Budweiser Makes Limited-Edition Sampler Pack to Woo Craft Beer Crowd

You think? I would have guessed the always popular bud select 55.

I hate to bring bad news but every beer company in the country wants their beer on the shelf, and wants the beer of their competition to not be on the shelf. I have even more bad news. If a company becomes so popular that distributors make lots of money selling their products, when that company tells a distributor to do something, such as giving them preference, the distributor listens.

I have good news too. Right now ABInBev is trying to put every craft brewer out of business. Despite this we are growing 13% annually, and they are declining. It seems that they aren't very good at stopping better beer from reaching consumers, in fact, if observable facts can be used as evidence, they fucking suck at it, and they probably won't be any good at making a truly better beer.

Kinda feel like watching someone's grandpa trying to prove they're still "hip". Embarrassing and sure to end poorly.

I bought a 12 pack for $12.49; none are truly up to craft quality. Ironically, the darkest one, from California, was not, IMHO, as good as the east coast one (Williamsburg, VA); the St. Louis offering was the least. Slightly better than BMC's; but opt for a Batch 19 if you want a BMC attempt at craft.

^^^This.

There is a HUGE market for fake craft beer over in Belgium & not just Belgium ( also for instance UK, France, South-East Asian…) with brands like Leffe & Grimbergen selling wonderfully worldwide – hell even Stella Artois gets along magnificently as a “superior” beer in many markets. Budweiser is still figuring this out but I do not see why there wouldn’t be a big market for stuff like this in the USA. How is this giftpack doing? Is it selling well?

This reminds me of the fake moonshine I keep seeing at liquor stores that is flavored with fruit. It's basically Popov with maraschino cherries in the bottom of a mason jar, slap a $22 price tag on it and you have marketing gold. Don't support Inbev's marketing team, same old bud in a fancy bottle and a touch of vanilla.

I would have bought it if it was in a four pack, but I cant commit to a 12 pack of the unknown. That goes for other breweries as well, I have never picked up a sampler pack that I thought was worth it. The closest I have come is Sierra Nevada's beer camp, but the floral IPA just didn't do it for me and the imperial red is the only one I thought was an A beer.

I wanted to give all three beers a chance.

I really did.

But quite honestly? A waste of my money. I'm sure their brewmasters brewed something decent and then it got wrung through A-B's mode of ruthless consistency, ruining whatever their original vision was intended to be.

Except that they've taken good beers and made them mind-numbingly boring.

If I see some of these beers on a Mix 6pk shelf, I might some of these up. Wouldn't buy the 12pk though. I could see this appealing to the Heineken/ Corona crowd.

I will not buy this because quite frankly the beers sound terrible. Why would I want something with "a little more hop character than Budweiser"? And I'm not exactly enthused about a beer I envision will be a worse version of the already terrible Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale. I try to avoid BMC at all costs, but I honestly would buy from them if they would mass-produce authentic German lagers instead of their rice water and fake craft garbage, if only because they're somewhat hard to find.

Good luck with that..

None of my hard earned money will go to AB or any of those jokers who work with the best of the best brewing technology and continue to make pure junk liquid. I do still buy Goose Island from time to time, but idk how long I'll continue given the latest news of the main man and head brewer leaving.. I'll still consider it for now as long as a big bunch of bs doesn't get changed, but it's just a wait and see thing I'll be keeping a close watch on. As for the crap they released with twist caps and claiming its top shelf stuff to win us over is ridiculous. I'm a small business owner and a beer snob.. Those 2 things allow me to have appreciation for the guys who do it right. If AB wanted to impress craft beer nation then they should have left Goose Island be. I'm not saying dont buy them... I'm simply saying goose island ran a year or so owned by AB and everything and everyone was left the same. If you really wanted to impress us then you should have left the Chicago brewery alone and you shouldn't have brought the shock top lad in. Has AB not realized that this is one industry's following that just can't be won over or purchased? We want good beer. We know who can craft good beer and we won't settle for less. No matter how much cash is dumped into it. Idc what they release. I still say piss on AB and all the other crap when the topic is brought up and most of the time it's not given the worthiness of even being mentioned among my conversations. I feel for the craft folks in the Chicago area and even more so when the brewery was first sold given that it's roots and soul have been ripped out from under it due to the departure of the 2 greats who HAD to leave. They knew what AB was about to do and stepped out wanting no part of it.

Great post right here,with a healthy attitude right here right here

Stella is not Budweiser, Hoegaarden is not Blue Moon. You may not like who now owns them but they are not beers without merit.

