// WIRED US/UK — MOBILE & WEB
Bud Light Boycotters Are Still Waiting for Their ‘Woke-Free’ Beer
“Go woke, go broke” was a culture war rallying cry of the Biden years, with American conservatives waging battles against any corporate entity that dared to pay lip service to diversity or LGBTQ rights.
But customers of one successful anti-woke alternative brand later found their own wallets a bit lighter—with nothing to show for it.
In April 2023, at the height of a right-wing freakout over a sponsored Instagram post in which transgender actress and singer Dylan Mulvaney showed off a can of Bud Light with her face on it, a Georgia man named Seth Weathers smelled an opportunity to cash in. Conservatives were vowing to ditch the Budweiser brand and take their business elsewhere. (A tearful Kid Rock even filmed himself shooting up a few cases with a semiautomatic rifle.) It was an angry political demographic in need of a new low-ABV lager.
Weathers, a political consultant who briefly served as Georgia state director for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2015 and went on to work with a county commissioner known for racist Facebook posts, swooped in to pitch a replacement beverage. Under his social brand “Conservative Dad,” he marketed a brew called Ultra Right Beer to the MAGA voters making a stink about trans inclusivity.
“America’s been drinking beer from a company that doesn’t even know what restroom to use,” Weathers said in a YouTube ad that included a clip of Mulvaney sipping Bud Light. “That’s why I created Conservative Dad’s Ultra Right 100 percent woke-free beer.” The commercial shows Weathers teeing up a can of Bud Light and walloping it with a baseball bat. “Stop giving money to woke corporations that hate our values,” he said, warning such companies to “stay the fuck away from our kids.”
The concept made a splash in right-wing media, which sent droves of readers and viewers to the Ultra Right Beer website to place orders—even though Weathers had yet to find a brewery to make the stuff. (He was also facing logistical hurdles to shipping the hypothetical beer, a process subject to heavy regulations that vary from one state to the next.) Within two weeks, Weathers had partnered with Big Kettle Brewing in Lawrenceville, Georgia, to produce the beer, and claimed he was closing in on $1 million in sales of six-packs priced at $19.99 apiece.
But while Fox News and similar outlets continued to tout Ultra Right as a stunning victory over Budweiser’s brewer, Anheuser-Busch, deliveries were slow to materialize. Weathers’ company, Ultra Right Beer LLC, would eventually receive an “F” rating from the Better Business Bureau, which notes that it has failed to respond to nearly 200 complaints over missing six-packs and virtually nonexistent customer service. The author of a one-star review of Ultra Right on the BBB website griped that its special edition “Revenge” cans of beer with Trump’s mugshot on them took a year and a half to arrive, while a “Fight”-themed six-pack (styled with the image of Trump raising his fist after surviving an assassination attempt at a July 2024 campaign rally) never arrived at all.
Weathers claimed in August 2024 that sales of the special edition Fight beer had reached the $1 million mark. It’s not clear how many orders of Fight beer ultimately shipped. On eBay, resellers have listed empty six-packs for as much as $115.
Two years later, around 400 people are members of a Facebook group called “People Still Waiting for Ultra Right Fight Beer,” with many claiming that they have received neither the limited-edition beer nor a refund after placing orders in 2024. “I no longer want the beer … just my money back!” reads a recent post on the page.
Enough of these customers have contacted Georgia attorney general Chris Carr to report on Ultra Right Beer LLC that the office has opened an investigation into the company, which has been unresponsive to compliance orders, according to court filings. Ironshield Brewing, the company that operated Big Kettle Brewing as a contract brewer, announced that it