An Alarming Trend

I was looking up Magic Hat when I came upon this piece of disturbing news. Magic hat was bought by North American Breweries in 2010. Ok, I thought what is this North American Breweries. I checked them out and they own Genesee Brewing, Dundee Brewing, Pyramid, Magic Hat, and MacTarnahan's. This is a trend that alarms me. If you go back to the 60's and 70's which was the great wasteland of American beer there were 2 things that ruined our beer. First was consolidation as a country we were down to only handful of breweries left and those few left were being dominated by the giant national breweries. The second trend was the cheapening of ingredients in the name of profits. Rice and corn in beer are cheaper than barley malt but they also have less flavor. I can't tell if this a local phenomena or a national trend but for our taste buds I hope we don't return to the 70's.

PS: Genesee became Dad's choice when 'Gansett became too expensive.