You’d think it would be so simple. Somebody starts a brewery – so they own it. Maybe they sell it, so now that person owns it. Or they take it public, and now a bunch of people own it.

Yet it doesn’t seem to work out that way. Capitalism has gone on a hell of a ride the last 150 years, and as a result the web of brewery ownership is all over the map. And who owns what can get a little confusing – hence the reason for this site. But why is it so hard to find out who is behind your favorite beers? Well, there are a couple of key reasons why brewery ownership can be so hard to track, and the tend to follow a few key trends.

This is the main cause why even though there are thousands of breweries in the world, the vast majority of the volume is held by a few key companies. Brewing is an industry that benefits dramatically from economies of scale: brewing 30 barrels at a time is much more expensive than brewing 3,000 barrels at a time. So beginning in the late 19th century, breweries started to join together to make their business more efficient, and gobble up more market share.

But by the mid-twentieth century, scale was a secondary motivation for consolidating – brewers were beginning to buy each other out simply to kill competition. With fewer rivals on the scene, brewers have more control in their relationships with distributors, retailers, and ultimately customers.

This is where things start to get tricky. Depending on where you are in the world, a beer brand can have two entirely separate owners. Why? Licensing. When a brewery is small, it might understand that it doesn’t have the resources to distribute its product as far as it can distribute its reputation. So it strikes up a deal with another brewery to license the name: “you own it over there, we still own it over here.”

Where this gets complicated is when those small breweries start to expand – which is why Kirin owns a few brands in the United States (including New Belgium and Bells), but it doesn’t own the Kirin brand itself.

When breweries get really big, governments step in and ensure they don’t take too large a share of the market. In most of Anheuser-Busch’s dealings in the last two decades, their acquisitions have been tempered by the Department of Justice (as well as foreign governments) pulling back some of their ambition. In 2008, when they merged with InBev (which owns Labatt), the Feds made sure they auctioned off the brand, which is why its now owned by FIFCO in the United States.

These actions mean that sometime these deals can go very badly for the acquirers. Such was the case in 2012, when AB InBev bought Grupo Modelo, makers of Corona and Modelo. Regulators were worried that this would make AB far too big, and so the US rights to the Grupo brands were sold off to Constellation Brands, at the time a pretty insignificant member of the beer industry.

Now, they have the number one beer in the country.

Lastly, the type of owner that can make finding out who’s in charge so complicated is the one that doesn’t want to be found. Typically, this is where private equity companies get involved.

In an industry as homespun as brewing, finding out the beer is owned by an investment group can be seriously detrimental to the value of the brand. But private equity is an enticing exit opportunity for brewery owners, as they can get rewarded for their work and get out.

That’s why you’ll often find that investors call themselves “strategic partners” rather than owners, or maybe they don’t even announce their ownership at all.