Infographic: These 5 Giant Companies Control the World’s Beer
Explore the full-size version of the above graphic in all its glory.
The next time you hit your local pub, the odds are that the pint of beer you order will come from one of five global beer conglomerates.
Together, they own hundreds of the best-known domestic, import, and craft beer brands all over the world, in pretty much any country you can name. Whether you are seeking a smooth pilsner, a creamy stout, or an old-fashioned ale to whet your whistle, this multi-national beer oligopoly has got you covered.
The Big Five
Until recently, there were actually six big conglomerates: AB InBev, SAB Miller, MolsonCoors, Heineken, Diageo, and Carlsberg.
However, in mere weeks that will no longer be true. The world’s two largest beer companies – AB InBev and SAB Miller – are merging into one massive megabrewer. The deal, which is worth a hefty $107 billion, is expected to close by October 2016.
When it is all said and done, the merged company will have a brand portfolio that will be the envy of the industry: Budweiser, Corona, Stella Artois, Hoegaarden, Pilsner Urquell, Foster’s, Shock Top, Elysian, and Beck’s are just some of the flagship brands involved.
That will be after likely divesting several key brands such as Blue Moon and the entire Miller line of beers to appease antitrust regulators.
The Illusion of Choice
As we said previously when we posted the infographic showing the illusion of choice in consumer brands, we believe it is important for you to be aware of who is supplying the different brands and goods served at your dinner table.
Each dollar you spend is a vote – make sure it goes to a product and company that you believe in.
beer?! all I see is different brands of pisswater
Carling Breweries, a small little logo in one of the MegaCorps, you probably wouldn’t even pay it scant notice compared to a Budweiser, Coors or Miller logo—but…..
Carling USA/Balt/Ill brews: Black Label, Natty Boh, National Premium, Old English 800, Red Cap Ale, Colt 45, Tuborg, Tuborg Gold, etc etc
Carling Canada brews: O’Keefe Ale, Carlsberg, Heidelberg, Kronenbrau, Old Vienna, Calgary and others
Carling Australia brews Swan, Foster’s etc
The point is, we might even buy a local/regional brand thinking we’re not supporting these mega corps, but ultimately, even our small local companies may have been swallowed by these behemoths.
The noose tightens, the world grows smaller.
It’s even worse than it appears, if that’s possible, because these behemoths also contract brew many of the brands that are still family owned companies that closed their breweries long ago.
A decade ago Pabst Blue Ribbon, an old brand from Wisconsin, underwent an out-of-nowhere resurgence because college students made it a trendy brand again. It was a little embarrassing for the ownership family to admit that they closed their brewery and had been contract brewing with Miller.
There are many legitimate independent small to mid-size brewers left though. Just got to seek ’em out.
I buy Ballantine Ale; checked the bottle labels and couldn’t find any of the big 6 names.
People are crazy
Beer is good
God is great
(From a country western song)
I drink usually Bud Light or Miller Lite.
I prefer Vodka cuz that shit mixes wif eberythang plus I can get a litre for the price of a shitpack of watery hops and grains.
Im not a drunk!! Heh.
Let people counterfeit money, and they can buy everything, if our goverment turns a blind eye. Let the government turn a blind eye to monopolies, and they can consolidate everything. Here’s a question of the day. Who owns the stock in this big five? Or for that matter, the big five in any industry? Waste your breath wailing about government being the problem.
You can’t swing a dead cat around my city without hitting a craft brewery. In typical ‘Murican can’t get enough of a good thing spirit, it seems that a new one opens every month. Same goes for Los Angeles North (Boise). Even tiny towns and villages in the middle of nowhere have a craft brewery or two. There is so much good, locally made beer out there it boggles the mind. We have a store here called Total Wine and More. It’s like a Mall for alcohol. The first time I went there I was shocked that we even need a store that big for selling alcohol. They must have 400 different beers in there and they can order probably a thousand more.
I’ve got five 6th barrels on tap in my store room right now. The big five had nothing to do with any of them. Sadly though many small brewers are in it for the money hoping that one of the big five will come along and buy them out. Prohibition and consolidation is what allowed the big boys to squeeze out all the little guys last time. I don’t see that happening this time though. There will be some culling and consolidation but a number of these small outfits will survive this go round earning a decent living without selling out.
Yes, why this article omits the explosion of microbreweries is odd. I have an investment in one down in Austin Texas and hope to hell it gets bought out by one of the big brewers so I can get my money back! I’ve taken a loss for five years on that misadventure.
Beer isn’t the half of it. If you look at any major category of business you’ll find there are usually less than 5 parent companies controlling 80%+ of the market and most have interlocking boards of directors. We seriously need to break up these monopolies. Less competition = less choice, fewer jobs, higher prices.
Five companies is not a monopoly. Hundreds of microbreweries is not a monopoly. Once again, Wescoaster is a dimwit. It comes down to the consumer to know what they are buying and from whom. Buyer beware.
