Bruce Nichols Passes Away

November 30, 2010 By Jay Brooks

I just heard a few minutes ago the sad news that Bruce Nichols passed away from leukemia. Bruce was one of the founders of Philly Beer Week and launched the annual The Book & The Cook event nearly two decades ago at the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archeology & Anthropology where Michael Jackson did an amazing beer dinner each year. I last saw Bruce earlier this year during Philly Beer Week in July but, sad to say, we only spoke briefly, each of us on our way to different events. I’d heard he’d been ill but did not know the extent of it. Philadelphia’s beer community lost one of its leading lights today, and I extend my sympathy to Bruce’s family and all my friends in Pennsylvania and beyond who knew Bruce. He will be missed. Join me in drinking a toast tonight to Bruce’s memory.

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Bruce with Don Russell and Tom Peters at the opening of the first Philly Beer Week in 2008.

Tom Peters, owner of Monk’s Cafe, posted the following on his website today:

I lost a good friend today and so did the entire Philadelphia beer community. Bruce Nichols lost his battle with leukemia. Bruce was president of Museum Catering Company and co-founder of Philly Beer Week. Bruce was a voice of reason, always calm and had an innate ability to bring people together.
Bruce, myself and Don Russell organized the first Philly Beer Week with the help of many bars, restaurants, distributors, brewers, etc. Bruce was always a driving force behind the Philly beer movement. He was also adept at keeping us crazy beer people organized and on-point. Philly Beer Week would have never happen without his ideas and positive energy.
Bruce is the person that brought famed beer writer, Michael Jackson, to Philly, way back in 1991. Bruce Nichols hosted Michael at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology for a “The Book & The Cook” event. That single beer event drew more people than any 10 food events combined. Thus began the real emergence on the Philadelphia beer culture. Bruce & Michael combined for seventeen annual beer events, each more challenging than the previous. Bruce really helped push the boundaries of beer culture in Philadelphia. We are all thankful and grateful to all that Bruce has done for us.
Bruce will be missed by all who were close to him and the beer community has lost a good friend and champion.
I raise a glass to your life. Goodbye, my friend.

And thanks to Jack Curtin for letting me and everybody know.

Beer Nation’s Farm To Table Video

November 30, 2010 By Jay Brooks

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Beer Nation, a “web-based series exploring the craft beer revolution,” recently posted a great overview video of the Farm To Table side event that took place during the Great American Beer Festival for the second time this year. You can watch the video below or at the Beer Nation website.

CBS Sunday Morning On Pretzels & Beer

November 22, 2010 By Jay Brooks

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On the CBS show Sunday Morning yesterday, they aired their annual Food Issue, which included a segment of pretzels and beer.

It was great to see them delve into the history of pretzels in America, especially because I grew up on Pennsylvania pretzels. In fact, one of the companies they highlighted, Tom Sturgis Pretzels, is located in my hometown of Shillington, Pennsylvania. The man who runs it now, Bruce Sturgis, was in my high school class.

For the beer segment, entitled Even the Founding Fathers Loved Beer, it was mostly a positive depiction of beer for a change and featured two friends, my old professor Charlie Bamforth from U.C. Davis and Marty Jones from Wynkoop Brewing in Denver, Colorado.

The only annoyance was when host Barry Petersen had the following exchange with Charlie Bamforth.

Peterson: “Charlie Bamforth teaches brewing and he throws down the gauntlet on wine versus beer.”
Bamforth: “The most sophisticated and complex of alcohol beverages.”
Peterson: “More than wine?”
Bamforth: “Yes.”
Peterson: “Oh, come on.” [said in a tone dripping with contempt.]
Bamforth: “No, absolutely.”
Peterson: “How?” [in a tone barely concealing his disbelief and, again, dripping with contempt.]
Bamforth: “It’s much more complicated to make.”

Peterson cut Charlie off at that point, but he could have gone on and on, no doubt, about the issue of wine vs. beer. After all, Bamforth has written several books on this subject, the most recent of which is Grape vs. Grain. I also just got my review copy of his latest book, Beer Is Proof God Loves Us: Reaching for the Soul of Beer and Brewing.

