Why SABMiller’s acquisition of Meantime is a good thing.

Just to be clear, I’m not an apologist for big, corporate brands, OK? And I’ll fight with anyone who says I am.

I think most people who love craft beer, good beer, real ale, interesting flavourful beer, whatever you want to call it, share a belief that mass market consumerism and the centralising of production into ever fewer, ever bigger corporations, goes hand-in-hand with cost-cutting, homogenisation, blandness, and a triumph of style over substance. It happens in all markets and it’s happened in beer as much as anywhere – I’m old enough to remember when the likes of Stella Artois and John Smiths were well-made, flavourful beers, and it pains me to see what’s become of them.

The small scale of craft brewers allows them to be nimble, adaptive and experimental in a way bigger companies simply cannot do.

Also, if you put the rational arguments to …