Because You Like Beer You Sort of Liked Beer Wars
On April, 16, I along with ~75 others surrendered $15 for the live satellite debut of Beer Wars. This $15 got me 89 minutes of documentary and 30ish minutes
of Ben Stein being awkward with beer personalities. Someone must have finally won all of his money, because he seemed peeved off. And very confused. Stein asked more than one question that was explicitly addressed in the film, and in one case had a whole segment devoted to it. Kudos to the panelists for keeping their cool, especially Beer Advocate founder Todd Alström who had to bear a great amount of Stein’s brunt and respond on a live satellite feed to Stein making fun of his beard, brother, and oddly drawn associations with the Godfather and dead horse heads.
Now that that’s out there, let me address the sexually confusing and creepy poster.
The torso has ten arms; seven of them being left and four right (which could explain why she/it is leaning to the left). And one of those “right” hands is wearing a left handed baseball glove… full of hops. From the start I was a bit apprehensive.
I get it… each hand is holding an item that symbolizes part of the story. Seems simple enough, but if I would have examined this image a little closer before viewing the film, I might have had a better idea of what I was getting into. Four of those ten hands are holding sports items. Four are holding beer items and only three of those four look like “good” beer and only one with any brand (Dogfish Head). Then we got one hand with Old Glory and the last holding a guitar.
So lets break it down. If Beer Wars were a pie, we would have four slices of sports content, then three slices of good beer, one slice of bad beer, one slice of America, and one slice of guitar… sounds like slim pickings for a documentary about beer titled Beer Wars?
I wish it could have been as good as that.
Instead we were treated to an “insider’s” perspective of the US beer market. Director Anat Baron 
came from Mike’s Hard Lemonade and claimed that as her credentials to tell the story of the craft beer industry. That, plus she has an allergy to alcohol preventing her from drinking beer made for a documentary that was a little off the mark.
To the point:
The film was heavy on the wars, lite on the beer (get it?).
Sam Koch of Boston Beer Company (AKA Sam Adams) played the part of Father Abraham with Dogfish Head crazy man Sam Calagione as John the Baptist and one time Boston Beer Company partner Rhonda Kallman as… Jesus?
She was portrayed throughout the film as a persecuted evangelist for the gospel 
of her caffeinated beer Long Moonshot.
In sticking with the metaphor, she even gets crucified by Alström at the end.
“Take off the ’ft’ and replace it with a ’p’, cause it’s crap beer!” said Alström in his professional opinion.
Ok.
From the satellite feed before the film Anat explained that Beer Wars was five years in the making, and this shows in the story telling as A-B is heavily set up as the big bad wolf only to be gobbled up by InBev from across the Atlantic in the last 30 minutes or so of the film.
The film brings nothing new to the table, and its main accomplishment is to disappoint craft beer fans/nerds. But what could you really expect from someone who has a few years experience in the cheerleader beer industry and really has no experience with even tasting good American craft beer.
In my opinion, the best part was in the parking lot before the documentary ever began. FrankTex of Saint Arnold announced he was bringing some beers and tailgating and thus followed Live Oak, Real Ale, and the Austin Zealots. Thanks for making it worth the 30 minute drive South through rush hour traffic, guys.
You should have stayed in the parking lot.