Craft versus crafty

Just because that beer you’re drinking has a quirky name and a whimsical label on the bottle doesn’t mean it came from a microbrewery.

In a biting opening salvo, a trade group for the nation’s craft brewers on Thursday accused Anheuser-Busch InBev and other major manufacturers of “deliberately attempting to blur the lines between their crafty, craft-like beers and true craft beers from today’s small and independent brewers.”

“We call for transparency in brand ownership and for information to be clearly presented in a way that allows beer drinkers to make an informed choice about who brewed the beer they are drinking,” the Colorado-based Brewers Association said.

The group singled out Blue Moon and the Shock Top line. Those popular beers are owned and produced by, respectively, SABMiller, the same company that makes Miller Lite, and AB-InBev, the Belgium-based purveyor of the ubiquitous Budweiser and Bud Lite.

“You would not know that from looking at the labels,” said Julia Herz, craft beer director for the Brewers Association, which represents such locally owned breweries as Saint Arnold, Southern Star, No Label and Karbach.

There’s more information from the Brewers Association here and here. I don’t think it’s asking a lot to clearly state on the label that thus-and-such beer is a product of whichever brewery. A lot of people are choosy about which businesses they support and which they don’t. More generally, I favor customers getting full information about the products they buy. How can you make an informed choice if you don’t have all the relevant information? Beer, TX has more.

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