Tooling down 15-501, flipping through the AM dial, I hear the magic word and my hand pulls back. "Beer," says a voice from some urban blue-collar backwater -- only it's with that gruff, Real Man accent: "Beeah." "Real beeah," he says. "Beeah beeah."
That's as opposed to sissy beer, of course: the ales, porters, stouts, and pilsners, the stuff that has color and flavor and substance, the stuff that's nibbling at Anheuser-Busch's market share a percentage point at a time. Like a flat-worlder denouncing the heretics, the Real Man is defending his right to drink the mass-produced goat piss that passes for malt beverage from Manteo to Maui. His choice: Bud Light.
Later, on some FM contempo-rock replica, a silky pitchman delivers a plug for a new market entry -- Elk Mountain Amber, "handcrafted" in the tradition of the neighborhood pub, with the smooth, rich flavor of real hops and barley malt. The joke, which both Real Man and Slick are betting you won't get, is that Anheuser-Busch brews both Bud Light and Elk Mountain Amber, not to mention Elk Mountain Red, Red Wolf, Bud, Bud Dry, Bud Ice, Bud Light Ice, Natural Light, Michelob, Michelob Light, Michelob Dark, Busch, Busch Light and a dozen others. The idea here isn't simply to confuse the consumer. Trying to distinguish between any three of these clones would be confusing enough. No, it's far more insidious. Anheuser-Busch is waging a struggle for the American soul. The battleground: convenience-store shelves and dank bars across the land. In this corner, the Big Boys: Anheuser Busch, Miller, Coors, and the other three megabreweries that together control about 95 percent of the U.S. beer market. Their weapon: mass marketing.
And in this corner, the several hundred microbreweries and brewpubs that have proliferated like fruit flies in the past decade. Their weapon: beer. Formidable weapons, both. Mass marketing has borne and raised the most recognizable of American monoliths: McBurger, shopping malls, planned unit developments, Wal-Mart, multiplexes, Newt, 4X4s, you just about name it. Mom and Pop long ago fell to its relentless fist.
On the other hand, beer ain't no slouch. All cultures have beer. Music is the universal language, beer the universal food. Beer breaks down barriers of race, sex, and class. It's a democratic institution, a neighborhood thing, a community builder.
In late 19th century America, 3,000 breweries produced a fantastic variety of malt beverages. But Prohibition -- and mass marketing -- whittled the number down to about 700 in the 1930s. By 1973, only 76 remained. But encouraged by the fantastic success of a few West Coast brewpubs in the early 1980s, the locals are making a comeback. Even in North Carolina, always slow to catch a wave, brewers are setting up shop, tapping kegs, and filling bottles. Albemarle Ale out of Charlotte, Smoky Mountain Ale from the Western hills, Tumbleweed from Boone, three styles of Dergy's from Wilmington taps, even a new joint going up in Apex, for chrissakes.
In Chapel Hill, drinkers will soon have not one but two brewpub options. Raleigh boasts Greenshields, with its state-of-the-art, computer-driven brass and copper vats and the most impeccable suds in the Triangle. And even Durham's Bull City Brewery -- still serving the same mediocre swill it did through its Weeping Radish and Old Heidelberg Village incarnations -- offers an alternative that's a cut above the Liteweights.
No surprise that the Buds and Millers are fighting back, tooth and claw, on all fronts. It took a few years, but they finally recognized the threat. Multiple millions later, here's what they're trying to do.
Flank 1: Retail. Strategy: Produce as many brand names as possible, combine with new "styles" (ice, dry) that have only a micron of difference in the ingredients, and package each product in various containers (cans, 12-ounce bottles, long necks, tall boys, quarts). The objective is to take up as much of a store's limited shelf space or a bar's cooler capacity as possible and squeeze out the competition. You gotta have "the basics," goes the theory, so if you expand the basics by a factor of 10, you retain market share. It works; even the giant supermarkets can't keep up with the influx.
Flank 2: The growing market for quality beer. Solution: Co-opt the movement by introducing phony "microbrews" like Red Dog and Elk Mountain. Miller even fabricated an entire microbrewery, Plank Road, which mass-produces Icehouse and Red Dog.
Flank 3: The old guard. Plan: Attack real beer as un-American and encourage brand loyalty to "beeah beeah." Since Bud Light Ice Dry tastes like shit, this gets down to the basic ability of advertising to convince the emperor he has a beautiful new wardrobe.
They've got the money, but not the product. Beer is best when fresh, and it's freshest when it's produced around the corner. Plus, in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator, the megabrewers have created yellow flushings that all subscribe to the Law of American Lagers: To be drinkable, they must be practically frozen.
This isn't just about beer. As a cornerstone of the community, beer is a critical domino in the corporate fight to retain control of the American wallet, to keep dollars flowing out of town into distant pockets. If beer falls, they ask, what's next? Fast food? The military-industrial complex?
The populist microbrewers have made some inroads. Despite the glut of garbage brew, real beer is spreading into supermarket and even convenience-store coolers. Coors Light taps are harder to find at your favorite pub, and it's a small step from that Bass or Sam Adams keg to North Carolina-brewed ale.
The war is just beginning, a David-and-Goliath matchup. But if enough locals trust their tastebuds and take pride in their community again, who knows? At workday's end, in every big city and tiny village, citizens of all stripes may one day drop pretense and gather in pubs to exchange news and views. Shoemakers will jaw with lawyers. Athletes and nerds will go flagon to flagon. Of their own free will, citizens will cut the TV umbilical cord. And real beer will again take its rightful place at the center of civilization.