They may deny the rumour till Judgement Day but Schincariol’s refutations are beginning to sound a bit hollow. Relations seem to have turned from terse to sour between Schincariol’s thirty something owners, the brothers Adriano and Alexandre Schincariol and their cousin Gilberto over the past few weeks ever since the London Sunday Times reported in April 2011 that SABMiller was interested in buying Brazil’s number two brewer.

The world’s number one brewer AB-InBev on 4 May 2011 posted a sharply higher net profit for the first quarter, but the results were skewed by a 0.4 percent drop in volume to 91.45 million hl compared to the year-earlier quarter.

There’s only a thin line between high hopes and heartbreak. Having already sold its brewery to SABMiller in November 2010 for an estimated USD 45 million (EUR 30 million), Germany’s brewer Warsteiner has now disposed of its wine company Casa Orfila in Mendoza. In April 2011 Warsteiner clinched a deal with the local beverage company Cepas Argentinas SA for an undisclosed sum.

Conglomerates, daaahlings, are so yesterday’s fashion. Which is what Fortune Brands found out to its detriment when the activist investor Bill Ackman told the board that the aggregate value locked up in its three divisions (golf/home products/drinks) was higher than the company’s total.

Looks like the end game of globalisation could turn nasty. The privately-owned Schincariol, Brazil’s second-largest brewer, has strongly denied the claim that it has been put up for sale for about USD 2 billion and that SABMiller was the likely buyer. People familiar with the situation believe that Brazil’s market leader AmBev could be the source of the allegation, first published by the London Sunday Times on 3 April 2011, in the hope of denting Schincariol’s public image.

Just as well August Busch IV resigned from AB-InBev’s board. The world’s media is not letting him out of their clutches now that the family of his 27-year-old girlfriend, who died last year of what authorities say was a drug overdose at the mansion of August Busch IV, is suing the Anheuser-Busch heir. According to U.S. media reports, Mr Busch is being accused of carelessness and negligence in the death that produced no criminal charges.

The complexities of the Three-Tier System in the U.S. never fail to amaze us at BRAUWELT International. Here is another maddening anti-competitive regulation: Under Texas law, brewpubs may serve beer or sell it directly to the public for home consumption, but they are not allowed to sell it via distributors or retailers. On the other hand, a brewpub in California isn’t subject to Texas restrictions, so it can sell beer on site as well as package it for distribution to other states, including Texas. A Texas brewpub can’t do this. So in Texas you have a situation where you can buy beer from a Californian brewpub at your local shop, but you can’t buy beer from the brewpub down the street. The only place to get a Texas brewpub beer is from the source.

Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, the UK, France, Poland: all have progressive duties for beer (with variable thresholds and reductions) which benefit the smaller guys. So why has it taken the U.S. a quarter of a century of craft beer growth to think about alleviating the excise burden for craft brewers? Of course, tax regimes in “Old Europe” don’t mean anything to American politicians. That’s why it’s a brave and laudable move by The Brewers Association (BA), which represents America’s craft brewers, to try to convince their legislators in both Houses of Congress that a change to a graduated beer excise rate is really needed.

Wimmin, stop popping Prozac. There’s an alternative: it isn’t fattening, not even addictive and doesn’t require a prescription. Mother’s little helper is called Skinnygirl, a ready-to-drink (RTD) Margarita cocktail, which sells at a store near you.

For the sixth year in a row, total volume of sales for the carbonated soft drinks industry was down in 2010, says Beverage Digest. Fortunately, total moneys made – thanks to higher prices – were up from the previous year. So gloom all around? Not quite. Because Americans are increasingly shifting their preference to diet drinks.