“What? They sold Mountain Goat to Asahi? Noooooooooo!”

Okay, so Mountain Goat sold the business to Asahi. You know what that means?

Right now, nothing.

Well, unless you’re the sort who makes it a habit of instantly disliking any ‘‘independent’’ brewer who ‘‘sells out’’ to ‘‘big brewers’’. Because, hey, we know all these craft breweries are just charities, right? They’re not interested in the money at all.

You guys can wail all you want about how this is the death of Mountain Goat – even though Asahi has been brewing most of the Goat beer you’ve been drinking these days.

And that’s fine with me – if ownership is your prime measure for choosing which beer to drink, then you go for it.

For the rest of us, lets just take a breath and wait and see what happens. Being bought out doesn’t automatically mean everything turns to shit. You might have heard of this small business called Little Creatures. These guys have cranked out one of the iconic Australian craft beers, one which routinely rates highly on every beer poll you see.

So imagine my amazement when I found out they were actually owned by Japanese company Kirin. Yes, this is sarcasm – I already knew they were owned by a giant company. Have been for years – but the beer still tastes good, doesn’t it?

So lets just see what happens to the beer. If Asahi is smart, they’ll leave it alone. After all, they bought the Goat because of its sales so cutting costs on recipes would surely see those sales plummet.

In closing, the brewery in Richmond stays open, the staff will still be there and Asahi will still brew the bulk of their beer. So really, what changed today?