Is your Beer Genuine?

'The Plot To Destroy America's Beer' - this BusinessWeek article really had me thinking, I am going to be observing beer labels more carefully. I, for one, big believer in operational efficiency. But where do you draw the line between authenticity and the richness of local ingredients? Recipes do not make taste, if that was the case everybody would be a master chef!

One Friday night in January, Rinfret, who is now 52, stopped on the way home from work at his local liquor store in Monroe, N.J., and purchased a 12-pack of Beck’s. When he got home, he opened a bottle. “I was like, what the hell?” he recalls. “It tasted light. It tasted weak. Just, you know, night and day. Bubbly, real fizzy. To me, it wasn’t German beer. It tasted like a Budweiser with flavoring.”
He examined the label. It said the beer was no longer brewed in Bremen. He looked more closely at the fine print: “Product of the USA.” This was profoundly unsettling for a guy who had been a Beck’s drinker for more than half his life. He was also miffed to have paid the full import price for the 12-pack.

Tastes are personal, and very subjective. How do you balance mass market with individual preferences? Clearly AB InBev has decided to go pragmatic and mass-market on the Beer market!