Budweiser gets a lot of crap from the craft beer world. Some of that criticism they brought on themselves by handing out their own mocking of craft beer. Their watered down rice and corn based brew is scoffed at, made fun of and mocked across the board for being Big Beer and not community oriented. Some of that criticism is true, some of that isn’t.
There have been some horrific flooding throughout the state of Texas. As reported by NBC, instead of continuing to brew beer, Budweiser stepped up and turned it’s beer production line into producing cans of water.
Anheuser-Busch said it had stopped beer production at its Cartersville brewery in Georgia late Wednesday night to produce 50,000 cans of water for the American Red Cross.
“Right now our production line is running emergency drinking water instead of beer,” Cartersville brewery manager Rob Haas told NBC News.
But this isn’t the first time they’ve done this
The Cartersville brewery produces cans of emergency relief water a few times a year, Haas said, partnering with the American Red Cross to provide to places in need within the United States.
“It’s something we’re uniquely positioned to do in a very timely period,” he said.
About 2,000 cases, each carrying 24 cans, are en route to communities in Texas and Oklahoma, he added. The water is expected to reach those areas within the next few days.
Red Cross spokesman Jordan Scott said the organization had been working with Anheuser-Busch, one of their disaster relief partners, to iron out the logistics of the water shipments and what areas they were needed the most.
Big Beer scares people because of the distance it creates between what we consume and the communities we consume it in. We get concerned about their distant factories and the toll it creates on our environment, jobs and community ties. Well, sometimes Big Beer is the only one that can help and we should be thankful for that. Tonight on the #taptrail, raise a glass to Budweiser. I’m not suggesting to drink their beer, but just raise a glass.
