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A low snow year brought us back to Europe, this time we stayed as long as we could and now this is WHATCHU GET.

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Sell Out!

Yesterday, 10 Barrel Brewing Co. sold out. Starting January first, the rapidly expanding brewery will be owned by Anheuser-Busch. They announced the news, rather abruptly, in a video posted on all the social media platforms. The public reaction has been, to put it lightly, mixed.

On Facebook and Twitter, fans congratulating the owners on making it into “the big time” were drowned out by angry partisans. Many said they would be boycotting the brand. Many used dollar signs to express their contempt for corporate greed. Some say they saw it coming. Some say the haters are just jealous.

in the blogosphere, reactions have been slightly more tempered. Beervana writer, Jeff Alworth, took to All About Beer last night to paint a more balanced picture. Fears of declining beer quality are of course ludicrous, “the brewery makes great beer, and that’s the reason it was a prime target.” Alworth believes, and I agree, that this is how mature markets work. Good businesses change hands. It’s the way of economics.

As the first generation of brewers and brewery owners start to reach retirement age, many will have to weigh their options. You can sell out, obviously. You can go public — which never seems to work out. You can pass the business on to the next generation, like the Grossman’s of Sierra Nevada. You can form an employee owned company like Full Sail and New Belgium.

Selling out seems like the worst option, the slimiest, the most money grubbing. And selling to Bud? That seems downright evil. But as Alan McLeod pointed out last month, “there is no such thing as an evil milkshake,” and by extension there is no such thing as morally superior beer.

Despite what some beer commercials will tell you, beer is beer and beer is an industrial product. Delineating between big, bad beer and small good beer is going to get harder and harder in the future. We’re not just talking about acquisitions but growth. As “big craft” brewers (a term I’m stealing from McLeod) grows, their business starts to look more and more like big bad Bud. Stone is crossing oceans, opening two huge new facilities. Sierra Nevada has covered the entire continent.

These are not small hand crafted companies anymore. ”Craft beer” is big business and big business brings big money.

On the other hand you can read The New School, where Ezra Johnson-Greenough tries to explain why people are upset. It’s not naivete. Everyone knows that businesses make money. That’s not the problem; the how is what irks people.

10 Barrel was making a lot of money — sales doubled last year and are on track to double again this year — but they were doing it locally, on the back of great beer and great word of mouth. A-B can buy ads on TV. A-B can buy hops a million tons at a time at cents on the dollar. AB-InBev cuts costs and increases production and pushes their products.

That’s what a lot of people are worried about: the craft part of the brewery taking a back seat to the industrial side. And while there are plenty of arguments to be made about the level of craft really involved in making the same beer every day on any scale, there are still plenty of shortcuts you can take to get from point A to point IPA. Using whole leaf hops vs. pellets vs. extracts, brewing high gravity worts and watering down to meet certain profiles, price gouging and price slashing. I’m not sure these things are really devious, but they do have an effect on the overall product.

Not only have AB-InBev purchased a physical brewery, they bought brewing talent and intellectual property. 10 Barrel brewers have been winning awards since the brewery opened eight years ago. Progressive brewers like Tonya Cornett, Shawn Kelso, and Jimmy Seifrit made waves. Now, all their recipes are property of Budweiser. That does seem icky.

I think the most important loss here is on the community level. Bend residents will never go thirsty, but they are losing a local business. The most heated rhetoric on both sides of the debate, both pro-10 Barrel and anti-InBev, come from those who live in Bend. They are ones who helped build the brewery, and they, though perhaps naively, feel some ownership in the business.

We don’t own the things we love. Fandom doesn’t offer stock options. But our affection can transform any object, both in our own eyes and in the eyes of those we meet. If I tell you how much I love a beer, it can change the way you see it on the shelf (if I’m doing my job right).

10 Barrel won’t change overnight. It might take years to manifest itself, but when you lose local control, you begin to lose what made it local to begin with. Bridgeport makes a good case study. Locality is hard to pin down, hard to quantify, but you can feel it; you can taste it.

So what happens now?

I’m not sure how I feel. I have never been a big 10 Barrel fan, so I don’t feel betrayed. I don’t have all the facts, so I can’t demonize anyone for compromising their morals. I just feel — I feel torn. This is the sort of thing that seems to happen more and more often, and if good beer can be made by a mega-corporation, who am I to snub it?

I don’t know. Pour me another beer.