Beer Wars - the movie

[Rudeboy]

Just watched parts of it again. And came to the part of where Sam was in his kitchen with his wife and kids and there's this Carboy sitting in the window and he sez something like "See still homebrewing."

WTF.

It was sitting in the freaking window of a solarium! The sun was so strong that you could see right through the carboy.

Was he being facetious and he was brewing 5 gallons of iced tea? Was he trying to clone Corona? Was he brewing it as a prop for a tasting to have an example of skunked beer?

It was just weird that it looked like Sam Calagione was making one of the most rudimentary mistakes that a first time kit and kilo brewer would.

Rudeboy

[gbob]

Just watched parts of it again. And came to the part of where Sam was in his kitchen with his wife and kids and there's this Carboy sitting in the window and he sez something like "See still homebrewing."

WTF.


It was just weird that it looked like Sam Calagione was making one of the most rudimentary mistakes that a first time kit and kilo brewer would.

Rudeboy

I think this was covered elsewhere, but the best guess is that Sam was asked to put the carboy there for the sake of the shot. An hour of sunlight isn’t going to kill anyone’s beer. When filming with a single camera, lighting is pretty important. Having him talk while in a dark basement would not be the best possible location.

I think it’s safe to say that Sam knows what he’s doing.

[rbowser]

I just watched the movie via Netflix and I agree with everyone's impressions.

I liked some of the movie, but I think the director missed the real story and then caught it just in pieces. She wanted to tell a story about the little guys against the big guys, but missed the best story.

The best story, is that this is a battle in which people passionate about brewing and bringing craft back into a product that had long since become a marketing vehicle. She caught some of this but the inclusion of Rhonda and really herself in the movie lead it down another less coherent and compelling path. Was that Edison beer even good? No one talked about it.

Perhaps the guy who leads Stone is an asshole, often the people who push the envelope are, but showing that would have made the story much more compelling, more complex, and less of a simple tale of good small and bad big.

Along those lines, I also thought it was a bit too Michael Moore in the editing and the bad guy / good guy / black and white approach. Could the lite beer drinkers not tell the difference between the brands or did she just show us the people who missed? Is the poor guy at AB that much of a clone or did she just pick the worst edits? Is it really just AB's fault that people want lite beer or did we just demand a very light beer as a strong preference and AB just moved to the next place they could differentiate their product from all the other very lite beers - marketing.

But, I still liked it.... it caught elements of a transition happening between mass marketed products and craft products and people choosing quality oven quantity in their lives. Or in my case, both.

but it could have been a lot more.

[12stones]

Just watched this for the first time. My first impression was that this film was financed by AB/InBev with the agenda of discouraging craft brewery start-ups. The underlying tone seemed to start out as a Robin Hood story of craft brew against the big three, but quickly devolved into simply emphasizing how difficult and overwhelming it can be to break into the retail beer industry. Oppression through marketing and legislation and an outdated three-tier system.

I think the focus on Dogfish Head and Stone came about due to their popularity and modicum of success at the time of filming (small brewers making a somewhat big splash), and the focus on MoonShot was to show the harshness of the business (1st: AB marketing a similar beer to push out a competitor; 2nd: turning to the "dark side" to grasp at some chance of success).

I felt it was worth the time to watch, but won't be taking much from the film other than if I want to break into brewing it's gonna take a lot of time, hard work and money. But, then, I already knew that.

[Ozwald]

I avoided this for so long, but finally had enough pints in me to say fuck it & watch it. At about 15 minutes in, I was really struggling to not turn it off & find something better. Like a stupid cat video on YouTube. And I like cats. I love every kind of cat. I just wanna.... damn it, now I'm going to have that stupid song stuck in my head all day tomorrow, but at least it would be better than that damn film. While it's probably great to open the eyes of those folks who swear by their macro-swill of choice, I'm wishing I had those 89 minutes of my life back to spend on something more constructive... like Russian roulette with a semi-auto. The BN was definitely a poor choice for an audience to advertise to.