I just came across a great article by Tom Philpott over at Mother Jones. In a nutshell, Philpott lays out how 80% of the beer consumed in America is brewed by two corporate entities; SABMiller and Anheuser-Busch InBev. He also notes that most of the beers these guys make totally suck. You got that right, Tom!
Along with a nice narrative about the rise of craft beer, Philpott shares a chart developed by Michigan State professor Philip H. Howard. The chart shows which corporations owned the various beer brands and their product lines in 2010. While I’m more of a Wolverine guy, this Spartan manages to show how beer brands have been colonized in the petri dish of the adult beverage marketplace in the United States. It’s pretty interesting to see it laid out like this.
Click the image below to get a bigger view, or hit this link to go to a zoomable version on Michigan State’s website.
It’s good to see a couple of craft brewers rate enough to make the chart, but if this were total sales volume, I bet they’d be so small you wouldn’t be able to read their names if you zoomed in all the way.
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Beer & Whiskey Brothers 
That’s interesting info…but you should reconsider and be more of a “Spartan guy”
I went to college in New Jersey, so it’ll all pretty much academic anyway (pun!).
When I lived in MI in the late 80’s, I’d visit Ann Arbor and always had a great time, so I think that’s where my preference came from.
To tell the truth, I’m mostly a Bells guy! 🙂
I am more of a Founders guy. Sparty On!
I can go either way there. Sparty on, indeed!
I love it! A bubble chart makes relationships so much easier to follow. I’m currently trying to produce a chart like this for my genealogical studies of all the various Molyneux families (and there are lots of them.)
BTW: You can read them all–even the craftees.
Bubble charts are fun for sure, like visual bubble wrap.
They are like Snow Flakes. No two are the same!
Kind of depressing, to see how even if you want to avoid the soulless big corporate beer machine and support what you think is the little guy, he might not actually be the little guy anymore.
Those 2 megabreweries are also multinational conglomerates, and when you think about shipping beer or ingredients around the world, corporate beer in America isn’t red, white, blue, or green. It’s just pale yellow fizzy.
Slightly misleading. Craft Brewers Alliance (out of Portland, OR) isn’t owned by Anheuser Busch. Craft Brewers Alliance uses Anheuser Busch’s InBev Network for their distribution network in the western US. In return, Anheuser Bush owns 30% of Craft Brew’s stock. Craft Brewers Alliance is still an independently owned company with complete management of its breweries and their beers.
missing beers from south america. Brahma anyone?