What Do You Mean, This German Beer Was Brewed In Missouri?

You can’t really blame reader Nathan for thinking that Beck’s beer comes from Germany. Until just a few years ago, it was an import. Then InBev, the brand’s owner, acquired Anheuser Busch, and with that lots of breweries in the United States. Breweries where they might as well make InBev-owned brands, since most consumers won’t be able to tell the difference. Or so they thought.

“I thought this beer was from Germany, but it was from USA,” Nathan wrote. “I believe ‘Product of Bremen, Germany’ refers to the company, not the beer I was drinking. Either way, it tricked me into thinking I was drinking a German beer.”

If you’re not up on your beer news, it’s easy to see where Nathan got the idea that this is a German beer. Look at the label: the bottle has the word “Oktoberfest” right on it, and apart from the season you see things like the words “Brauerei Beck & Co” and “Originated in Bremen.” Only none of it is true: InBev is a company that’s really into cost-cutting, and one easy way to do that was to just bring the Beck’s recipe over to its breweries here in the U.S.

If you want to learn more than you ever needed to know about InBev, check out this 2012 Businessweek article with the not-at-all subtle title, “The Plot To Destroy America’s Beer.”

One beer drinker was so upset that he sued InBev, which didn’t really work out.

There’s even a Facebook page protesting the change and demanding that InBev start importing Beck’s again. Sure, it isn’t quite as popular as the page demanding the return of Coca-Cola’s Surge, but it exists.