Every Saturday, as Mike, I, and whomever follows this blog closely enough to purchase the beer of the week, indulge in a fine craft beverage, we do so non arbitrarily; that is, there is usually a reason behind the particular choice in beer.  So this week, as an expression of sympathy to hard working American brewers who were dismayed that the President chose a foreign owned company to procure his beer, we are choosing a patriotic choice as the “Sip With Us Saturday Beer.”

Now, don’t get us wrong.  Mike and I drink foreign beer.  We like it.  We love it.  We promote it on this site.  I personally am itching to visit several foreign breweries.  But, while we are not yet owners of a brewery, I understand why American breweries may be upset.  This “beer summit” was perhaps the biggest commercial of the year.  The exposure that Bud Light received via blogs, news articles, and twitter as a result of “beer summit,” had to at least rival that of the Super Bowl.  And besides, instead of having to pay some big shot quarterback millions of dollars to hold a beer and grin for the camera, Bud Light got a free endorsement from the most recognizable man in America.

Yes, we are sympathetic.

Namely, there were four breweries in contention this week:  Magic Hat, Genesee, Sam Adams, and Sierra Nevada, as their voiced opposition to foriegn endorsement was a bit louder.  From https://www.wptz.com and https://briefingroom.thehill.com we read:

“Craft Brewers the country over are chagrined by the president’s choice to consume a beer owned by a company based outside of America’s borders,” the statement says. “Bud Light, owned by Belgium-based AB InBev, and Blue Moon, owned by London-based SAB MillerCoors, together control over 90 percent of the beer market in the United States.”  (Magic Hat)

Among rival brewers, the news fell flat. “We would hope they would pick a family-owned, American beer to lubricate the conversation,” said Bill Manley, a spokesman for the Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., a California-based brewer that happens to be family-owned.

Jim Koch, founder of Boston Beer Co., which brews Samuel Adams, decried “the foreign domination of something so basic and important to our culture as beer.”

Genesee Brewery, Rochester, N.Y., released a statement congratulating the president for having beer at the meeting but adding: “We just hope the next time the President has a beer, he chooses an American beer, made by American workers, and an American-owned brewery like Genesee.”

We chose Sierra Nevada’s Bigfoot Barleywine out of the four breweries, simply because they aspire to high degree of quality, are well known in the craft industry, the product easy to find for our readers, and nothing screams “AMERICAN,” like bigfoot!

To make your drinking experience much more enjoyable, feel free to watch the conclusive footage of bigfoot while drinking your beer tommorrow.  Cheers!

nate and mike