The news wasn’t exactly a shocking blow to the beer belly, since rumors had kicked around for several weeks.
Still, Monday’s announcement that American brewing giant Anheuser Busch was being sold to Belgium’s InBev had many beer fans reeling like frat boys at a keg party.
Levi Yockey was taking it particularly hard.
“I think it’s unfortunate,” said Yockey, who was sitting at Cuba Cuba’s bar sporting a “USS Budweiser” ballcap on Monday evening. “Budweiser is an American tradition. It’s just a consistent beer.”
Yockey was sipping a Negra Modelo from Mexico, but he was warming to the subject.
“Budweiser is just a consistent beer,” he said. “You can drink one. You can drink 100. You can’t drink 10 European beers and still feel good.”
Personally, I don’t think you can drink 10 of anything and still feel good. But I took him at his word.
Yockey was not alone in his sentiments.
Over at Wyman’s on 13th Street, Steve Overmier shook his head at the $52 billion deal that brings Anheuser-Busch, which also brews Michelob and Busch, into a foreign company’s fold.
“What it’s indicative of is the selling of the American economy,” Overmier said. “It scares me.”
He cast an eye down at his mug of ice-cold Coors, the flagship beer of the Golden-based company that merged 3 1/2 years ago with Canadian brewer Molson, and then merged U.S. operations with London-based SABMiller.
“I think it’s still made here,” Overmier said.
Across the bar, Anna Norris sipped a Bud while playing the Monday night trivia game.
“I think it’s a shame,” she said. “Yet another American product is being outsourced. Do we want to make anything in this country?”
For the record, InBev officials say they’ll keep Anheuser-Busch’s 12 North American breweries open, although control of the St. Louis-based company, whose roots predate the Civil War, will move overseas.
No word on whether Budweiser’s famed Clydesdales will be replaced with Belgian work horses. I’m guessing that because the Clydesdales haul their wagons for dollars instead of Euros, they’ll stay on.
Back in the day, I probably shot 5,000 games of pool with a Budweiser within reach, peeling the neck label with my thumb to mark the bottle as mine. Somehow, I can’t see doing that with InBev beers like Becks and Stella Artois.
Still, not everyone had a problem with news of the sale.
At the Avenue Grill in Denver’s Uptown neighborhood, Blake Maynard flat-out championed the superiority of Europe’s brews.
“American beers are for the faint of heart who like watered-down beer,” he said. “There are eight zones in the European food pyramid and the top one is beer. You can live on their beer.
“So I’m particularly grateful that Europeans will have something to say about the making of American beer.”
Eloquent words, even if they were uttered by a guy wearing a T-shirt and hiking shorts. Maynard’s friend James Drabbant looked at him with pride, like he’d just delivered the Gettysburg Address of beermaking.
Drabbant grinned. “As your manager, I’m taking 30 percent,” he announced. “Of course, if you were a child star, I’d take it all.”
Maynard looked at me.
“Why don’t you buy James one last Budweiser before it goes Belgian?”
William Porter’s column runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 303-954-1977 or wporter@denverpost.com.
