Bass IPA (Anheuser-Busch InBev)

Well, here it is, the new face of Bass. As described previously, the grand old Bass brewery was taken over by A-B InBev in the year 2000, and its products are now being produced at the Anheuser-Busch plant at Baldwinsville, New York. The label would clearly like us to believe that this beer is made in the traditional English style, despite its remove from the distinctive calcium-rich Burton waters and the even more distinctive Burton Union system in which it was traditionally fermented.

So what might a person expect a "traditional" Bass IPA to taste like, if they were to permit themselves to be persuaded by the marketing? I can do no better than to reproduce this quote from Martyn Cornell's excellent Zythophile blog:

North American IPAs – excellent though many of them are – use hop types completely unknown to 18th and 19th century British brewers, and major on floral, citrussy flavours and aromas in their IPAs, which are designed to be drunk comparatively young. Early British IPAs were designed to be drunk aged anything up to nine months or more, and while they were certainly bitter, they would have lost most of any hop aroma that they originally had. In addition it is becoming increasingly clear that early British IPAs would have showed at least some Brettanomyces character, from their long ageing in cask. Apart from both containing lots of hops, and being similar colours (except for the black ones) modern North American IPAs and early British IPAs could not be much more different.

Okay, so what is this one really like? In my pint glass, it shows a medium amber color -- strangely thin, though. Doesn't seem dense enough. The pour produces half an inch of clumpy, off-white foam.

There is a rather subdued, delicate, flowery, cotton candy aroma. Quite nice actually, and I will give points for foiling the expectation set up by the aroma of American IPAs.

At first sip, the beer does have some of that trademark Bass malt flavor, sweet and dense, but it drops of very quickly into a finishing bitterness that has very little nuance -- no citrus, no sap, no flowers, grass or herbs. In this sense, too, it does stand out from an American-style IPA. The body is of medium weight -- not as flimsy as the thinnish appearance might lead you to expect. Just a bit of grain flavor lingers after the bitterness lets up.

There is actually a fair amount of flavor here, but not much complexity. When tasting it blind, my wife said "tastes like a fairly well-made American beer." That's about right. It does stand apart from the predominant contemporary West Coast IPA style, but whether it is because of an authentic English character, I'm not so sure. There is certainly no Brettanomyces character (because there is no cask aging), nor any sulphurous “Burton snatch.”

Overall I would rate aroma this beer's best quality. That aspect of it really is rather nice.

From the bottle's label:

[front] Brewed in the tradition of William Bass Brewers Limited, Burton-on-Trent, England. This fine India pale ale has been brewed in the great British tradition using traditional English Fuggle hops.

[back] ICONOGRAPHY. From the makers of the original pale ale comes Bass India Pale Ale. Make with all malt and a blend of imported and domestic hops, including the traditional English Fuggle. Bass IPA is then dry-hopped in aging tanks for a remarkable aroma. Perfect for anytime you want to enjoy an intensely satisfying beer.

Featured beer:
Bass IPA

Caveat Emptor (or: Invasion of the Body Snatchers)

I evangelize a lot about craft beer. After all, it has more or less rescued the American drinking public from the homogeneity of dull, mass-produced light lagers. But of course the craft movement did not invent flavor in beer; it merely restored what the mass producers had stripped out. And prior to the 1990s, imported beer was always there to remind us, by contrast, of the wan quality of our domestics.

Back then, whenever I had the chance I drank beers from England and Germany -- motherlands of the brewing traditions that immigrated to the United States and thrived prior to Prohibition. It seemed to me that these countries still treated beer as a flavorful, traditional beverage, not a commodity to be produced at as high a volume and as low a cost as could be worked out by a planning committee.

But it's a good thing the craft beer movement did take hold here in the U.S., because the inexorable expansion of a few multinational beverage corporations seems to be overtaking every great and venerable European label we once knew. Among the dozens of formerly independent brands that have been gobbled up by the world's largest beer concern, Anheuser-Busch InBev: Bass, Becks, Boddingtons, Franziskaner, Hoegaarden, Leffe, Löwenbräu, St.Pauli Girl, Spaten, and Stella Artois.

A few of those really sting for me. Sure, the original brewing arrangements remain intact in some of these cases, but the bottom line is that A-B InBev controls the brands and can do with them as it pleases. And they have already made some changes that clearly do not benefit the beer as much as they do the parent corporation.

Take for example the Bass Brewery, founded in 1777 by William Bass in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, and one of the most important players in England's storied history of brewing. The brewery was purchased by Molson Coors in 2000, and the Bass brand was later sold to the mega-conglomerate A-B InBev. Beers bearing the Bass imprint are now brewed for the American market at the Anheuser-Busch plant in Baldwinsville, NY. (The facility has an annual production capacity of 7.6 million barrels.)

The Bass label now says "Brewed in the tradition of William Bass Brewers Limited." Not sure exactly what that is intended to mean, but it can't possibly be true beyond a very superficial point, since the Burton Union fermentation system originally used by Bass survives to this day at only one brewery in the world, and it is not in Baldwinsville, New York.

This is the essence of what can happen when a juggernaut corporation buys up historic breweries for their "brand cachet." After the acquisition, decisions are based on the balance sheet, not the quality of the beer, but consumers are expected to hold the products in the same fond regard.

Selling out to a global beverage corporation may, unfortunately, hold an allure for some American craft breweries, too. Many have rapidly grown to the limits of their production capacity, and they'd love to have more fermenting tanks or wider distribution than they can afford on their own.

In a move that generated lots of conversation in the craft beer community, Chicago-based independent Goose Island sold itself to A-B InBev in 2011, and its flagship beer, 312 Urban Wheat, is now brewed in -- you guessed it -- Baldwinsville, NY.  A-B InBev also holds non-controlling stakes in, among other breweries, Georgia's Terrapin Beer Company and Delaware's tiny Coastal Brewing Company, which produces the Fordham and Old Dominion brands.

The multinationals are also using their distribution leverage to steal precious shelf space from legitimate craft breweries. Under the guise of independent and ostensibly "crafty" companies, MillerCoors makes Blue Moon and A-B InBev markets the Shock Top and the less-known Blue Dawg brands. These are but a few examples from what is likely to become a pernicious trend.

It's all bad for the beer drinker, in my opinion. But in the big picture, the most insidious practice of all is to cash in on brand loyalty built through decades (sometimes centuries) of conscientious craftsmanship by selling the hollowed-out husks of formerly great beers. What is lost can never be replaced.

*****
Recommended reading:

• The Plot to Destroy America's Beer
• Big Beer dresses up in craft brewers' clothing

Recommended viewing:

• Beer Wars