It’s about time I found a good excuse to post on beer. It’s a beverage which — particularly in the form of the great American microbrew — holds a special place in my heart and, needless to say, American culture.

Unlike water or wine, beer walks the delicate line between common appeal and refinement. It is at home in a corner bar or in the bleachers but even in its blandest form and contrary to its reputation in fraternities, it rewards sipping and — as any grimacing adolescent will tell you — is an acquired taste.

And when you graduate to the products of small, craft breweries, it can, like nothing else, simultaneously satisfy the desire for simple, locally-produced nourishment and complex flavor.

Unlike wine, however, a beer’s particular reputation or the social expectations surrounding its consumption never overwhelm the moment. Sites of beer connoisseurship like RateBeer.com always end up being — except for a few snobby souls — more excuses for social connection and ways to be in touch with local communities than places of exclusion and privilege.

Through that idealistic lens I read Edward McClelland’s analysis of the rise and fall of Budweiser. McClelland uses the occasion of Bud’s sale to the big Belgian brewer InBev to offer a fascinating (if short and somewhat predictable) analysis of how the “mad men” marketing culture was able to popularize some pretty bad beer:

From its very inception, Budweiser was a triumph of marketing over quality. Adolphus Busch, the dynasty’s founder, called his beer “dot schlop” and drank wine instead. During taste tests, St. Louis drinkers spat it back over the bar. But if the Busches didn’t believe in their product, they believed in their business plan. Adolphus bought licenses for tavern keepers and paid their rent. In exchange, they served Budweiser. On one of his frequent visits to Europe, he learned about pasteurization. That, and a fleet of refrigerated railcars, kept the beer fresh on cross-country shipments, allowing Bud to break out of St. Louis.

What really made Bud was television …

And the story starts sounding familiar to anyone aware of the mechanisms of late capitalism, as the Budweiser “image” creates its own reality.

But cue the Rocky music, because, surprisingly, this particular American story has the underdogs winning — or at least thriving:

Budweiser’s position as America’s beer — the alcoholic version of McDonald’s, Disney World and Wal-Mart — has made it difficult to reach the modern drunk. Traditional-beer sales have been stagnant since the 1990s. The baby boomers graduated from their prime drinking years, and new local beers arose to replace the hometown lagers Bud had helped pour down the drain. In 1980, America had eight craft breweries. A quarter-century later, there are over 1,300. In some cases, they’ve recaptured regional loyalties. As a young beer drinker in Michigan, I was weaned on Stroh’s from my father’s refrigerator. After that Detroit brewery went out of business, my dad started expressing his Michigander pride by drinking Bell’s Amber, from Kalamazoo. Last week, I was in Duluth, Minn., where I saw the process gone full circle: Fitger’s Brewery, which closed in 1972, has been converted to Fitger’s Brewhouse, maker of Big Boat oatmeal stout. Then I went on to Wisconsin, where I bought a six-pack of Island wheat, brewed from grain grown on Washington Island.

In my own experience, nowhere is this independent, local brewing culture more alive than in Vermont, one of the most rural states in the country that Bud and other big brewers never really cared about. Walk into any bar — even if it’s the only one in town — and you’ll find a bunch of beers on tap, almost all of them from Vermont’s breweries.

Because its lack of any major metropolitan center makes it invisible on the national marketing map, Vermont has become a utopian vision of what would happen if microbreweries ran the world.

Ireland also elicits thoughts of a beer utopia — or at least of small communities gathering together at the town pub sharing a pint of the local brew, Guinness. But, as Kim Murphy writes in the Chicago Tribune, this vision might be dying, as the Irish (gulp) are drinking less beer overall — and the younger generations, in particular, are moving away from Guinness:

“Years ago, everybody drank Guinness,” said David Donnelly, a 36-year-old Dubliner. “But young people don’t drink Guinness. If I was going for a few drinks with me mates, we just drink Budweiser. Guinness is more of an old fellow’s drink.”

Let’s hope that young man and the other Irish who might have strayed don’t end up falling — as Americans did for decades after World War II — into valuing manufactured style over crafted substance.