While visiting the Schlafly website recently I found this article about The Brewers Association's latest attempts to distinguish legitimate craft beers from the imitators that A.B. and Miller/Coors love to put in front of us. Of course, Blue Moon and Shock Top are the two most notorious craft brew imitators. The Brewers Association seems to think we can't tell the crafty brews, as they name them, from the true craft brews. I don't understand this, my opinion is, if you can read you should be able to distinguish crafty brews from craft brews. Reading glasses may be required but the small print on the beer packaging includes who brews the beer, this is usually on the bottles.
I appreciate The Brewers Association intention to maintain some honesty in advertising. I certainly learned something about one of my favorite breweries too. It seems that Magic Hat imports most of their product. I am a bit confused about this as the report also claims that Magic Hat brews their beer with adjuncts. This implies that the ingredients include more, or less, than malted barley, hops and water, such as barley malt or sorghum. I bet there's even some high fructose corn syrup in there! The accusation basically means, Magic Hat is making a drink or alcoholic beverage, they are not, by The Brewers Association standards, making a craft brewed beer.
However or where ever Magic Hat makes their beer, they have a very crafty brewer or head chef who knows how to turn high fructose corn syrup to into some very tasty beers. I am guessing that the drinks must be produced in Canada, that could explain the distribution difficulties in the South-east U.S. For me, a dedicated consumer, learning that Magic Hat has been sneaking around behind the brew kettles is a lot like learning there's no Santa. I don't intend to avoid Magic Hat's products but I will remain curious about their business practices.
Speaking of Santa, here's an early Merry Christmas to you all!
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