Beer Wars
In visiting numerous pubs in the UK, I found the predominant draw to be real ale. I talked to a bunch of people in pubs while I was there and realized the conclusion I had come to before leaving home was correct: in the US, we have virtually nothing like real cask ale which is, thankfully, abundant in the UK. It seems that in the sixties, beer companies tried to do away with it in favor of keg draft systems, an event halted by a grassroots movement called CAMRA or Campaign For Real Ale. This organization assures the availability of real ale and properly-poured imperial pints.
The documentary Beer Wars identifies the American dilemma. Thanks to prohibition and subsequent corporate domination post-prohibition, some 95% of the beer market here is controlled by big breweries that mass produce light lagers. In other words, like a great many things in America, beer has been harmed by both a fundamentalist fad and unchecked greed and monopoly. Ironic, since you would think the US would have had more variety and opportunity in the market than Britain.
All is not lost, however. American breweries have multiplied exponentially since the early 1980′s, and today there are more beer varieties made here than anywhere else in the world. Microbreweries, which do technically exist in the UK as well, have found a profitable niche market in the US. I first began to notice that (the best) local shops were creating beer aisles organized much in the way a wine selection would read, with categories for various imports, domestics, styles, and flavors. As the documentary shows, small breweries and a few re-imagined old names are clawing at the market and have a monopoly on quality to most tongues.
The counter-weight to this development, and where the corpratocracy again looms are the reactionary big business campaigns to buy out, crush, and exclude newcomers from the market. The documentary profiles several small brewery owners, for example from Dog Fish Head.
