You're out of line, pal. Budweiser may not be the best beer in America, that credit definitely goes to local brewers nationwide, but Budweiser is still the symbol of American breweries. Yes, it's mass-market, and geared towards a mass-market appeal, but just because it's not the "best there is" doesn't mean we should abandon it and all it stands for for uncaring foreign owners who see it as a business and not an institution. Budweiser is a symbol of American success and American ownership, it's not in any way appropriate to dismiss them simply because they have a widespread appeal. It sounds like you're buying into the snobbery of hating anything that's popular.

Selling A-B to a foreign owner would be a major blow to St. Louis, to Missouri, and to America; all of these things are more important than a debate about the quality of their product or whether its "really" a premium beer. The fact of the matter is that people like Bud or they wouldn't buy it; I for one do not drink Bud Light because it's not very good - in my opinion. I do purchase Budweiser and Bud Select regularly. If I want a light, I'll get a Natty or a Busch, both also made by Anheuser Busch.

What is important here is not whether the product is the best there is, what is important is that this is an American company, based in America, employing thousands of Americans, and it is poised to be overrun and washed into nothing by a foreign owner who cares not for the city, the state, or the nation, but only for Mammon, only for profits.

Would you sell Ford to foreign interests simply because Ford doesn't make the "best" cars? Would you sell all American businesses to foreigners because they don't have the "best" this or that? Or should you perhaps recognize that it isn't a question of who's the best, but who they are, and what other benefits we derive from them?

Selling Budweiser to Belgians would be a major blow to American enterprise, on the same level as the deal to sell the LA Ports to Dubai. All-around, it is ALWAYS a foolish move to sell American assets to foreign owners who see them as nothing but capital and profit-and-loss ratios.

I didn't mean to imply that anyone who stands over a mash tun at A-B is getting the sweet end of this deal.

I do have to wonder though, why have we allowed companies like A-B to get so large in the first place. Companies like A-B pushed out smaller, less distinguished players out of these markets a long time ago. (In this case prohibition didn't help any either.) I certainly understand that from a corporate profit perspective that bigger is better due to economies of scale, but aren't employment rolls part of the reductions that give these efficiencies? At what point do the gains to the broader economy from greater corporate efficiency get canceled by reductions in well payed consumers to buy their goods?

Brewed in Berkeley, but it doesn't taste like hippies, I proudly drink Pyramid, though Sierra Nevada is also tasty. I also enjoy the microbrew at Jupiter and the recent Berkeley addition, Trumer Pils.

I have scant simpathy for brewery workers in St.Louis. I've been watching for 20 years while local, iconic buisnesses in Oregon have been bought up by out of state companies and used as cash cows while the people who helped build them were thrown out of work.

RIP Blitz Weinhard, Meyer and Frank, Fred Meyers, Portland General Electric, Newport Bay. In one of those cases it was a midwestern megabrewer who was responsible. From my perspective it makes no difference at all whether the company stealing some of my friends retirement savings and then laying them off are Brazillian or Texan. I am no longer willing to buy anything that isn't made in the Pacific Northwest if I can help it. Nor will I trade at a store that's owned by a giant retail conglomerate from Ohio.

Fair enough and thanks for the response - it's true tsingtao is brewed in a city that was owned by germany once.

I think clone was a poor choice of words because of its implication that Bud was the ancestor, which as you point out is clearly not the case.

I guess what I was more pointing out is that those beers are all light lagers / american pilsners (I don't think tsingtao or kirin are more german than american in terms of style).

So, call it swill, but realize that the world seems to like swill a whole lot.

Personally, the only beer I feel bad about lumping in with bud in that list is Kingfisher, which is quite good and goes well with super spicy indian food.

As has been commented before on this great blog, an open, globalized, free market has many winners and many losers. Policy makers will always emphasize the benefits while ignoring the people who get trampled in the great machine of free capitalism. But winners and losers go together.

We cannot discuss how great our current system is, where an individual has the freedom to increase his or her wealth by directly investing in public companies, and then complain when another company uses the same system to increase their wealth at the cost of many jobs. They go hand-in-hand in a free market, and unless the government is willing to tweak this system, I'm afraid that's just life. This is simply what shareholders do. American companies have gone bananas buying up foreign companies across the globe, with a myriad of consequences (both good and bad). I'm originally from Canada, and have seen this first hand. Why is it then so shocking that the reverse should come to pass at a time when the American economy is sluggish? Welcome to the system you've created, America, with all its upsides and downsides.

Plus: if you like beer, plant yourself in the pacific northwest (both US and Canada). Highest concentration of delicious microbrews in North America in my opinion.