This blog’s for you

As you might be able to glean from the appearance of the website today, I have some changes to announce.

It’s something that has been in the works for some time, but for legal reasons, I haven’t been able to talk about it until today: Ben’s Beer Blog is proud to announce a unique partnership with AB InBev and, from this day forward, the blog will be known instead as Ben’s Budweiser Blog.

I know this will come as a shock to my many loyal craft-beer drinking readers but a few months ago, owing to my own increasingly dire financial circumstances, I went in search of sponsorship and advertising opportunities for the blog and, while I had some offers from larger Ontario craft brewers, none could compete with the offer I ultimately received from AB InBev through their local subsidiary, Labatt.

As you are likely aware, I was voted the Best Beer Writer in Ontario for the last two years in a row at The Golden Tap Awards and along with this enormous success has come the serious challenge of meeting a growing demand for my witty, irreverent take on the beer industry. As part of this partnership, Labatt has agreed to immediately invest in my blogging infrastructure by purchasing a better desk chair for my mom’s basement and a larger hard drive, both of which I am confident will accelerate my growth in one of the most dynamic blogging segments in Canada while fully preserving the creative character and pioneering spirit that you’ve come to expect from Ben’s Beer Blog.

Obviously, this might seem like something of a philosophical departure for a blog that has for so long championed small and locally-owned breweries, but I assure you that my partnership with AB InBev is simply a natural evolution in my growth as a writer and will only allow more Canadians to enjoy me being a dick about the beer industry and liberally peppering my writing with the word “fuck” in the manner that has made Ben’s Beer Blog what it is today.

The focus of Ben’s Budweiser Blog will remain the same and I, Ben Johnson, will continue to write all the content for the blog. In fact, I’m confident that this partnership will actually afford me more time to devote to the experimental and interesting writing that got me into blogging in the first place. This means that in addition to the coverage you’ve come to expect, I’ll be adding new features that get back to basics, including my own expert and totally unbiased reviews of a wide range of beers, including Bud Light, Bud Light Platinum, Bud Light Lime, Budweiser Select, Budweiser Select 55, Budweiser 66, Bud Ice, Bud Extra, Bud Light Chelada, and the Bud Light Lime-A-Ritas line.

And for those of you who have come to appreciate my unique take on beer industry news, don’t worry, I’m still going to “tell it like it is.” This new large brewery ownership does not mean that my blog will pull any punches. Later this week, for example, I’ll have some pretty hard-hitting coverage of the ins and outs of Anheuser-Busch InBev filing their Annual Report on Form 20-F with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for the year ended December 31, 2015. Hold on to your fucking hats for that doozy.

I’ll also continue The Proost Questionnaire feature, giving you an inside look at the familiar faces in the community working hard to bring you the beer you love. Future installments of the feature will include Sabine Chalmers, Chief Legal & Corporate Affairs Officer and Secretary to the Board of Directors for AB InBev, Felipe Dutra, the Chief Financial & Technology Officer for AB InBev, David Almeida, Chief Integration Officer for AB InBev, and even Miguel Patricio, the  Chief Marketing Officer for AB InBev.

So you see, the name may be different, and the people signing the cheques for Ben’s Budweiser Blog might also own a large beer company, but as is the case when my new parent company purchases craft breweries, nothing is really going to change. It will still be the same product you’ve come to love; only now it’s a closely monitored, market-tested, hyper-efficient version of that product that’s mass-produced by a corporate entity that will probably soon control most of the world’s beer production and is clearly driven virtually entirely by profit margins.

I look forward to sharing this next exciting chapter with my readers.

Cheers!

*In case the date of this post didn’t make it clear, this was an April Fool’s joke.