Netflix Minute: Beer Wars

Netflix Minute is a weekly feature highlighting a title from Netflix's catalog of instant view films. If you want to spend a night snuggled up with a bag of popcorn and don't want to drive to the video store, this is for you.

Documentaries are a bit of a wild card, as far as my cinematic tastes are concerned. Their success hinges on the viewer’s ability to grip onto the raw facts tossed at them and the desire to invest in the narrative structure that the director hopefully tries to build. In the case of Beer Wars, I had both.

Beer is clearly a supporting pillar to American culture as we know it, which is made quite evident by the massive profits of companies like Anheuser-Busch. However, a recent trend begs the question of whether or not we as a people want to endorse these corporations or rather support local breweries and smaller companies who cater to more specific tastes.

Well, “specific tastes” is my attempt to be somewhat unbiased in my description. Beer Wars takes that description and interprets it a little, purporting that local and craft brews are almost guaranteed to have a better, richer taste than the mass market, light lagers produced by Anheuser-Busch, Miller, and Coors. With that assertion comes the narrative I talked about earlier.

The film follows two major microbrew companies, Dogfish Head Craft Brewery and New Century Brewing Co. It follows their respective journeys through conception, production, marketing, and of course, the rough patches. The presidents of both companies, Sam Calagione and Rhonda Kallman, are both enjoyable to watch on the screen and definitely have a message to deliver - namely, the big three practically have a monopoly on the market, these craft brews are superior products, and they should be given a chance in a marketplace dominated by giants.

Many of the impressions I’ve read about this documentary point out that it has a degree of bias, to which I would respond “of course?”. The thing is, Beer Wars does provide many of the facts. To anyone like me who doesn’t really know the history of the business and the laws put in place after prohibition, the facts really did help me build a baseline opinion without being too swayed by the message of the film at first blush.

However, it’s definitely clear that the narrative is trying to make the argument that consumers should gather the cajones to perhaps spend a little bit more cash and vote with their wallets for higher quality brews that, surprise, Sam and Rhonda happen to make. While some may argue that such a direct assertion may be crossing the line, I feel like these guys deserve a chance to be heard through the $1.5 billion dollars the big three spend on advertisement every year.

Score: 4 out of 5
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