"Lagers and pilsners are no bueno"....spoken like a true BA Hop Hound. I pity you who said this.

Sometimes I fell like 90% of BA regulars do everything they can to keep the beers I love off the shelves.

This.

Also, most breweries are unable to sell outside their state because they are making all the beer they can and the demand is so high that locals buy everything they brew. People buy their beer and sell/trade with a 1000% profit, typical for a market that has much more agregate demand than supply.

With all that in mind it's obvious that AB has little to do with craft beers reaching the shelves, once they sell every single bottle they produce.

There's a supply restriction indeed. Craft breweries can sell everthing they want and only need to increase their output level if they want to sell more beer.

There's like 100 different products I want to buy right now and I cannot buy because the brewery is unable to brew enough and not because AB is working against it.

Stella tastes like Budweiser, sorry. And Hoegaarden and Blue Moon taste the same too. I know they're different, but they're made to appeal the the Lowest Common Denominator of people because that sells to the most people.

And lagers and pilsners taste roughly like urine 99 out of 100 times. I love stouts, porters, oak aged beers, Belgians and sours so that may explain my dislike for bland, flavorless LCD beer.

the batch no. 91406 is going to be the new Bud Black Crown

Here is something to ponder...

Do you hate the macro breweries because they make poor quality beer, because that beer is popular, or because they were the only companies to survive Prohibition and were thus the first to get their proverbial flag in the sand and shape America's beer scene? If Stone or Sam Adams or Founders became as large as ABInBev and started aggressively marketing to keep other beers off the shelves, would you boycott them too?

What if they saw the light and diverted superbowl ad money into making genuinely GOOD beer? What if they made an IPA that put all others to shame and could push it to grocery stores for $18 for a 12 pack? I can only see two reasons to buy craft beer: quality, and supporting local breweries. I buy Sam Adams, Stone, Founders and Dogfish because they are good, and Sweetwater, Red Brick, and Red Hare because I like to keep my money where I live.

And as for popularity, brand loyalty is pretty much the only reason why beers like Busch and Schlitz even exist anymore. And light beers are probably here to stay, since people like the fact that you can get a buzz for less than 100 calories. If people only cared about taste, Diet Coke simply wouldn't exist.

Well over 600 breweries with links to pre-Prohibition companies survived to re-open after Repeal (out of a total over 700 breweries by 1934).

AB was the #1 brewery in the those first few years of legal beer in the mid-'30's but had under 2% of the US beer market. Miller was much smaller (probably in the 20's) - there were 3 other breweries in Milwaukee alone that were larger. Coors was even smaller, brewing under 100,000 bbl./yr the first year, so less than 1/10 the size of AB.

The era of "BMC" as the Big 3 began in 1990 when Coors finally passed Stroh for the #3 spot (and it technically ended in 2007 with the merged MillerCoors, and the start of the Big Two era)..

Honesty I think this is why you see things like that other thread about smaller brewers trying to distance themselves from the big guys by making "craft beer" an exclusive thing. I mean they used to be able to distance themselves by saying that they made better beer and guys like AB just made light bland lager. But I can easily see in the very near future a company like AB realizing where the growth is and putting out a solid, well made IPA or APA. I mean it would be hard to deny that the brewers who work at AB breweries aren't people with a lot of skill, so I am sure if they came up with an IPA recipe it could be at least good. And with their suppliers and distribution they could probably sell it for even less than $18 for 12.

And as late as the late 70s, Coors was still so regional that a movie could be made about bootlegging a truckload of Coors to the east coast (Smokey and The Bandit).

Yeah, didn't cross the Mississippi until 1981. They were big enough on the western side of the country that they were already the #6 brewer with over 13% of the market (larger than their share in 2007 when the MillerCoors merger occurred, IIRC).

Of course, once you hit the Rockies back then, there were few strong regional brewers left --- all the way to the Pacific coast. Olympia was probably the last - and it'd be swallowed by Pabst a year or two later.

I remember Coors being a big deal to people who went out skiing in Colorado and would come back raving about it. Like the Kalik Gold I enjoyed in the Bahamas, I think it had a lot more to do with setting than flavor.

$

"DEEP AMBER! DEEP GOLDEN!" Well I'm convinced.

I bought the 12 pack of three different beers. All seem to be too sweet and no hops. Waste of money. Won't please Bud drinkers or Craft beer drinkers. Not bad beer just weird IMO. And I liked the American Ale try from a while back but it sold at a craft beer price in my area and was too tame to compete in that area. They should stick to pumping out the Bud Light and forget craft beer. Or invite in some home brewers to show them how to make tasty beer!