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Archives for January 2007

Newcastle Soup

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Thanks to my friend Pete Slosberg, who sent this item in. Today’s San Jose Mercury News has it’s food section devoted to soup and includes a yummy looking recipe using Newcastle Brown Ale. The recipe, called Newcastle Brown Ale cheddar soup, is reprinted below. I know what I’m making for dinner tonight.

Newcastle Brown Ale cheddar soup

Serves 4

2 cups cauliflower or broccoli florets
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 (12-ounce) bottle Newcastle Brown Ale
1 (14.5-ounce) can chicken broth
3 tablespoons cornstarch
2 cups half-and-half
2 cups aged cheddar cheese, shredded
Croutons, to taste

In small saucepan over medium heat, cook cauliflower in water to cover until tender, 5 to 10 minutes. Drain and set aside. In a large pot over medium heat, melt butter. Stir in onion, garlic and Worcestershire sauce; cook until onion is translucent. Pour in Newcastle Brown Ale and bring to a boil. Pour in chicken broth, then return to boil.

After contents boil, reduce heat and stir in cauliflower. In a small bowl, combine cornstarch with 3 tablespoons of water; stir until dissolved. Set aside. Stir half-and-half and cheddar into the soup until the cheese melts. Stir in cornstarch mixture. Continue to cook and stir until soup thickens. Serve immediately with croutons.

Ben Franklin a Wino, News at 11

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Okay, so maybe I used an overly sensational headline to get your attention, maybe Benjamin Franklin wasn’t exactly a wino, but he did apparently like the stuff enough to say in a letter, “behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.” That’s a little different from the t-shirt in my bedroom dresser, which reads “”Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” I must confess I was always a little skeptical that Franklin’s quote was so perfect, but it was hard not to love the idea of America’s first true genius being such a beer lover. It’s clear Franklin enjoyed beer, as well as wine and rum, from the historical record. I’m sure, for example, he would have enjoyed a pint at the India Queen Tavern in Philadelphia in 1787 where a compromise to our Constitution was hammered out. Or even earlier, in 1774, when newly arrived delegates to the Continental Congress met John and Sam Adams for a pint at the City Tavern. But as for the famous beer quote, it appears to be hogwash. That’s according to a new book by Chicago historian Bob Skilnik, Beer & Food: An American History, which goes deep into our nation’s heritage of beer and food pairing. I’ve seen an advance copy of Skilnik’s book and it’s a great, informative read, especially for those of us who have been beating the drum of beer and food.

Here’s the press release that came out today:

As bookstores make ready for the release of “Beer & Food: An American History” (Jefferson Press, ISBN-10: 0977808610, ISBN-13: 978-0977808618, $24.95) by nationally recognized beer and brewing expert Bob Skilnik, the author thinks it’s time to address one of the biggest historical fallacies concerning Ben Franklin. Beer-themed web sites, brewing organizations and even “beer writers” are fond of quoting the Founding Father and his love of beer. A web search of the supposed Franklin quote, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy,” yields almost 100,000 hits, all with vague attributions that Franklin did indeed utter the quote or penned it in his long-running pamphlets of sound advice and witticisms known as “Poor Richard’s Almanack.”

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy
“I challenge anyone to find the documented attribution of Franklin making this beery statement,” says the author and researcher. “My research indicates that Franklin did make a similar quote in a letter to his friend, French economist Andre Morellet, around 1779 while living in France. In the letter, Ben Franklin swoons over the pressings from the noble grape, even mentioning its starring role at the Wedding at Cana, ‘Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy,’ says Franklin, and after reading the entire letter, one might argue that he had consumed more than enough French wine while writing his friend Morellet about its qualities.”

The tweaking of Franklin’s passage about rain from the heavens and its eventual conversion into wine probably took place during the post-Repeal era when the U.S. brewing industry was in a heated battle with liquor manufacturers for the taste buds and dollars of a generation of drinkers who had turned towards ardent spirits during National Prohibition. As part of their marketing plan to groom a bigger beer-drinking audience, the United States Brewers Association began a decades-long advertising campaign that was quick to associate beer and beer drinking with our Founding Fathers, early American history and patriotism.

“With Benjamin Franklin’s 301st birthday coming up on January 17, I hope I can set the record straight about this little white lie. I have no doubt that ole Ben enjoyed a tankard or two of beer with friends and associates, but this beer quote is inaccurate. Imagine if a dairy association had hijacked the original Franklin quote years ago and substituted the word ‘milk’ instead.”

