Talking about and drinking so much beer from Boulevard, Schlafly, New Belgium and other midsized breweries, it's easy to forget that microbrewers combined make up a small minority of the beer business. Eighty percent of the beer brewed in this country comes from only two giants -- SAB, which owns MillerCoors, and InBev which owns Anheuser-Busch.
As the new movie Beer Wars explains, Davids like Boulevard are competing for ever-larger pieces of the pie with the two above-mentioned Goliaths. But the pie itself is shrinking and thus the beer wars are on:
documentary's director, Anat Baron, has
been in the business (she helped start Mike's Hard Lemonade) and worked
as a television producer before that.
The most interesting page on her movie's Web site
is called "beer facts," which is where I got that 80 percent number. Baron also figured out that the average American lives 10 miles from a brewery. She also goes into some of the 37,000 laws in
America relating just to beer. Sadly, I didn't see any mention of Boulevard on the Web site or in the
trailer.
The film screens April 16 at 7 p.m. in several theaters around the area including the AMCs in Olathe, Leawood and North Kansas City, Cinemark on the Plaza, Cinemark in Merriam and the Regal Kansas City 18 Cinemas
at Casino Station. It's one night only, and afterwards, there's a live
discussion with brewers moderated by Ben Stein.
Tickets are $15; you can buy them here. And no,
that price doesn't include beer. Nonetheless, I'd be game
for getting a group of Fat City friends together to see the movie.
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