LogFAQs > #973540160

Of all the things there are to worry about in the world today, the state of beers is not one of them. Craft brewing is thriving magnificently in a great many areas, and even in the areas where it isn't, it's not particularly hard to find stuff that's been imported from a couple counties over. If a few macrobreweries do end up trying to duplicate Bud Light, you're not going to have any problem at all simply not drinking those copies.

It's also worth noting that the biggest thing that sets Budweiser apart from other beers is that they use a significant amount of rice, which has to be prepared differently from other grains and requires a fair amount of specialized equipment to do so at any particular scale. Even if AB hasn't patented those techniques such that nobody else can use them (which I expect they have), trying to emulate Bud isn't something other breweries can do without a pretty significant investment into new equipment and other infrastructure, investment that will do nothing to help any of their other products. To that end, I don't know that it's going to be the most attractive niche to chase. The most you're likely to see in that regard is AB selling off a couple of their breweries that produce Bud and another macrobrewer buying the facilities and using that pre-existing equipment to put their own spin on the concept, which won't hurt production of their other products.