Strange Brew: My Beer Predictions for 2007

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To Beer or Not to Beer. As Strange Brew was a loose parody of Hamlet, I thought I’d peer crazily into the skull of poor Yorick, and try to divine the future. Let’s see if anything that happened last year can be used to predict what might happen in the beer industry in 2007. Here are five things I think will happen this year. Let’s see how I do a year from now. What are your predictions?

 
Craft beer growth will hit double digits for 2006 and also will continue to rise through 2007.

 
Price wars among the large domestic producers and the popular import brands will heat up again beginning in spring or early summer.

 
Mainstream media attention will increase and will actually begin to improve.

 
A-B’s Here’s to Beer PR campaign will either quietly disappear or if the website remains up will not have any new content added now that Bob Lachky is no longer in charge of the effort.

 
Gluten-Free beer made for the growing number of people with Celiac disease will surprise most predictions and become a bigger niche than expected.

Free Happy Hour Law Goes Into Effect

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California State Bill 1548 went into effect today, handing — as usual — another advantage to large beer companies and further eroding a level playing field for breweries in California. It was originally an even worse bill, but thankfully the California Small Brewers Association was successful in working with legislators and other interested parties to scale back some of the bill’s provisions. It passed without fanfare at the end of August and was quietly signed into law by the Governator, with our watchdog media all but completely silent, in and of itself a telltale sign of whose interests the bill will serve.

The law was originally pushed by Anheuser-Busch which tells you everything about who will benefit most from it. A-B argued that it leveled the playing field for them to compete with wineries and liquor manufacturers and that they plan to “conduct only small educational tastings about new beers.” Sure, and I’m Napoleon Bonaparte.

According to the article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle:

“It’s an opportunity for us to get consumers to sample some of our new products,” said Andrew Baldonado, western region vice president of government affairs for Anheuser-Busch. “The winter’s bourbon cask ale is a seasonal beer that we’re doing. The best way to introduce those new products to consumers is to be able to have them sample them.”

Of course, retailers with the right kind of license can and already have been conducting beer tastings under current law. The new law now allows manufacturers — you know, brewers — to sample the public on their beer directly beyond those few who visit their breweries, such as at bars and restaurants. It further permits “8 ounces per person a day and requires the beer to be served in a glass.” Tasting sessions cannot last more than an hour and there are also other limitations. The full text of the bill is available on one of my previous posts.

In a way, it feels weird to be against this bill because on its face it appears to make exposing people to beer much easier and in literally thousands more locations than under the former system. And I firmly believe that the only way to teach people what beer really is, meaning good beer, involves tasting them on it one on one. So this should be a good thing, at least on paper. The reason it’s not is because of who can afford to really take advantage of the new law. It shouldn’t take a genius to figure out who can best afford to buy eight ounces of beer for a bar full of potential drinkers.

But A-B insists their “purpose” is “education, not intoxication.”

“It would never be an instance where we would be buying the house a round,” said Baldonado. “We would talk to consumers one at a time about whatever product it may be, whether it’s Budweiser or something else.”

Sure, and I’ll never invade Russia or sell Louisiana to the Americans. As the Chronicle article concludes, Glynn Phillips, of Rubicon Brewing, acknowledges the economic difficulty for small brewers to offer free beer. “A small guy like me, I can’t afford to do that,” Phillips said. “But bigger breweries can walk into a restaurant and sample an entire crowd.” Phillips also recently spearheaded the founding of the Northern California Brewers Guild to pool resources between small brewers north of the Bay Area. Such guilds are necessary precisely because the craft brewers don’t have the wherewithal that the large brewers do. And that’s why this law is not all it seems, because it will allow the big guys one more advantage over the small brewers.

One final note that’s almost funny. The Chronicle article contains a quote from Fred Jones, a lawyer with the neo-prohibitionist group, California Council on Alcohol Problems, a coalition of religious groups. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t like the law either, but for different reasons. Here’s what he has to say:

“It was jokingly referred to as the ‘Free Happy Hour’ bill (in the Capitol), so I think that gives you an image of what could happen,” Jones said. “What is the reason behind giving someone 8 ounces of beer free? One could argue that with wineries, each winery is different and every bottle is different depending on age or season. But we’re talking about beer here.”

Wow! Talk about wearing your naked ignorance on your sleeve. Every wine is different but all beer is the same? How stupid do you have to be about beer to think that? Or to say it out loud? Sheesh.