NB bought by AB/InBev?

I am not saying you are wrong. What you are saying may very well be the way things are. But the painful truth is, people look for cheap when they can get it. There is a very real reason why WalMart is the most successful retailer in the nation. Given the choice between a t-shirt for 15 bucks in the mom and pop shop, and the same t-shirt in WalMart for 8 bucks, the masses will go to WalMart. I am in a position where I can pay the extra bucks and support local business. I am the exception. I go to the local, individually owned Ace Hardware for what I can rather than Home Depot or Lowes. I paid 90 bucks in my local brew shop for a temperature controller rather than get it on line for 70. I love supporting the little guy, but I see many times on this forum where people donā€™t have that extra 20 or 30 bucks to spend. I am not rich, but I am doing well enough that I can spread my good fortune to local business and not at WalMart, Home Depot, and Lowes. Hopefully I can do that all my life, but if hard times ever come, I too will be looking for the cheapest route, because that is what will allow me to continue doing what I desire.

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Hi, my name is Jim. I sometimes drink a Bud, especially with pizza. :grin:
Seriously, this is a little disconcerting to me as well. BUT only if NB changes for the worse. So, Iā€™m willing to wait and see.

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New brewers are probably going to walk in and see this: the store is huge, smells of fresh barley, and there is a wall of 300 beer kits. The first 290 kits are clones of Budweiser and Bud Light. Ignorant new Brewer says ā€œhey I can make it myself!ā€ And never makes it to the last few kits, which are no longer Surly and local craft clones. Instead, theyā€™re a couple of clones of AB/InBevā€™s other portfolio brands. New brewer makes his first kit, which is designed to taste a little off even if made spot on with a full boil. New brewer says, ā€œWhy would I make this when I can buy it for cheaper and it tastes better?ā€ And he never hombrews again.

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I wasnā€™t looking to be right or wrong, Iā€™m stating my feelings on this. I too have a few extra bucks to spend on my hobby, and I DO support local. After all, isnā€™t that what made this nation so great? And of the last 30 plus years, seems as though, taking care of yer neighbor has gone to the roadside. Iā€™m not going to tell or criticize where and how anyone shops/buy, I will put my extra effort into keeping my hard working neighbors busy working. Iā€™m looking then to find out where some of these peeps Iā€™ve been communicating with are going to go, should they leave. It will be sad to never discuss brewing with them again. Sneezles61

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Or heā€™ll

  1. borrow (and later return :slight_smile: ) The Complete Joy of Homebrewing,
  2. brew his first batch with a friend, enjoying one bottle of homebrew (maybe a chocolate peanut butter imperial porter) that the friend made,
  3. enjoy the hobby so much that late one night, heā€™ll realize that

The truth about love hops comes at 3am
You wake up [ā€¦] and grab a pen
(hint: think pink, darn autocorrect, Think P!nk. :slight_smile: )

Probably time for me to clean and sanitize for brew day, but first ā€¦

Yup. ā€œGaming the systemā€ could be fun. Iā€™m hoping for 50% off on select books, but 1/2 off on streaming music services would be OK as well. :slight_smile:

Well, just because peeps may not shop at NB after the merger does not mean they will leave this forum. At least I would hope not.

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Maybe a good point. Let the pissyness fade and see what happens. Sneezles61

I hope that this does not change how NB does business. They have always been reasonably priced or the best with great customer service. I buy some of my stuff from them but no one online can beat prices on the bulk items I buy like sacks of grain. Shipping is too expensive. So to the LHBS I go. Neither one can beat bulk hops direct from a hop farm.

I stumbled onto the forum a long time ago, was asked to moderate but never had any requirements to meet. Found it to be one of the most friendly forums of any kind. If that doesnā€™t change, not all that much will change for me.

I do not like how big brewing controls the distributorship. Distributor A can not deliver the same beer distributor B sells. ā€œAā€ strong arms a bar into selling their product by making them a ā€œdealā€ they canā€™t refuse. B replies with something else. Sure thatā€™s business but in the mean time customers may not get what they want. I can see this at the bar just up the street from us. My wife drinks Miller Lite. He did not have it for months because he was either battling the Miller distrib or the Bud one gave him a great deal on something. It got to the point where she said ā€œletā€™s not come here anymoreā€ sad since it is within walking distance and no others are. Miller is back now thankfully.

