I’m walking through my local independent grocery store this afternoon, trying to get everything on my list when I realize I’m in the beer aisle. Old habits die hard, so I survey what’s there and notice a beer I’ve not heard of before: Wild Hop Lager. I pick up the six-pack carrier and pull out a bottle. Green Valley Brewing Company? Ever heard of them? Me neither. Now I’m only human but it’s not often that I’m stumped. I don’t usually run into completely new breweries I’ve never heard of. So I take a closer look at the packaging and read everything on the label. It’s supposedly organic certified by the UDSA? But in the back of my head I’m thinking it was a different organization that certified organic status. Didn’t I read that somewhere in connection with Wolaver’s a few years ago? The packaging looks good, almost too good. It’s slick and well done and even uses printed crowns, unusual for a start-up brewery. I’m becoming suspicious, I can’t even say why at this point. There’s a web address on the carrier, but there’s no brewery information on the label. No address, apart from Fairfield, California. Uh-oh. I pull a bottle out of the carrier again and examine it more closely. Only one more clue, but it’s a compelling one. There at the bottom of the bottom, on the left hand side, is a freshness date. That’s also a curious thing for a new brewery to have on their label. I feel like Sherlock Holmes and things aren’t adding up. But I’ve got a hunch, and it’s a pretty good one, too, I think, as I head home to check it out.
When I get home, I type in the website URL and wait for it to load, which doesn’t take too long. It has an age verification check, and it’s feeding my hunch, too. How many small breweries have those? The webpage itself is only one page, with no clickable links anywhere, just a message “Check back soon for more on Wild Hop Lager.”
The entire website consists of a picture of the bottle and the following text:
Let the Good Times Grow
Wild Hop Lager is made with 100% organic barley malt, giving this certified USDA Organic brew a hearty taste that is rich and flavorful. Plus, with every purchase of Wild Hop Lager, a donation will be made to the Organic Farming Research Foundation to improve and educate people on organic farming practices. Together we can set a better example for future generations.
Organic … and they donate to charity. This is getting better and better. So I do a whois search to find out who is the owner of the domain name and — I’m almost giddy when I see it — I’m right. It belongs to Anheuser-Busch of St. Louis, Missouri. I dig a little further and discover the Maltlog on the website for the Missouri Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control. On February 6, 2006, A-B applied to register “Wild Hop Lager” and “Harbin Lager” and both were granted on February 10. Ohio similarly approved the name on February 14 of this year.
Now this isn’t the first time Anheuser-Busch has tried to make a microbrew. Anybody remember Pacific Ridge Pale Ale? As far as I know, they’re still making kegs of it at the Fairfield plant and selling it to restaurants and bars as their own private label craft beer. But there’s one distinct difference between Wild Hop Lager and Pacific Ridge. On all the Pacific Ridge packaging, it was clearly disclosed that it was an Anheuser-Busch package. With Wild Hop Lager, no such disclosure is made. In fact, it appears downright designed to appear to be a real craft brewed beer, not that that’s new either. There never was a Plank Road Brewery (it was Miller) or a Blue Moon Brewery (that one was Coors), either.
This is just the latest attempt to regain flagging sales. With good growth in the craft beer segment, it’s hardly surprising that they’d try to make their own craft beer-like product. It’s their modus operandi, after all, to infiltrate any segement of the market they can and either dominate it or shut it down. That this was so clandestine is a little surprising and most consumers, I fear, won’t realize they’re being duped. I’m perfectly okay with Anheuser-Busch making a better beer, but I’d be a lot more comfortable with it if they didn’t go about it in such a way that seems so underhanded and deceitful.
Anheuser-Busch’s new macro-micro on the shelves of my local grocer.
UPDATE: Several people on various forums have commented that they would have liked to see tasting notes for the beer here. While I was unwilling to part with the $8 necessary to provide tasting notes, the San Francisco Chronicle did a blind tasting of the beer as a part of their coverage of this story on March 30.
Well done, well put. In a way, it’s sad. They’re too embarrassed to disclose themselves. — Ainz
This explains a lot. I picked up some of this beer earlier this week at Safeway and found it very disappointing. The hop flavor is nearly indistinguishable…definitely not what you’d expect from an IPA. A weak attempt at best.
I really appreciate the review of this beer. Our website just talked about
organic beers and we were going to mention this one, but stopped short because we did not yet know
if it was in Portland. Thank you for the information. By the way, we would love to include your
website in our blog . Keep up the good work.
Cheers,
Prost!
Dave Dronkowski
if you try to go to the website now, you’ll find it’s down; I found it in a cache, though. the way it works, USDA approves the certifying agency, which in turn certifies the product, which enables it to carry the USDA Organic label. so USDA doesn’t certify anything as organic, but it does set the rules under which the certifying agencies must operate, including what constitutes “organic.”
Its a good beer and I get it for 6.99 at my local gas station. Its not supposed to be an IPA whoever made that comment. Its just a plain lager using legitimate organic farming methods. Its a little hoppy but nowhere does it claim to be even a pale ale. Who cares that its Anheuser Busch. Dont act like you have not been drinking beers from this company since high school. I appreciate good beer and I deliver all the small brews to include Wolavers. Did you think Anheuser Busch wasnt going to get a piece of this market? Come on! This Wild Hop Lager is for you. Damn hippies. Dont even act like you never step foot in Walmart either.
I did drink Anheuser Busch in high school, it was bad then and it’s bad now. (ok, I am being harsh)well the point is that although this beer isn’t coming right out and saying that it’s an IPA, by not saying anything they imply that that’s what it is. in other words unless our friend hadn’t done a great deal of digging then most would assume that it’s an IPA. never mind that a bad faux IPA makes all the others look bad, but this isn’t the first time that Anheuser Busch has conveniently forgotten to mention that their up to something, it’s just bad business.
hello folks, Cherie: If a beverage has the word ‘Lager’ in it’s description it CANNOT be an
IPA. The initials IPA stand for India Pale Ale. The fermentation process between a lager
and an ale are different.
Secondly, to Eternalfriday: the reason we hippies avoid supporting corporations such as
Anheuser-Busch and Walmart is clearly explained in the above blog. Said corporations are
striving to eliminate as much competition as they can. This results in fewer choices of
products, which among other things, encourages higher pricing. Don’t like you’ve never
smoked marijuana before, you kunuclehead!
Drink a Wild Hop, smoke a doob and go to Walmart. Its fun.
A-Busch certainly has the resourses and expertise to make and market superior beer. With the market share they hold , they could offer a great beer at a great price. Why don’t they? Why do they hide their identity when fielding a new beer? The fact is the only reason they field these “new beers” is to crowd true craft beers off the shelves.! All supermarkets have limited refrigerated display space , so A-B says display my new product along side our other extensive product line or we will pull all our product from your shelves. Of course they are the “king of beer” sales they are able to muscle the competition from the shelves. How many craft breweries have gone belly up or been absorbed by bigger breweries in your area? It is happening all to often here in the NW.! That is the reason this damn hippie objects to yet another example of a corperate giant eliminating local variety and flavor. Individually these small breweries offer no serious threat to big breweries, collectively they only occupy about 5% of the market total. But the corporate giants see that as dollars stolen from their kingdom and its cheaper to quash the uprising than compete on a level field. Thanks for identifying another counterfeit.!!
You bet!!! I know how much that Damsailor likes his hops. It’s a shame they have to try to muscle in on territory they don’t even need. Keep ‘er hard over!
Arg, fooled again! I knew it looked a little too clean… and then it tasted bad.