I don’t know much about Barry Peterson, but it takes a lot of gall to assume you know more about beer and wine than a professor of fermentation sciences. What’s the point of interviewing an expert if you’re just going to assume you know more than they do. Charlie’s pretty used to it by now, I suspect, and just nonchalantly continues. The segment later on talks about how the perception of beer and wine is what keeps better beer in the shadows, which is ironic since Peterson, by his own actions, just proved that point by displaying his own ignorance for the subject he’s reporting on.

But that aside, a nice take on beer overall. You can watch both the pretzel and beer segments below.

Starbucks Beer

October 18, 2010 By Jay Brooks

An alert reader just forwarded me this (thanks Shaun). Today, a Starbucks coffee shop in Seattle, Washington, is test-marketing a new menu item: beer. According to an AP story the Starbucks on East Olive Way “reopened Monday [and] is the first under the Starbucks brand to offer alcohol.” The AP story continues with the following. “Craft beer and local wines go on sale after 4 p.m. The idea is to offer drinks and a wider variety of savory food that will attract customers after the morning espresso rush.”

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USA Today has a fuller story about how and why the chain is testing beer, wine, cheese and other foods. Their pronouncement is that the “Starbucks of the future arrived today.” They speculate that if successful, this new model could become “the prototype for the next generation of stores for one of the world’s most influential brands.” Here’s how they describe the new look of the renovated Starbucks.

A very different kind of Starbucks is on tap. It will serve regional wine and beer. It offers an expansive plate of locally made cheeses — served on china. The barista bar is rebuilt to seat customers up close to the coffee.
Most conspicuously, the place looks less like a Starbucks and more like a cafe that’s been part of the neighborhood for years — yet that’s “green” in design and decor. This is the calling card of independent java joints that have been eating and sipping away at Starbucks’ evening business for decades. U.S. Starbucks stores get 70% of business before 2 p.m.
The corporate eyes of Starbucks — and the nation’s ultracompetitive, $15 billion chain coffee business — are laser-focused on this Starbucks store on Olive Way in Seattle’s bustling Capitol Hill area. The 10-year-old location was closed for three months to be revamped into a Starbucks that may not look or sound like any Starbucks you know. But if this location is a hit, some version of it may eventually come to a Starbucks near you.
….
Inside, the floor is stripped to highly polished concrete. Some of the chairs were salvaged from the University of Washington campus. Empty burlap sacks — once used to transport Starbucks coffee beans — hang from the walls. And an oversized table — designed for customers to share — is made from flooring salvaged from a local high school.

There’s also a video of the new Starbucks’ project to sell both beer and wine.

Inaugural Good Food Awards Include Craft Beer

October 17, 2010 By Jay Brooks

Last weekend I was pleased to help judge beer for the inaugural Good Food Awards. As I remarked yesterday in a post about Blue Bottle’s Stout Coffee Cake, while the sustainable and local food community has been slow to accept beer, “things are finally changing and a growing number of self-avowed foodies are accepting craft beer as an equal to other artisanal foodstuffs.” You couldn’t ask for a better example of that than the new Good Food Awards. Started by Seedling Projects, their take on the Good Food Awards is to reward producers whose products are “delicious, authentic and responsibly produced.”

The Good Food Awards will present the best of seven different types of food: beer, charcuterie, cheese, chocolate, coffee, pickles and preserves. Here’s the overall concept:

The Good Food Awards celebrate the kind of food we all want to eat: tasty, authentic and responsibly produced. We grant awards to outstanding American food producers and the farmers who provide their ingredients. We host an annual Awards Ceremony and Marketplace at the iconic Ferry Building in San Francisco to honor new Good Food Award recipients and also organize a month of events and tastings to support the wider community making good food.

More specifically, they included beer for the following reasons:

Good Beer is crafted by brewers who practice water recycling and resource conservation, support their local communities and seek out ingredients that are free of pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified organisms. The Good Food Awards seal will be given out in the categories of Traditional, Experimental and Collaborative brews – those made by more than one brewer working together — a growing practice that highlights the community spirit flourishing amongst craft brewers.

