Anhieser-Busch canning water instead of beer? Do they know something?

Yes, Anheiser Busch knows that people buy $60 Billion worth of bottled water per year. (source: wikipedia - bottled water)

They just want their cut haha. Unless one thinks Ozarka and Nestle and Aquafina are all in on it too.

reply to post by Gazrok


I'm not sure it really does go "bad", But the cans we had, did have an expiration date on them(and had just expired), that's why we ended up with them. Someplace local had a stockpile, and had to get rid of them. My guess that they are required by law to put a date on them.

reply to post by LastStand


Interesting post, and I find it surprising that your Grandmother is suspicious, my grandmother is paranoid to the extreme but only about the people she lives with, and yes she too lived through the depression.

That aside I would like to shed a bit of light on this subject. I live in Missouri, and was involved in the 93 floods. Busch did the same thing then, stopping beer production to can drinkable water. It was a noble gesture- they didnt charge for it they just gave it away to any who needed it.

As for why they are doing it now-well Missouri residents can tell you easily enough-Its going to Flood.

I am not predicting, this didnt come to me in a dream. Its a simple fact, we received much more snow this year than we have been in the last say ohh 10-40 years. We are now just beginnng to see the start of the rainy spring season. Already the rivers are swollen, not yet beyond capacity, but very close. The upper Missouri and Missippi rivers are absorbing spring snow melt, or will be very soon, raising the levels even higher. Once the late spring and early summer rain deluges hit, we are going to go under like a rock tossed into a pond. Busch knows this, and they understand PR very well. They package drinkable water now, and dole it out when needed-it gives them a very good name with the folks who really need drinking water during a disaster.
Busch had a hard time keeping up last time we had any serious flooding, I think they are just making advance preperations. Just my personal opinion.

i wonder why water takes longer then beer to can
weird

reply to post by LastStand


I had some of that canned crap after Hurricane Rita, it is by far the most god awful non alcoholic drink I've ever had. The fuel tainted water on the Kitty Hawk tasted better. It tastes like hot aluminum, they do have a limited shelf life as another poster mentioned so they only make them when it's in demand. The stuff we had was canned 2 days previously.

reply to post by Silverado292


Wow, so two days in the can and it tastes like garbage - can that is.



What is the reason to can it as opposed it a plastic bottle?

Is there something the aluminum can protect it from that a plastic bottle cant?

Radiation? Just wondering.

reply to post by getreadyalready

Originally posted by getreadyalready
...their business is slow...

Somewhat, but not quite:

Anheuser-Busch Doubles Its Dividend

reply to post by burntheships


I figured because they already have tons of cans on hand it was cheaper to do it that way. I ended up guarding all the food Fema had dropped off I had 2 prisoners detached to me and we were working in 100+ degree weather and none of us could actually finish a can. Thankfully we were where all the food, water etc... was located at so we switched water sources quickly.

To add: I couldn't see the water part printed on the can when I first saw them but I did see the logo. I remember seeing an endless sea of them and thinking "What #ing moron thought this would be a great idea."

reply to post by burntheships


As far as I know they have never produced beer in plastic bottles. If they did, they would have to retool or build a new facility for that. I think glass bottles are more expensive to produce too, and would take up more space and be more fragile for transport.

Sure it doesnt taste great, but in an emergency, water is water.

reply to post by Cheesefacedogbone


Yes, I agree in survival water is water, and to clarify I have not seen beer in plastic either.

As you said, maybe they are just using aluminum because its what they have.

Too bad it tastes so awful.

Originally posted by getreadyalready
reply to post by LastStand

 

They did this during Katrina and Andrew.

I am still a little concerned, because they don't usually do it until a disaster is at hand. The water has a limited shelf-life and it takes up valuable warehouse space.

In my opinion, there are only a couple of reasons to do this. Either they know of an impending disaster that will require even more water than they can produce in a few days. That is a very scary scenario, because one or two days of production is more than enough to provide for most disasters. OR, their business is slow, and they are trying to keep the factories running until demand for beer picks up?

Either of those reasons above, points to major issues for the U.S. If economy is so bad that it has affected beer sales, then we are screwed! OR, if a disaster is looming that will take this much water, then we are screwed. Either way, it looks like we are screwed!

I have to doubt the beer thing...and how would they know about the disaster - to the point of diverting resources of this magnitude...? THAT is the scarier of the scenarios. That someone must know something WE are not being told.

Originally posted by Jackasszilla
reply to post by LastStand

 

Interesting to say the least, I do have one question/request. Is there anyone more technologically inclined than I that can enlarge the photo of the can itself and embed the pic? Specifically the image on the can.

Looks to me as if someone has a hand in this other than the Anhieser-Busch company, but I'm just going off of the picture I can see.

Jack.

