Beers you thought were indie, import or craft beers but are actually just Anheuser-Busch InBev (AKA Budweiser) brands

Stella Artois

Beck’s

Leffe

Hoegaarden

Bass

Michelob

Boddingtons

Bohemia

Labatt

Lowenbrau

Murphy’s

Spaten

St. Pauli Girl

Widmer Brothers

Redhook

Rolling Rock

Kirin

Chechvar

as well as fake microbrews like:

SkipJack

ZiegenBock

Wild Blue

Redbridge

Wow. I knew InBev owned a lot of brands, but I didn’t realize a lot of these were part of their portfolio. I’d be really interested to know how independent some of the brewing facilities are for a lot of these brands. Has anybody with insider knowledge and expertise examined how has that changed the brewing practice for these beers? Large brands must make an effort to ensure consistent favor and quality, and frequently that comes with some compromise because of the volume of ingredients required, particularly if they are making exceptionally large production quantities. But is that true for all of these brands?

I think it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming that simply because a beer (or any other product) is owned by a large company it must be of a lower-quality (or that the inverse is true, that small breweries produce necessarily better beer), but large, diverse corporations are rarely the monolithic organizations people like to envision them as being. Don’t get me wrong—I think the craft beer movement has been amazing and done a fabulous job of changing people’s perceptions about beer and forcing the quality of the products available to improve.