We judged about fifty beers from around the country, divided into broad categories: experimental and traditional. It was then further divided geographically into five regions, though the majority came from the West. We had six judges, a good mix of experience and backgrounds. Dave McLean, from Magnolia, ran the judging behind the scenes and asked me to act as judge captain, though he did manage to judge one late round, when one of the other judges had to leave early.

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The beer judging table at the Good Food Awards.

We tried a lot of great beers, and the winning beers were all very impressive beers. The winners in all the categories will be announced on January 14, 2011. Two days later, beginning January 16, they’ll kick-off Good Food Month, which will last until February 20. “Each week will pair two of the food categories” judged and the final week, February 11-20, will include a partnership with our own SF Beer Week to celebrate beer in the Bay Area and beyond.

Renato Sardo and Dave McLean judging beer at the Good Food Awards.

Family Dining Leads To Responsible Drinking

October 5, 2010 By Jay Brooks

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It’s not often I agree with the neo-prohibitionists but last month the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) released the findings of their sixth annual Importance of Family Dinners survey. And guess what, kids who eat with their parents at family dinners are less likely to develop bad habits like binge drinking, smoking or drug use. It’s one of those studies I characterize as “duh studies,” because the results are so obvious. Do we really need a survey to tell us that being engaged with our children is better than being alienated from them? At any rate, Medical News Today, has the story of this year’s survey.

The first one was conducted in 2003, and based on their survey concluded that “teens who have dinner with their families five or more nights in a week are 32 percent likelier never to have tried cigarettes (86 percent vs. 65 percent), 45 percent likelier never to have tried alcohol (68 percent vs. 47 percent), and 24 percent likelier never to have smoked pot (88 percent vs. 71 percent). This also led to CASA creating a holiday, Family Day — A Day to Eat Dinner with Your Children (September 27) and it’s one that I support and list on my calendar database of holidays.

But here’s my one quibble and where we part company — it’s always something, right? — these same organizations that celebrate family are the same groups that also have pushed to make it illegal for parents to give their own children a taste of alcohol in the home, believing they know better. For example, California just added civil penalties to the criminal ones for giving alcohol to a minor in the home. In theory, I’m not allowed to teach my own children about alcohol when I, as their parent, believe it’s appropriate. The best I can do is model responsible behavior by my example of drinking in moderation and trying to cast doubt on the propaganda they’ve been receiving at school literally since kindergarten that’s mandated by the state and with “learning” materials from MADD.

These same groups also have pressured state alcohol regulators to not allow kids at beer festivals, though wine tastings are usually just fine. They claim to love family and want kids to not engage in what they believe to be dangerous behaviors, at least while they’re minors, but at the same time want to deny parents the tools and resources to educate their own children about those dangers. They don’t want kids even seeing adults drink, even though it’s legal for adults to do so and it would allow children to see their parents drink responsibly, thus showing by example how the majority of Americans consume it. It would model good behavior and act as a balance to negative stereotypes, showing that drinking can be part of a healthy adult lifestyle. Showing both the positive and the negative stereotypes would teach kids they have a choice, that drinking doesn’t have to lead to destructive behaviors if done responsibly.

We already know what happens when they’re not permitted to learn that lesson. They go off to college or out in the world and, on their own for the first time, binge drink or worse. And who can blame them? If they’ve seen no positive drinking examples and only know the propaganda they’ve been brainwashed with since elementary school, what else should we expect?

I agree that families should be engaged, that parents should be involved with their kids and especially their teenagers. But as long as parents are handicapped by misguided anti-alcohol advocates who think “just say no” is a valid approach or think kindergarten is an appropriate age to begin teaching kids about drinking and driving, then nothing will change. Real change has to begin at home, with the family, and that also has to include modeling positive behavior and freeing parents to make decisions about their own children.

I see the negative effects of the propaganda every time my six-year old daughter reminds me beer is a drug and I have to, yet again, explain to her that it’s okay for Daddy and other adults to drink it. Either they can’t be bothered to explain the difference between legal alcohol and drugs or she’s too young to grasp the concept. Either way, it’s not working. When Porter was her age, he came home from the “Red Ribbon Week” lectures chiding us for using cold medicine because it was a drug, and “all drugs are bad.” That’s the message he got. But that’s what happens when zealots are allowed to shape the policy and parents are cut out of the decision-making process for raising their own children.

