Take a trip down the beer aisle at your local grocery store. It might appear that independent craft beers are booming. The great variety of labels indicates that somehow the little guys have managed to buck the consolidation trends of so many other industries and bring their suds to a mass market.
The beer aisle at my local Safeway in Lynden, Washington, for instance, hosts the usual domestic mainstays (Bud, Budweiser, Miller, Coors, Sam Adams), cheap college beers (Pabst, Milwaukee, Busch), Mexican beers (Corona, Negra Modello, Dos Equis), standard one-off foreign imports (Guinness, Kokanee, Foster’s, Stella, Heineken), and enough other smaller brands to induce vertigo.
A local beer-drinking customer who didn’t want to stay on the well-trodden path could buy a Pyramid Apricot Ale, a Dogfish Head Sea Quench Ale Session Sour, a Thor’s Equinox dark ale, a Silver City Ripe ‘N Juicy Double IPA, or a Sufferfest Repeat Kolsch Style Beer with Bee Pollen, to pick a few almost at random from a huge number of choices.
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