Jay R. Brooks on Beer
Monday’s ad is also for Budweiser, again from 1942. This one is quite remarkable, and uses corn syrup and the love of candy by children to make its case. Here’s the thinking. “To the great candy industry of America, corn syrup is a necessary ingredient. Used in other foods as well as candy, it contributes much to the energy and nutrition of the nation.” Thus, A-B’s “Corn Products Division” is as wonderful as their beer business. So drink Bud and “Help a Child’s Dream Cone True.”
Given that today is New Year’s Eve — what I generally refer to as Amateur Drinking Day — I thought this science lesson from Mental Floss on what causes the spins was an appropriate topic. In Why Does Alcohol Cause the Spins?, author Matt Soniak explains that sometimes after an evening’s drinking that the room appears to be spinning out of control. You lie down, but it doesn’t help. No matter what you do, the vertigo persists, causing great discomfort and often the loss of lunch, dinner and everything else that used to be in your stomach. Here’s why.
The spins happen because of an odd effect alcohol has on your ears — specifically, on three tiny, fluid-filled structures called the semicircular canals. Inside each of these canals is a fluid called endolymph and a gelationous structure called the cupula, which is filled with cells covered in fine, hair-like stereocilia.
As you move around, the movement of the endolymph lags behind the more solid cupula, distorting and bending it — and those little hairs. When the hairs bend, the electrical signal they send to your brain is altered, helping you to make sense of the rotations your head experiences on each of the three planes the canals sit on — movements up and down, left and right and backward and forward — and keep your balance.
Booze throws this system out of whack. Alcohol thins the blood, and when boozy blood travels to the inner ear, it creates a density difference between the cupula and the fluid in the canals, and distorts the cupula’s shape. The little hairs bend and send a signal to your brain that tells it you’re rotating when you’re really not, and this illusion of motion makes it seem like the room is spinning.
Some of the things that you most want to do when you’re good and drunk, like lie down and close your eyes, make the sensation worse, since you don’t have any visual or physical cues to counteract the false sense of motion. Looking at a fixed object and keeping your feet planted on the ground can help lessen the effect, but there’s no real way to stop it.
So now you know. The bad news is there’s pretty much nothing you can do about it apart from practicing moderation and drinking plenty of water. If I know I’ll be drinking a lot, I try to eat a hearty meal beforehand, drink a glass of water in between each beer, snack during the party and take some Advil and Vitamin B before going to sleep. Happy New Year everybody.
Maybe this will help; maybe not.
Take a tour of the Suffolk brewery Greene King with head brewer John Bexon hosted by UK beer writer Roger Protz. The video, entitled The Magic of Brewing, the Joy of Beer, runs just under a half-hour and includes a tour of Greene King’s “traditional brew house and fermenting area, taking in the ancient wooden vats where Strong Suffolk is matured.” Enjoy.
Like most kids, I read (or had read to me) a lot of fables and fairy tales growing up. But a class I took in college on them reinvigorated my love of the genre, and I’ve continued to be a fan of fables ever since. Today, I have about two long shelves dedicated to collections of fairy tales from around the world, including the complete Brothers Grimm and an annotated volume of their more well-known tales. So I was excited to see the labels for the Grimm Brothers Brewhouse of Loveland, Colorado. The brewery opened in mid-2010 but somehow escaped my notice until recently. I don’t know if any of the brewery owners are brothers, or even named Grimm, but I’m guessing not, because their names are not readily available at the website or their Facebook page. But they’re certainly using the mythology of the Grimm stories to great effect in their beer names and especially the artwork, created by Ten Fold Collective, a local graphic design firm.
I just love the graphics for their labels. All of their packaging just looks amazing. I know that good packaging won’t mask a subpar beer for long, but it will enhance a good beer’s reputation and will help any beer stand out on increasingly crowded retail shelves. If their beer is only half as good as the packaging, it should be terrific. But it’s best to find out. Loveland is only about an hour north of Denver, on the way to Fort Collins. I definitely have to make a point to get out there during GABF week next year.
Here’s what the bottles look like, followed by close-ups of the labels themselves:
And these labels are part of their “Fabled Series.”
And this is a special release they did for Valentine’s Day earlier this year.
Here’s a fun little “decision chart” from Faultline helping you figure out which type of Belgian beer to choose, and what to eat with your beer. The info on the chart was put together by Ryan Sweeny from Little Bear, a Belgian beer cafe in Los Angeles. Apart from the chart butchering the spelling of Tripel, it’s a fun, simple, potentially useful chart for the uninitiated looking to enjoy some belgian beer.
To see the chart full size, click on this link.
Today in 1911, Mongolia declared their Independence from China.
Mongolia
Mongolia Breweries
Mongolia Brewery Guides
Other Guides
Guild: None Known
National Regulatory Agency: None
Beverage Alcohol Labeling Requirements: Not Known
Drunk Driving Laws: BAC 0.02%
Alcohol Consumption By Type:
Alcohol Consumption Per Capita (in litres):
WHO Alcohol Data:
Patterns of Drinking Score: 3
Prohibition: None
Friday’s ad is another for Budweiser, also from 1942. This one is more of a history lesson equating “the story of bread,” which “may well be called The Story of Civilization.” From there it’s on to yeast, specifically baker’s yeast, for which A-B apparently was one of America’s biggest sources.
In case you missed it, yesterday’s New York Times had an article on Brettanomyces entitled Brettanomyces, a Funky Yeast, Makes Flavorful Beers that’s worth a read.
Thursday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1942. It’s a funny ad that would be totally illegal today thanks to the work of the prohibitionists and neo-prohibitionists, who have turned from trying to ban alcohol after the failure of Prohibition to instead making it as difficult as possible to sell, including increasingly stringent advertising restrictions, including that making health claims are banned, even true ones. But this ad is all about the healthy nature of beer, and the necessary vitamins and foodstuffs in beer, not to mention how R&D on beer has led to other discoveries.
Sam Wiley, a Brooklyn-based designer and advertising artist who’s done work for Anheuser-Busch, was asked to create packaging for a brand to be called “Mocking Bird Lager” and “Mockingbird Pilsner.” I don’t know if these were done for ABI – she doesn’t say — and as far as I know, no one has launched this line of beer, so it’s anybody’s guess, but it’s a great looking design. I don’t like clear glass because it’s not good for the beer, but from a purely design point-of-view she used the clear glass and the gold of the liquid to nice effect. I like that they don’t look like typical beer bottle designs and I think as the market gets more crowded, any brand’s ability to stand out on the shelf will become increasingly important.
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