April 1, 1999 -- You've got to hand it to Anheuser-Busch. While other major brewers have largely ignored the barbs that are regularly tossed their way by the denizens of the craft brewing industry, the world's largest brewing company has elected instead to meet the criticisms head on. And they seem to have done a pretty good job so far.

Contained in my mail yesterday was a press kit detailing the projected 1999 activities of the Budweiser Beer School, a sort of roaming classroom that A-B introduced in 1995. As with most public relations material, the kit contained a whole lot of overwhelmingly positive info about the item being promoted, most of which I will not bother relating here. What I did find to be of interest, however, was some of the other info added to the folder, to wit:

-- A "Beer Facts" mini-pamphlet detailing the calories, nutritional stats and alcohol content of all of A-B's beers;

-- A schematic tracing in brief the entire brewing process for Budweiser, including the rice mill, cereal cooker and real reason for those beechwood chips;

-- A "Budweiser Beer Facts and Figures" sheet that offered such remarkable, and somewhat horrifying, stats as the claim that Bud sells at the rate of one barrel per second, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

So why do I give A-B credit for this? Simply, the two greatest competition points that small brewers have against the majors are the big, bold flavours of craft beers and the legendary secrecy of the big breweries. By putting out this information, A-B is taking the lead in doing what it can to combat the latter point. I'm not sure what they intend to do about the former, though...

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