The article you posted is very much in line with a conversation I had with an exec of Budweiser at a charity event.Here's an interesting article that was on BrewDog's blog last December. It includes this quote from the owner of a brewery that was bought out. From the Blog:
Nøgne Ø
Within months of selling to a mega beer corporation, Nøgne Ø founder and former CEO Kjetil Jikiun posted this message on Facebook. He said the new buyers had ensured "Nøgne Ø The Uncompromising Brewery was changing into Grey Ø The Average Brewery" and the new values introduced were "Good Enough. Mediocre. Average." Kjetil left, obviously distressed as to what became of the brewery he loved. At the time of the acquisition both Kjetil and Hansa (the buyer) insisted nothing would change. It obviously did, and quickly.
There are also other interesting tidbits from the Elysian, Lagunitas, and Goose Island purchases.(NB1403)
He basically said when AB/InBev buys a craft brewery they initially allow the brewery to retain control over recipes and process (seems to be the statement everyone makes when they are first bought out), but as time goes on they gradually take more and more control over the decisions being made at the brewery, and he flat out told me the end game was to "phase them out"
How much of that is legit and straight up or just some exec talking to be talking...I don't know.
I also had a conversation with the Head Brewer at the Van Nuys location. They are going to start brewing Golden Road's 329 Lager there. And he told me he hates that he has to brew their recipe and as soon as they let him he is going to change the recipe because he doesn't like using specialty malts. In fact they don't use them at all there and he doesn't want to deal with storage issues of having a specific place just for those specialty malts.
Again, this is all stuff in an informal discussion, so its to be taken with a grain of salt. But for me, coming from who it came from, there is at least a smidgen of validity.
