Resistance is futile. Anheuser-Busch's Brewers Collective

Anheuser-Busch In-Bev' Brewers Collective has purchased 20,000-barrel-per-year* 'craft' brewery Platform Brewing of Cleveland (and Columbus and Cincinnati), Ohio.

ABIB announced:

[Platform's] unparalleled creativity and experimentation has resulted in more than 600 recipes that include a variety of unique seasonals, sours, ciders and fruit ales, barrel-aged beers, and a line of hard seltzer.

Six-hundred 'recipes'! Wow! Such vast expertise! Or, as Jeff Alworth, at Beervana, put it:

Platform offers beer slushies, beer cocktails, seltzers, and hazies. [...] It doesn’t seem like a stretch to suggest ABI will be using Platform to reach younger Millennials and Gen Z drinkers.

On-line beer news site Brewbound (itself in recent news, unfavorably) interviewed Platform's co-founder Paul Benner.

Benner said the Ohio craft brewery began “exploring different investment mechanisms” about six months ago in an effort to continue the company’s upward growth trajectory. Ultimately, Benner said he and co-founder Justin Carson were attracted to the “autonomy and independence” A-B provides the founders in the daily decision making of its acquired craft brands. “As we became more educated on what that partnership actually looks like, it became more and more clear this was the best option for us for the short-term and the long-term as a company”

But not the medium-term? 'Autonomy'? Investment 'mechanisms'? Gobbledygook. How about honesty: "We wanted to make lots of money."?

Adding Platform to the list, here's the scroll of shame (my phrase) and the date each 'craft' brewery sold (out), alphabetically:

• Goose Island (March 2011)
• Blue Point (February 2014)
• 10 Barrel (November 2014)
• Elysian (January 2015)
• Golden Road (September 2015)
• Breckenridge (Dec 2015)
• Four Peaks (December 2015)
• Devils Backbone (April 2016)
• Karbach (November 2016)
• Veza Sur (April 2017)
• Wicked Weed (May 2017)
• Virtue Cider (September 2017)
• Platform Beer (August 2019)

At some point this year, Anheuser-Busch InBev rebranded its portfolio of (now, lucky 13) acquired 'craft' breweries from “The High End” to the “Brewers Collective.” The ABIB-borg collective. Resistance is futile.

-----more-----

• * 20,000 barrels as of end of 2017.
• Read more at Beervana.
• More details at The Full Pint.
• Interview at Brewbound.
• Press release from ABIB.
• This post originally appeared (in shorter, less snarky form) on YFGF's Facebook page.


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