Iā€™m thinking this will be good for the price point but bad for the little guys, the LHBS. Its the same approach as Walmart, grow as fast as possble, increase your buying power and push out the small guy. The sad thing is that there is not enough brewers to push back plus if we all go somewhere else, they will just buy them out. Once AB is in, there is no way to get them out and its just disappointing. It wonā€™t be long before we see NB kits that resemble the beers that they own so folks will buy them to compare to what they brewed. Its double profit at that point. Iā€™m going to do my best not to buy NB anymore.

Although I enjoy the forum (as much as I enjoy any forum), I have not made a lot of purchases from NB. When I first started brewing back in the 19??'s I made my first purchases from two LHBS, (well, 2 hrs drive), and still use them. Hopefully the level of service for those that use NB will not change.

To look up the list of global breweries owned by InBev is awesome. I took particular interest in how many UK breweries were on that list. Just three out of 1285. Bass, Boddingtons and Whitbread which to my mind never brewed a beer worth the effort of drinking. While most of the rest are rated as Private Brewery Pubs a few big names still survive independently of InBev, such as Fullers, Samuel Smith and Shepherd Neame. Say 20 years ago the big breweries owned the pubs which were run by tenants who could only buy from their parent brewery. Then the law was changed and demanded that the breweries had to sell of a high percentage of their pubs. This was when the small pubs failed in their droves as there isnā€™t much profit in beer meaning one had to also sell food. This is when the ā€œFree Houseā€ pubs blossomed meaning that they were ā€œfreeā€ to stock any make of beer that their customers wanted. The bottom line here is that InBev were only able to buy UK breweries and pubs that were the least popular and have since been forced to upgrade the food side of this business. So InBev do not have a magic wand that only picks out winners, but they do have deep pockets with which to improve their purchases. So their buying NB may have positive results.

Holy Cowā€¦my teams losing at halftime, and now I see this.

Yes Voodoo, losing and then someone pulls the plug on the drain too:tired_face: Sneezles61

I for one, will be throwing in the towel for both NB & MWS. I have spent hundreds of dollars to both over the past ~10 years & have a 6 keezer system & a custom built-in-wall 180 bottle wine rack to back that up. Having grown up in STL & having AB as a big local co was once a proud part of me being a st louisian, but their sellout to in bev a few years back cut me off from buying any of their products 100%. I read a story a few months back on how they had bought a micro brewery in Virginia which was deeply rooted with micro brewers along with annual events. Not anymore as this year was the last of the events. Now buying out NB & WMS after all their anti craft brew adds just goes to show they are a greedy corporate schmuck that only care about profit margins & less about quality. I feel sorry for the hard workers at NB & MWS since they did nothing wrong & have contributed to the success of NB & MWS, but I refuse to send my hard earned cash overseas to a greedy monopoly who are set on being biggest, even after they already are.

By the way, google already pointed me to www.morebeer.com & www.morewinemaking.com

Letā€™s just hope this forum doesnā€™t become a profit loser and inconvenience to InBev . Hopefully they will realize that that thousands of questions get answered here that could have resulted in a phone call to them. Of course they could deflect the calls to a call center in India where they make in a year what call center employees make in a month here then they can read from a script so you never get an answer. Donā€™t get me started :rage:

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Probably the only changes will be any post making derogatory comments about in Bev beers will be flagged and deleted. I thought about not posting here but Iā€™ll hang out for awhile and knock in Bev beers and companies. I know your listening

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You have no idea how tempted I am to flood the recipe thread with things like ā€œStack that paper, sonā€ lager brewed with rice, corn syrup, and aged on beechwood chips. But I feel bad for the NB moderator having to really be careful about this place. I was halfway expecting some sort of response on the forum from someoneā€¦ NB had a couple of users on here at one point.

Some of the craft beers they have acquired arenā€™t bad. While down in Florida I found Goose Island (from Chicago haha) Honkers Ale in the grocery and thought I would try it. Not bad. Then I see on the bottle ā€œbrewed in Baldwinsville NYā€ hmmm I live about 30 min from Bā€™ville and the only brewery there is a giant AB. I didnā€™t know at the time AB-IB bought them.

This must be clone brew in large scale. I will admit I never tasted a Goose Island beer before they bought them so I canā€™t tell if the beer is better, worse or the same.

Itā€™s not like a paid position they can leave any time. I
Think @dmtaylo2 used to moderate but now he just posts. Hate to lose more people.

Thats not the point. Itā€™s David vs Goliath IMO