Ortega on Beer: Beer Wars Live - The Review

So I went and saw Beer Wars Live (BWL) last week.

To quickly get you up to speed, BWL is a documentary by Anat Baron about beer in America today, & everything it takes to get a beer a brewer makes to the consumer. It focused mostly on two people, Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head (Milton, DE) & Rhonda Kallman of Moonshot beer (Hingham, MA). Intertwined w/their stories was the story of the Bud, Miller, Coors (BMC) Goliath: how they came to be that way & how they plan to stay that way. You see what these two people (and many more unseen brewers like them) do, day in and day out, to get to the marketplace alongside the big boys. The Live part was after the film where there was a live simulcast panel discussion w/a handful of the people who took part in the movie.
I had high hopes for this movie, especially when I saw my friend The Beer Weasel in the opening credits. However, those hopes faded as the movie went along.

My biggest gripe w/the movie was the Rhonda Kallman storyline. Yes she has the history in craft industry, she co-founded Sam Adams, but I saw her as not a craft beer advocate but as someone w/a gimmick that was doing whatever possible to sell that gimmick to whoever was buying (it didn’t seem like anyone was in the film). I think seeing her trying to sell her beer to the same people she’s supposedly against was rather hypocritical on her part as well as taking away from the main point the film was trying to make. On top of that, the constant bashing of the BMC Goliath did get to be nauseating after a while. You hate the big guys, we get it.

That being said, the star of the film was Sam from DFH. His passion for what he does really shows throughout the triumphs & struggles he goes through playing the part of David in this story. His dialogue about craft beer suffering from identity theft & its negative affects was spot on & one of the most important points the film made. Instead of Rhonda, they could have found any one from the over fourteen-hundred breweries in the U.S. today to get their story which would have more interesting.

The live panel, hosted by Ben Stein (very poor choice), gave you an updated look into the goings on in the world of beer. It would have been nice if it lasted longer. It seemed like the host was rushing things to make sure everything got covered, even if just remotely. Personally, I would have liked to have heard more from (both in the movie and during the live discussion) panelists Charlie Papazian, President of the Brewers Association, & Todd Alstrom, Co-founder of www.BeerAdvocate.com. I think they could have offered more unique aspects to the subject matter.

Overall, while I would say that this movie could have been much better, I found it informative though sometimes dated. At times though, it did give you that what’s going on behind the curtain glimpse into the beer industry.

So how does this “war” come to an end? At the very end of the panel discussion, director Anat Baron answered that question best when she said the public can only decide who wins “by using w/their wallets.”