Cryin' in your beers

Interesting commentary on the purchase earlier this week of Anheuser-Busch by the Belgian brewer InBev -which happens to make my favorite summer beer, Stella Artois. You know what that means, don't you? Now you're all going to be drinking snotty Belgian beer! Hahahahahahahahaha...... Beer snobs unite!

Seriously, I don't get the drama. Budweiser tastes like fermented bat piss, it's only remotely palatable when it's ice cold and, as this column points out, they've driven countless regional American beers out of existence. To quote, Bud is the alcoholic equivalent of McDonald's or Wal-Mart. Bland, featureless, ruthlessly corporate, tasteless and with such a low alcohol content you have to drink a whole damned case of it to get a good buzz. (They do have the best ads, though...)

But that's just a personal preference. I do have my moments - usually involving being out in the sun for several hours, sometimes with exhaust fumes involved - where Bud hits the spot. But calm down, people...It's not like they're going to stop making the stuff.

Now, my beer snobbery is well-documented. But judging by the sudden creation of the anti-Bud bandwagon in certain corners of the blogosphere, it looks like it might be time to nominate "trashing Budweiser" for an entry on the Stuff White People Like blog. It's always been interesting to me that hipsters who want to prove their street cred get into sh*tty cheap beers like PBR or Miller High Life, but would rather die than drink Bud, or Coors, or Miller Lite. (Maybe some sh*tty cheap beers go better with their iTunes-downloaded copies of "Live From Folsom Prison" and their Obama-stickered Priuses than others, I dunno.) Should A-B's move lead to some backlash-induced drop in their market share (doubtful), they can always take comfort in the fact that at least then elitist white college kids will suddenly decide that Bud Light is cool.

We real beer snobs, on the other hand, will stick with our Stella and seasonal Sam. And Guinness, of course, once it's not so muggy outside.

[By the way, I cannot believe no one's yet made a NASCAR/Jean Girard joke. C'mon, it's just sitting there on the tee, waiting for you to take a swing...]