beers. What was originally dubbed "Anheuser-Busch Natural Light", circa 1977, and was typically shortened by retailer and consumers to "Bud Light" or "Busch Light" (depending on market since "Busch Beer" was still not national) much to the chagrin of AB which didn't want to "cannibalize" the Budweiser brand [things have changed] and Michelob Light 1978 or so. ABNL was originally marketed in the premium price segment - so same as Budweiser, in some markets a bit more than the flagship.

By '77-'78, there were already Schlitz Light, Oly Light, Coors Light, Pabst Light and Pabst Extra Light, Pearl Light, Peter Hand Light, Schmidt's Light and Gablinger's, Fyfe & Drum Extra Lyte (Genesee), Heileman Light and probably others. Bud Light née Budweiser Light doesn't get released until 1982, eventually outsells Miller Lite sometime in the mid/late '90s and then tops Budweiser in 2001.

A couple of my favorite quotes from August Busch III. In 1967, when asked if his brewery was going to brew a "diet beer" (a term used for those first "light beers" like Gablinger's and Meister Brau Lite):

10 years later, as AB was first toe-tipping into light beer, when ABIII was asked what caused the sudden popularity of "light beer":

Well, there were these two partial investments :


Which eventually meant AB owning minority portions of Kona and Goose Island because of Widmer Bros. investments into those two breweries. That was AB and GI's "first date"...

 

Speaking of Busch beer I thought the description of events surrounding the dropping of Bavarian from the Busch label found in this book written by a marketing guy to be quite interesting, essentially explaining the move over to the Busch beer name (and wider distribution with new packaging, and as is noted in some advertisements, a new recipe that was lighter, the latter point of which isn't mentioned by the marketing guy however) as an attempt to position Busch beer as a competitor to Coors, ahead of a planned eastward expansion by that brand.

I thought the story made intuitive sense in explaining some of the moves surrounding Busch (the new name/label, marketing and recipe changes), even as I'm unsure as to how accurate it is.