This year’s Independence Day celebration will be the country’s 247th, and as bad as things look for the United States, it’s shaping up to be a solid holiday for the American beer business. It usually is: the Fourth of July typically tops even the Super Bowl for sheer case-moving potential, for obvious reasons. Drinker preferences are changing, but it’s hard to beat a cooler full of cold ones on a holiday so steeped in American tradition and symbolism.
Fourth of July 2024 will also be the first at which Real American Beer is available. Note the title-case: 10,000 breweries across the country make their own real American beer, but the only “Real American Beer” recognized by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) is a contract-brewed gimmick brand owned by Terry Bollea, a former professional wrestler and reality-television star you know as Hulk Hogan.
The particulars of this beer matter about as much as that of the venture itself, which is to say, “very little.” But for posterity, they are as follows:
It’s a light adjunct lager made by a few different contract brewers; It’s currently available in about 20 states, distributed by juggernaut Breakthru Beverages; Bollea is the “majority owner,” according to Brewbound’s interview with the brand’s chief executive; The brand’s chief executive is a former exec at ZX Ventures, Anheuser-Busch InBev’s start-up incubator/graveyard;
And so on. It’s not particularly novel for washed-up celebrities to launch drinks brands, nor is it novel for beers to