But hey, for the Wescoasters of the world, there is no area that the government should not be involved in.
What, no Sapporo? The beer I get to pay a premium for in Canada as an ‘import from Japan’, when it’s made in Guelph, Ontario in the Sleeman breweries plant…they do put on a good facilities tour if you’re ever in the area though 🙂
Funny for a Nova Scotian to see Alexander Keiths on that list.
I was considering touring the Alexander Keith’s Brewery while in Halifax a few years ago, but after a previous negative tour at Toronto’s Mill Street Brewery (where the beer was inconsistent and skunky), I decided to sample a pint of Alexander Keith’s (at Maxwell’s Plumb, I think (I drank a lot of beer that week)) and decided AK’s beer wasn’t for me.
I thought it was funny when Mill Street was later purchased by Labatt’s / Anheuser–Busch InBev, making them a corporate-approved “craft brewer”…and remember that time that Alexander Keith had to fire their popular spokesman when it turned out he was into child pornography?
Keith’s is an acquired taste for sure. When I was 16 it wasnt even most popular beer around here. But my friends and I drank it cause the Green Label matched the Green Death Export A rollies we smoked. We did it to be bad. Funny for me now seeing the beer “Rebranded” as a yuppie brew.
Now that I think about it more it was those fucking ads that turned it into yuppie brew.
Ja, Yuengling, an American owned & operated brewery, gets all my beer bucks. My favorite is their Oktoberfest variety, which I stock up on every Sept-Oct, and lasts almost all year. I just finished three bottles of my last six pack earlier today on a tubing trip down the Gunpowder river in northern Baltimore County.
The Yuengling Brewery is about 15 miles from my home.
Buy Trappist monk beer, and totally sidestep corporations. Plus it is very tasty. And strong. Very very strong in some cases. It is expensive but you can get double the alcohol.
I will stick to Narragansett and avoid giving my beer money, at least, to globalist assholes.
They haven’t messed up Dos Equis, which is a plus. Same for Shiner Bock. As long as the taste suits me, why should I care who makes it?
And at the end of a hot and dusty day of real-life physical work, it’s hard to beat a Budweiser to cut the dust–even if I then go to Dos Equis or Shiner Bock . 🙂
A Brief Note on Making Your Own Beer and cutting into the emerging monopoly…
While there are many styles, they all fall into one of two major classes:
Ale – The older of the styles, this is fermented with yeast that performs its work at the top of the liquid and at temperatures from 45 – 75 deg F. Most any of the styles here are easily accessible to the newbie’s skills and household conditions.
Lager – The predominant style drunk nowadays though ales are clawing back market share. The yeasty-beasties here like working at the bottom of the vat under cold conditions, let’s say 36-45 deg F. If you live in warm climes, keeping this brew free of off-flavors is going to be tough unless you get an old fridge for the fermentation.
The best current reference is:
Grab it using the portal to Amazon on this page.
It is far superior to books available back when I started in the late 70’s. It gives you an easy, quick understanding of what you need to get started. Directions are extremely clear and non-technical, though he provides info if you want to get analytical about it.
You will find most every style represented to some degree. (Yep, Belgian “sour” beers are in here in addition to my other passion, “mead” a honey wine which can be made sparkling or still.)
I do not agree with the current style of “closed” primary fermentation. It is messy, I do not find the flavors to agree with the archetypes of the style and I have not lost a single brew to infection in the nearly 40 years that I have been doing this.
Here is what you should NOT do if you are interested in going down this path…
1. Don’t underspend on gear. Those 1-gallon “starter kits” are a joke. For the time and trouble you might as have spent the money on a fine craft brew of the same volume.
2. Don’t overspend on gear. You already have a stockpot, right? Any 5-gallon food grade polyethylene bucket will do the job. Check with a resto or bakery, they will likely have some that held fruit fillings. (The ones that held pickles WON’T work. Any that held oil will need a complete cleanout with bleach – – NOT soap!) After that it is just a matter of a hygrometer, some bi-sulfite, bottles and crowns. A Capper? Get one of the bench-top types that can also be used for corking, because you just know that you will be tempted to make wine.
3. Don’t try to go “full-grain” brewing to start. It takes more gear, more space, more time and a little more experience to keep it from being an aggravating experience. The final taste experience is negligibly better than from extracts.
a. The pre-packaged kits might be okay for a “training wheels” starting effort. They are only slightly more economical than the 1-gallon starter kits.
b. Extracts are widely available in both liquid and dry form. You probably have a home brew store near you completely stocked with these and everything else you need.
You can have a good brown ale ready to drink in just 10 days from starting your first batch. Maybe three hours to cook up, overnight to cool down and a week later you can be bottling.
“Don’t Worry! Relax and have a home brew.” Charlie Papazian
Da P
Intended to get this up earlier but the fridge/freezer greeted me in the early AM with hissing, popping and the smell of burnt wiring. Have been a little pressed for time with addressing the issue.