If thereâs anything the Pacific Northwest lovesâbesides rain, flannel, and the satisfying sense of superiorityâitâs craft beer, the unique, sturdy brew that reflects the history and agriculture of where itâs made and is painstakingly created at independently owned and operated breweries. In Portland, weâre lucky: As one of Americaâs first craft beer hotspots, the city is drenched with the stuff.
But even in this wondrous beer utopia, itâs harder than one would expect to find truly independent breweries. Figuring out if a pint comes from a hard-working local brewer or a multinational conglomerate can be a labyrinthine process that requires both a love of beer and a degree in economics.
(I have the former. The latter, not so much.)
To know whoâs getting your money when you buy a beer, one first has to know about Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev), the all-powerful Thanos of the beer industry that, with the snap of its fat fingers, can change everything. Well, for beer drinkers, at least.
The entity we know as AB InBev can trace its roots back to a single, very old Belgian breweryâArtois, founded in 1366âbut in recent decades, itâs grown, and grown, and grown again, buying and taking over big chunks of major breweries and other conglomerates. From Canadaâs Labatt Brewing Company to Harbin Brewery in China, and from Mexicoâs Grupo Modelo to Fosterâs Group in Australia, AB InBev is everywhere. Thanks to a hostile takeover of Anheuser-Busch Companies in 2008, AB InBev now sells Budweiser and Bud Light, Corona and Stella Artois, Pacifico and Rolling Rock. Last month, the Economist noted AB InBev now sells a quarter of the worldâs beerâor, if you prefer a visual thatâs simultaneously wonderful and disgusting, âthree Olympic-sized swimming pools of beer an hourâmore than its three nearest rivals combined.â
(Those rivals, by the way, are hardly tinyâthey include sprawling companies like Heineken and MillerCoors.)
In Portland, where even grimy convenience stores are full of beers with cutesy names and whimsical labels, AB InBev can seem far away. But as the market dominance of major brand-name beers like Budweiser has faltered, groups like AB InBev are trying to make up the difference by quietly buying up small breweries and selling âcraftâ beer to unknowing drinkers.
Take Widmer Brothers, the Northeast Portland brewery that closed its taproom in January, but remains one of the cityâs foundational breweries. Dig a little and youâll find Widmer is owned by the Craft Brew Allianceâan organization that sounds like a small, dedicated business support system. Dig even deeper, though, and youâll find the Craft Brew Alliance is actually a larger companyâone that also owns Seattleâs Redhook Ale Brewery, Hawaiiâs Kona Brewing Company, and the gluten-free Omission Brewing Co. And a big piece of that scrappy-sounding Craft Brew Allianceâjust under one-thirdâis owned by AB InBev.
Or thereâs Full Sail Brewing, which helped put Hood River, Oregon, on the map as a destination not just for windsurfing, but also for beerâin the process, paving the way for the townâs current brewery darlings, Double Mountain Brewery and pFriem Family Brewers. Full Sail once boasted on its labels that it was independent and employee-ownedâbut in 2015, those same employees agreed to sell the company to Oregon Craft Brewers Co. Despite its name, Oregon Craft Brewers Co. isnât all that localâitâs part of a San Francisco-based private equity firm, Encore Consumer Capital.
The story repeats, again and again, with boutique beers loved by Oregonians becoming subsidiaries of enormous businesses. Bendâs 10 Barrel Brewing Company sold out to AB InBev in 2014; in 2016, Eugeneâs Hop Valley Brewing Company was bought by MillerCoors. Indie brewery founders are often the first to tout the benefits of these sales, insisting their beers will stay exactly the same and be accessible to even more people.
In theory? Sure! In practice, thatâs not always the case. While the independent craft brewing community is a friendly one, profit-obsessed corporations have no such inclinations. As Portland beer writer Jason Notte wrote for the MarketWatch website in 2017, AB InBev has a history of using its size to control basic brewing supplies like hopsâkeeping them out of the hands of the smaller, locally owned breweries that push the craft forward.
Not all breweries want to get swallowed by giants like AB InBev. Ninkasi Brewing Company in Eugene, for instance, turned down several offers to sell.
âYou become part of a system that is very powerful and provides access to a lot of resources, but theyâre also not really aligned with the values of the craft industry,â Nikos Ridge, a co-founder of Ninkasi, told the Oregonian in 2016. âFor many years theyâve worked to try to keep the craft industry from growing. If they had their way, theyâd sell every beer sold in the US, and thatâs not what the craft industry is about.â
In April 2019, Ninkasi sold a majority share to Legacy Breweries, Inc., a startup that plans to purchase multiple breweries across the country. âThis is a huge next step for us in terms of opening up creative partnerships to drive growth in a very dynamic environment,â Ridge told Aaron Brussat in an interview about the sale for the beer blog the New School. ââIndependent,ââ Brussat later noted, âhas become a fluid concept in the beer industry.â
For now, a number of great Oregon breweries remain independent: Double Mountain and pFriem, Deschutes Brewery, Ecliptic Brewing, Hopworks Urban Brewery, the nonprofit Ex Novo, and many of the Portland upstarts opening their doors, even amid the closures some of the cityâs old-guard brewpubs like Bridgeport Brewery (which itself was sold, in 1996, to Gambrinus, a San Antonio company). But thanks to decades of lax financial regulations that have rigged the market against independents, the odds of success are daunting.
âAfter nearly two generations of antitrust malpractice in which companies were allowed to grow by gobbling up their small competitors or merging with their largest ones, we are living through a new Gilded Age in which trusts are on the rise,â wrote author Cory Doctorow earlier this year. âFinance is dominated by a handful of giant banks; liquor and beer are dominated by a pair of giants, too. Cable, telecoms, shipping, oil, bookselling, movie theaters, and, of course, internet and media.â
Soâas is the case with just about any productâthe fate of independent craft beer depends on whether consumers care enough to seek it out and support it. Itâs easy to be cynical about the outcome of anything that relies on consumersâ sense of right and wrong: Many of us bemoan the rise of corporate surveillance and feel sad when a neighborhood business closes, and then many of us keep posting on Instagram and buying from Amazon.
But to look at the pint as half-full: Craft beer is better than itâs ever been, and craft beer lovers are a tenacious breed. (Youâve had to listen to at least one of them rhapsodically mansplain IBUs. You know how they are.) Which means as long as we continue to put in a bit of research and a whole lot of drinking, the very things corporations want to co-opt about independent craft beerâits quality, its inventiveness, its rambunctious spiritâwill be the things that keep it flowing.
Editorâs note: This story has been updated with details about Ninkasiâs recent sale to Legacy Breweries, Inc.