I think people's objections to a lot of BUL stuff is that they are marketted as (and priced accordingly) premium imported beers. If they were marketted as brewed here in a similar fashion to and priced the same as CD or VB, I doubt people would get up in arms as much.
Also the continued insistence that these beers are exactly the same when it is patently obvious to most that they are not.
It's not really acting offended anyway - it's seeing through marketting smoke and mirrors.
+1 to all this.
Manticle has once again thoroughly articulated the issues that I could not (that and the fact that I was rushing out the door to work).
As an addendum - BUL beer actually started me on the path to craft beer and all-grain brewing. If the BUL Heiny (my favourite euroswill) tasted the same (or was priced lower because you weren't paying for it to be shipped from Europe) - I'd not have started searching around for "what else" I could buy for $15 or so a 6pack.
It started me on the path to Oettinger (not fussed on it), BROK (not cheap enough given it's the same ol' same old), Matilda bay boh pils, JS Sundown Lager and LC Pale Ale.
They were okay, but I saw that each of these marques had some other beers of different varieties.
Up to that point I drank Stout or Pils/lager. Suddenly I was finding Pale Ales (starting with Fat Yak). That started me on the hop path, which started me looking for hoppier and hoppier beers, and eventually making my own hoppier beers (whereas previously I specialised in Dark Beers) and moving to AG brewing to hide the kit twang.
It's interesting that the media always contains reports about the "shrinking beer market" - I wonder if BUL in Australia has contributed to this - because I know that I don't buy much beer at all, whereas I once was a regular consumer of imported Heineken.
Goomba