One of the nation’s most popular annual musical gatherings, the Austin City Limits Festival (ACL) kicks off this weekend, but one local brewery is calling ‘bullshit’ on its choice of a craft beer sponsor.

Here’s the deal…

Last Sunday Austin Beerworks tweeted out that it wasn’t happy with this year’s official craft beer sponsor for the 16^th annual ACL.

As it turns out this year’s official craft beer sponsor’is Karbach Brewing, a Houston, Texas-based brewery that was acquired by Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2016…And Austin Beerworks thinks that calling them a “Craft Beer Sponsor” was intentionally misleading and that @ACLFestival “should feel bad about it.”

And, not surprisingly, it was on from there…

When Austin Beerworks co-Founder Michael Graham, who authored the pointed tweet was contacted by KVUE for comment on the matter he didn’t hold back….

“It frustrated me because there’s a clear definition of what craft beer is, and Karbach was pretty recently acquired by AB InBev, Anheuser Busch, the largest brewing company in the world, and that’s kind of the opposite of what craft beer is”

“We’re not angling to be the sponsor, these festivals are huge operations, and they require a lot of sponsorship money to exist, and most small companies don’t have the budget to do that. So I think it’s great that they do have beer sponsors, and I think it’s great Karbach is there, honestly I think Karbach makes good beer…they just shouldn’t be advertised as a craft beer sponsor.”

Karbach Brewing’s brewmaster, Eric Warner, then sent KVUE a statement responding to Graham’s comments…

“Karbach is excited to be a part of ACL – we’re huge music fans and really enjoy the music mecca that is Austin.”

 ‘To answer your question about how we define craft beer, to us it’s about what’s in the glass – quality, style of beer, innovation, passion, and ingredients. We started as a craft brewery years ago and I’ll always define myself as a craft brewer.

“I’m extremely proud of the incredibly hard work of our brewing team and the craft beers we’re making on Karbach Street every day where it all began. We look forward to sharing a pint with those who enjoy it!”

Austin Beerworks continued the conversation on Tuesday in a series of tweets criticizing Karbach for what they called “false advertising.”

“Having @abinbev (Anheuser-Busch InBev) as a parent company comes with many benefits – access to the world’s best distribution network, raw ingredients, and brewing knowledge. But you don’t get to pretend that you’re still a craft brewer.”

And we couldn’t agree more with Michael Graham and Austin Beerworks on this matter.