Beer originated elsewhere, but it has become the quintessential American drink. Gallup polls since 1939 have consistently reported that roughly two-thirds of Americans identify themselves as alcohol drinkers; the 2008 poll reported that 42 percent of drinkers drink beer more often than either wine or hard liquor. Sports teams and events, big ticket music acts, and cultural happenings all have become little more than advertising media for brewers to increase their reach to the beer-buying public, and more often than not those headline sponsors are Coors, Budweiser, or Miller.

Although beer is infused into our culture in a way that few other things are, the ways in which government regulation affects (or restricts, depending on your point of view) the choices available to the quaffing masses is given scarce thought. Beer Wars is a documentary by Anat Baron – herself a veteran of the malt beverage industry – that seeks to examine the state of America’s brewing industry by using the experience of two idealistic beer makers as a baseline from which larger issues about free markets and consumer choice are discussed.

The film’s timeliness – available September 22 on DVD at the film's official site – is uncanny, as it releases when the beer world seems poised for change, simultaneously sustaining a small number of massive and powerful producers and a flourishing appetite for craft brewed alternatives to the mass-produced light lager that seeks to crowd out competition in the grocery store cold case.

Beer Wars is neither a staid and static analysis of beer economics, nor an exposé-styled escapade. (Even when Baron is face-to-face with August Busch IV, Anheuser-Busch’s CEO, after having multiple interview requests ignored, she allows him to walk away without any confrontation.) What Baron seeks to persuade audiences of is that alcohol distribution laws – the “three-tier” system implemented after the repeal of Prohibition – although created to protect consumers, have actually erected immense barriers to entry that in turn reduce the opportunities consumers have to choose from a variety of quality beverages. Because the three-tier system prohibits breweries from selling directly to the retailer or the individual customer, the basic mechanism of a free market system – producers and consumers "communicating" about needs, wants, prices, and such – is not functioning.

Article Author: Bryan Myrick

Bryan blogs regularly on politics, international relations and culture at Unequal Time, serves as the Seattle Conservative Politics Examiner at Examiner.com and you can find his work on a variety of other political sites, including Blogcritics. …

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