The oldest known written recipe in the world is a formula for beer scratched out on a clay tablet, part of an epic poem devoted to Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of mood-altering liquids. Yet if you’re anything like me, regardless of which lagers you enjoy either at home or out with friends, you haven’t necessarily spent a whole lot of time thinking of your beer purchase as representing a dollar-for-dollar vote in some larger, sprawling corporate crusade for sociocultural dominance. Anat Baron’s Beer Wars is the movie to change that. An eye-opening, wildly engrossing documentary about how corporate beer giants work to intimidate, silence, swallow up and sink independent brewers, this no-holds-barred exploration of the American beer industry reveals the truth behind the label of your favorite beers.

Somewhere there exist fuller, complete notes on Beer Wars, bristling with deeper comparative insights regarding this movie. At least that’s what my gut tells me. But the truth is I cannot now find them, so I have no proof of such claims. So was I drunk when I watched this DVD? Am I drunk now? Both? Like Brittany Murphy in Don’t Say a Word, I’ll never tell. But I can definitively say that Beer Wars exists at the intersection of overall topical interest and quality, deftly interwoven third-person human interest stories, which is a sweet spot not many documentaries hit.

An industry insider (albeit an unlikely one, given that she’s allergic to alcohol), Baron is the former general manager of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, which she joined early in its existence and helped quickly move up in the market, to over $200 million in annual sales. Baron is neither a Michael Moore-style crusader who impresses her personality upon every frame of her movie, nor a deep-tissue massager of newly unearthed, difficultly won facts, but her movie sheds light on what are now the two mammoth beer corporations — Anheuser-Bush and MillerCoors, the latter of whom merged late in production on the film — who continue to push out and squash the American dream of the small business brewers, whom Beer Wars unabashedly argues have a deeper interest in taste and quality. A small handful of original animation interstitials by David Stone and
Casey Leonard, meanwhile, are peppy and engaging, even if they come off a bit like
a page ripped out of the playbook of The Kid Stays in the Picture or some Moore film.

Interwoven with some noodling around by Baron herself, this story of status quo protection is told chiefly through two of these entrepreneurs battling the financial might and dodgy tactics of Corporate America. Sam Calagione (above) is the personable founder and CEO of Dogfish Head, a Delaware microbrewery, and a guy whose ambition doesn’t seem to outweigh his zeal for a quality product; he’s into smart, modulated growth, which means not taking his company headlong into some harebrained public offering. Meanwhile, Rhonda Kallman, a former executive and co-founding partner at Samuel Adams, has dreams of introducing a caffeinated beer into the market, and works individual storefronts and bars in Boston and the Northeastern corridor to try to make her dream a reality. They’re each great subjects — interesting and relatable.

In trying to understand how unbalanced the beer industry is, Baron discovers an incredible connection between beer and politics, which leads to an explanation of the three-tiered distribution system, established after Prohibition, and why the big players are so intent on preserving their 75-year-old monopoly. This is probably the most fascinating part of the film, and one that could have used a bit more investigative muscle, or naked provocation. The issue here isn’t about the protection and integrity of laws governing underage possession and consumption; it’s that the biggest players seek by hook and by crook to leverage their already ridiculous competitive advantage, pressing for even more favorable legislation (over 37,000 laws and counting) even though the current distribution method basically obliges micro-brewers (who can’t sell their products online, obviously) to use delivery trucks bought and paid for by Anheuser-Bush and MillerCoors, who can then directly limit and otherwise blunt the impact of their competitors’ market penetration. This wouldn’t fly in any other industry; free market proponents would have an absolute shit fit.

Beer Wars comes to DVD presented in a 16×9 aspect ratio, with a nice array of supplemental features, including deleted scenes, extended interviews and a post-screening (if I recall correctly) chat with Baron and her subjects moderated by none other than Ben Stein. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) B (Disc)