Like a lot of things, I think beer is fine if you're adult about it. We've got quite a lot of beer in our Chicago office (we haul crates from Russian River and Three Floyds and Jolly Pumpkin). But nobody drinks while they work, and nobody drinks whole bottles; we open a bottle and a bunch of people taste. If it's Friday, we might open a couple bottles.
I can't imagine this creating a problem. For one thing, nobody's getting drunk. For another, nobody is OK with disrupting anyone else's work. And finally, I don't think many people here would be sanguine about seeing someone get harassed. On the other hand, maybe that's because so many of us are parents.
Maybe there's an argument that your culture needs to be mature enough to handle beer, and maybe there's an argument that if you've got kegs and people are drinking during the working afternoon, that's a sign that maybe the maturity isn't there.