> I see no downside to this shift from major corporate beer to smaller, local craft fare.
This is a model which has worked for hundreds of years in Germany. If you go to a local pub, you tend to either get a regional beer (eg hofbrau in Munich) or a micro brew from the village/town/pub itself. There's a huge amount of pride in local brewing.
Munich is perhaps a bad example since several of their breweries export globally (eg Paulaner, Franziskaner). In some cases these are very much mass produced brews, but in more rural places it's quite common to find the pub has a fermenter in the basement.
To a lesser extent this is the case in the UK, where most towns have their own brewery and will sell to all the local pubs. But the difference in Germany is that often there's no competition at all - it's the local helles or nothing.
Somewhat off-topic: Tegernseer is a very good Bavarian brewery whose beer is available at almost any currywurst cart in Munich but (regrettably) is not exported internationally.
Their brewery/pub in Tegernsee is an excellent day trip by train; far less crowded than the Munich beer gardens, and delicious food to boot. One of my fondest memories of visiting Bayern :-)
It's also interesting that Augustiner has been readily available in Berlin for a few years now (Augustiner is famous for not doing any promotion or advertisement, they just sell beer. In the 80s/90s they also sold lemonade, but stopped that due to needing all the capacity for beer, as I heard). But now Augustiner has become mainstream and not hip enough for Berlin anymore, so I've seen more and more Tegernseer there everytime I visit...
> To a lesser extent this is the case in the UK, where most towns have their own brewery and will sell to all the local pubs.
Indeed, and it's making a comeback. You see a lot more local beers (and they're a lot more popular) than you did even 5 years ago. Two of my peers in their early twenties have gone into (local) brewing. One of whom did this as an alternative to university, one of whom took this route after studying chemistry.
This is a model which has worked for hundreds of years in Germany. If you go to a local pub, you tend to either get a regional beer (eg hofbrau in Munich) or a micro brew from the village/town/pub itself. There's a huge amount of pride in local brewing.
Munich is perhaps a bad example since several of their breweries export globally (eg Paulaner, Franziskaner). In some cases these are very much mass produced brews, but in more rural places it's quite common to find the pub has a fermenter in the basement.
To a lesser extent this is the case in the UK, where most towns have their own brewery and will sell to all the local pubs. But the difference in Germany is that often there's no competition at all - it's the local helles or nothing.