Ken Grossman One Of CHOW 13

September 20, 2010 By Jay Brooks

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Ken Grossman, the co-founder of Sierra Nevada Brewing was chosen by the food website CHOW as one of their CHOW 13 for 2010. They describe the 13 folks chosen as “honoring the people pushing the food world in new and adventurous directions.” Last year — the first year for the awards — Sam Calagione was among the thirteen. This year it’s Ken Grossman.

CHOW’s pithy reason for giving Grossman the award is “[f]or starting the war against crappy beer.” If perhaps not the very first, Grossman certainly was one of the first, definitely a true pioneer, and he’s undoubtedly been one of the best at doing just that — winning the war, that is. A very well-deserved honor. It’s also great to see a food website include beer without fanfare as if it belonged; which of course it does. Still, that feels like progress.

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Comfort Food & Beer

September 3, 2010 By Jay Brooks

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Friends and regular Bulletin readers will already be aware of my obsession with comfort foods. Almost all of my favorite foods fall into that category: frites, potato chips, bacon, shepherd’s pie, Monte Cristo sandwiches, cheese, peanut butter pie and pretty much anything fried. So a few weeks ago, when I got a call from my friend, brewer Brian Hunt from Moonlight Brewing, I was especially susceptible to an idea he had that craft beer, too, should be considered a comfort food in its own right. I loved the notion immediately and we got together to talk about the idea over a few pints of comfort beer. The result of those discussions — plus some more research and conversations — was a feature I wrote that was just published online at the Brewer’s Association’s new CraftBeer.com, entitled Is Beer Comfort Food?

As a word nerd, I was fascinated to discover that the phrase is actually a fairly modern one, though there’s some disagreement as to its actual origin. The first use of the phrase appears to be in 1966, though it was an isolated occurrence and did not catch on at that time.

In “The Thin Book,” a 1966 work by ‘”a formerly fat psychiatrist’” named Theodore Isaac Rubin. The book’s ad copy read, ‘”Learn about ammunition foods, comfort foods and emergency foods.’” Reached in New York, Dr. Rubin recalls: ‘”I just made it up; I didn’t hear it anywhere. It means food that makes you feel good, that was always available and would help to sustain a diet.’” (“Ammunition foods” never made it into the canon.)

Likewise, Liza Minnelli (and I assume that yes, it was that Liza Minnelli) used the term in “Dieting Is All Well and Good— But Give Me ‘Comfort Food’!”, a piece she co-wrote with Helen Dorsey for Pennsylvania’s “Clearfield Progress’” Family Weekly section in July of 1972. That’s most likely why Wikipedia incorrectly identifies its origin as 1972.

But it appears to be in the latter half of the 1970s that the concept of comfort food began to catch on. The Merrian-Webster Dictionary lists its first use as 1977, making it roughly the same age as craft beer itself. Merriam-Webster added it to their dictionary the same year, although it wasn’t listed in the prestigious Oxford English Dictionary until 1997.

In the May 1978 issue of Bon Appétit, an article entitled M.F.K. Fisher on Comfort Foods appeared, somewhat solidifying the term, though some point to a March 1985 column by New York Times food writer Marian Burros, “Turning to Food For Solace.” William Safire credits her for popularizing the term, writing in 2003:

Burros was largely responsible for the term’s popularization. In a 1985 Times column titled ‘”Turning to Food for Solace,’” she wrote that the restaurateur George Lang, owner of New York’s Café des Artistes, “said his comfort foods ‘are foods I can eat any time, whether I’m full or not…. Comfort foods are the perfect tranquilizer.'” Lang said, ‘’My whole childhood is brought back with goose liver,” and the sophisticated food columnist revealed her own nostalgia for spaghetti and meat sauce or a tuna-fish sandwich.

Word expert Barry Popik disagrees and in his blog The Big Apple has undoubtedly the best account of the various claims to the term’s origins.

But back to the original question, is beer a comfort food? Brian Hunt and I think so, and so did several other brewers I spoke to. To find out why we think so, check out Is Beer Comfort Food? on CraftBeer.com.

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