I finally got around to watching Beer Wars tonight, thanks to Netflix and Tivo. I’m going to start off by saying that I’m very glad I didn’t pay whatever the outrageous price was to see it in a theatre. It wasn’t that good. I am glad I saw it, but I won’t be buying the DVD, regardless of what kinds of extra features there are.
The movie is narrated by Anat Baron, supposedly from the beer industry (she ran Mike’s Hard Lemonade). She seems pretty knowledgeable about the industry, at least from the perspective of an independent company (even if it is a malternative, or alcopop), but her narration feels like it is better placed in a movie for children. The production quality is pretty bad and the animation used is just plain silly and could have been left out. It just gives the whole movie a very simplistic, and not in a good way, and childish start and finish.
The basic premise of the movie is that the big three American brewing companies (of which there is now one as Miller and Coors merged and Anheuser-Busch is now owned by Brazilian/Belgian InBev) will do whatever it takes to keep their products on top. The advertising is explained from how they go about placing their products on store shelves to how much money they spend on television and print ads.
The movie explains how the three-tiered system works, but with such little detail that they could have kept that part out. The only thing explained is how big the distribution lobby is and how well they keep the outdated system, which is ultimately responsible for preventing consumers from being able to choose what they drink, in place. She breezed over it with such broad strokes, there wasn’t enough detail to explain why the system was put in place to begin with and why many consider it important still, and by that I mean people outside of the distribution lobby.
The movie follows Sam Calagione and Rhonda Kallman with great detail and Jim Koch with lesser detail. Sam is the founder of Dogfish Head, one of the largest craft breweries in the country. Rhonda used to work for Boston Brewing Co. with Jim Koch, the founder. She left and started Moonshot, a caffeinated beer. The best parts of the movie were seeing how Dogfish Head is run and how they fight to stay on top. Rhonda basically runs a beer marketing company. She isn’t a brewer and doesn’t run a brewery (the two beers she “makes” are contract brewed in PA). While I understand her inclusion in the movie for the advertising and marketing perspective, they could have gotten that from a real brewery that doesn’t make gimmick beers – her other beer, Edison, is a light beer. Sam explains how he prefers to keep growth small even though he has investors pushing him to go public. He wants to avoid that so he can concentrate on making great beer rather than keeping shareholders happy. It’s a real story of someone who went into great debt and took great risks to keep his business going strong in the face of big marketing money and legal attacks from the Big 3. Unfortunately, however, Anat chose to spend the most time following Rhonda, for whom I really had no sympathy. Perhaps it was because they both had been in the “beer” industry promoting alternatives to actual beer.
Had the movie followed real breweries who were faced not only with the challenge of running a brewery and all the issues surrounding that, but also the issue of marketing against the norm, it would have been a whole lot better and held a lot more weight. I would have liked to have heard more from Jim Koch and how he grew the Sam Adams brand to become the largest craft brewery in the country. I was a bit surprised he was just glanced over. The movie also briefly discussed Yuengling, the oldest brewery in the country, but failed to really get into details about how they lasted through prohibition to remain in operation.
It’s worth watching if you want a broad overview of the beer industry and what small breweries are up against. It’s not worth buying. The only reason I watched it was because Netflix had it. If I gave things a star rating, this one would have 2 stars out of 5.