ETA: Nevermind, I googled it and although it looked to have been a Masonic compass I am mistaken it is just an A but you can see how I saw that right...??? RIGHT???

edit on 03/12/2010 by Jackasszilla because: Added Information

Yeah i totally saw that too - was just about to google it for a closer look. I wonder if this is what happens when people focus and look for the conspiracy of things all the time - your senses become overly subjective/selective (viewing what you want to view, hearing what you want to hear etc). What am I saying, OF COURSE that is what happens!! Oh well, makes life exciting.

Would actually be a pretty kickarse logo though if it was a compass with sunbeams shooting out of the top etc.

reply to post by LastStand


I just watched a documentary the other day about water bottling and I'm not surprised this would happen .. Water is a gold mine for people right now and everyone is wanting in on it .. people are drinking less soda and buying more bottled water than ever before which does have it's negative effects on water supplies.. but the bigger thing they mentioned is how others are trying to get in on this..

Throughout the US you can stake claims pretty much on water reserves and due to loopholes in the laws, they don't have to pay for it really.. if they build a physicility locally they can pipe out the water and sell it locally without being taxed on it .. and due to the way the law works, since they are local they can take as much as they can get..

The fact is most of the bottled water you find in stores is pumped locally from municipal sources..

Ultimately after watching this film, none of this surprises me .. there is a TON of money made on water..

I'm sure they are just preparing for a flood scenario. I lived in a river town in IL during the Flood of '93 and with the heavy northern snowfalls we have had this year coupled with the rainy season, it's altogether possible we could see record flooding again this year. Where I live, the old-timers talk about the 20 year floods, so we are about due again. In '93, I worked in a factory in the bottoms and we were assembled by our shift supervisor to receive instructions on how to escape the bottoms if the levee were to break while we were at work. We were told to leave everything behind and get out to our cars, taking anyone who needed a ride with us, and heading up the hill three rows thick until we reached the top. Our supervisor had lived through the floods and he was an awesome man who put his $#@ on the line telling us to do that. Our esteemed factory owner cared so much about us, he had people in there right up to the last possible moment trying to remove product and equipment. Needless to say, much was lost, but I'm sure he wrote it off and the government took care of him. It kind of makes one sick to think of all the greed. Those last weeks prior to the levee breech, the frogs were terrible. The animals headed for higher ground way before we stupid humans ever thought about doing so. In my whole life, I've never seen anything so amazing. From an overlook in my town, the Mississippi looked like the ocean. My dad rode a boat across it and took some awesome footage. It was just unbelievable the power of that river. Unfortunately, it was also so devastating in so many ways.

Originally posted by Whipfather
Why is anyone surprised that Anheuser-Busch are canning water?
Have you ever tried a Budweiser? Especially Bud Light? Water is all that's in those cans!

Haha star for that! In addition to urine they also use extract of skunk, which they buy wholesale from both the makers of Corona and Heineken.

Originally posted by Dyax-
i wonder why water takes longer then beer to can
weird

I am also wondering why it takes longer to can water than beer..... with the beer you have to mash, boil, ferment, and carbonate. What are they doing to the water that takes longer to make I wonder?

The only thing I could think of is some sort of water sanitation, which wouldn't be needed in the beer due to alcohol content.

BTW miller does/did come in plastic bottles, I remember having some probably 5 years go or something. I think it is many made for sports events and the like where having a bunch of drunk people with glass bottles probably isn't the best idea

They should start putting water in those miller mini keg systems they sell, that would be a fine water dispenser!

reply to post by James1982


It says in the link in the OP, that the lack of carbonation, slows down the process some how.

This is not something new people. Back when the northridge earthquake in california hit, I was grateful to get canned water from the anhieser busch van nuys plant. they gave them to all the stores to give out to the people. There was no running water and it was needed.

So it is not surprising that food and water is stock piled. And as for how long it is good for? It is in a sealed can and it is water. how is it gonna go bad? And i am sure they can water more often then people know.

Back in the fifties they where storing food( M.R.E Type) In the boron mines. We are talking a sea of food. Just for the purpose of using incase of an emergency.

So we should all be thanking them for helping us when we need it. It is not all doom and gloom.

When we had flooding problems in my town a couple years back they handed out canned water from A-B.

Not bad water, kindof tinny. But when it's cold, it's wet and thus refreshing.

sorry fellas, nothing unusual here. they do it all the time, back in the 80's we had a really bad tornado here. the only water you could get for a week was the AB canned water. being 9 or 10, we thought we were really cool, drinking out of the same cans beer came in. HA..

I saw this on the NBC Nightly News a couple of weeks ago. They said Anheiser did it in anticipation of flooding this Spring in the southern US, which is expected....but it did make me think of the FEMA prep in the New Madrid zone...who knows...