Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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What Is Beer?

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pint question-mark
A provocative question to be sure, but not one I’ll even try to answer. Instead, take a look at how that question was answered 70 years ago by the the United Breweries Industrial Foundation in an ad they ran in the January 15, 1940 issue of Life Magazine. On page 69 of Life, they answer the question “what is beer?” eleven different ways.

what-is-beer

At the bottom right, there’s also an address where you can send away for a booklet with the “facts.” I’d love to see a copy of that booklet. It’s interesting what they were probably trying to accomplish with the ad, shining a light on all of the positive aspects of beer and distancing themselves from the negative, no doubt with many people at that time still remembering the prohibition era criminal elements. That’s why they argue that brewers want “to clean-up or close-up the small minority of law-violating places which abuse the license to sell beer. The brewers want to protect your right to buy beer in decent, respectable surroundings.” It makes sense, of course, that the new post-prohibition brewing industry wants to get off on the right foot, reminding people what good there is in their continuing to be in business, especially while the prohibitionist organizations were still hard at work, despite being dealt the near-death blow of prohibition being over-turned less than a decade before.

Below are close-ups of the eleven answers proffered to the question “what is beer?”

Employment Manager

wib-manager

Tax Collector

wib-taxcollect

Farmer

wib-farmer

Dietician

wib-dietician

Business Man

wib-businessman

Housewife

wib-housewife

Doctor

wib-doctor

Police Chief

wib-police

Brewer

wib-brewer

Poet

wib-poet

Average Citizen

wib-consumer

I just love the fact that “Poet” is included. It makes me want to write more poetry. And how many of you know a brewer who looks, or dresses, like this one? But most of these are just hilarious, though undoubtedly true, they’re statements you rarely see stated in ads nowadays. Still, I’d really like to see more pro-beer ads today. I think we need them now more than ever.

Portland Food Writer Goes Negative

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thumbs-down
This is just disappointing. A writer at the Portland Mercury, Patrick Alan Coleman, missed the point of the Beer City USA poll by Charlie Papazian and the Brewers Association and instead took things negative with this missive.

Normally I wouldn’t be concerned about something from the Examiner. But Asheville, NC? We’ve got to take them down. We’ve got more “beer city” in the backwash at the bottom of our pint glasses than can be found in all of their pubs and breweries.

Dude, you should be ashamed of yourself. This is supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be about civic pride, beer pride, beer community pride and building up support for your hometown. It’s not supposed to be about tearing down the other communities. It’s not about insulting other communities. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you’ve never even been to Asheville or probably any other beer towns, either, because you come off like a provincial bigot. You’re not helping your community. Both towns have a lot to offer, beer-wise. It goes without saying that I’m a huge fan of Portland and have many, many friends in the Rose City. And I hope they all do the right thing and denounce you for being so antithetical to what makes the broader craft beer community so great: the sense of community that’s bigger than any one town.

Harpoon To Can Their Beer

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beer-can-beer
Another regional brewery is joining the ranks of those who are canning craft beer. Harpoon Brewery is canning two of their beers, the I.P.A. and the Summer Beer.

From the press release:

The Harpoon Brewery is pleased to announce that your backpack will be a little easier to carry on hiking trips this summer; introducing Harpoon IPA and Harpoon Summer Beer in cans. Just in time for Memorial Day weekend, the Harpoon Brewery will offer its flagship India Pale Ale and seasonal Summer Beer in 12-ounce aluminum cans. The beer, which was brewed at Harpoon’s Windsor, VT brewery, is being canned at FX Matt in Utica, NY today. The new cans will enable New England craft beer lovers to enjoy Harpoon beers during summer activities and at locales where glass bottles are not convenient.

It’s interesting to see more larger craft breweries turn to cans these days. I’m guessing we’ll see more and more of this size brewery adding cans to their line-up.

harpoon-summer-can harpoon-ipa-can

Stopping Underage Reading

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websites
This continues to just piss me off — I know, what doesn’t? — but it’s resurfaced again in a HealthDay News report on the television website for Channel 13 WTHR Indianapolis. The article, Alcohol Companies Use New Media to Lure Young Drinkers: Report, is about the time-honored practice of believing that current times are the worst they’ve ever been (not like when we were young) and today’s youth is in more danger (not like the innocent times when we were young). Every generation seems to go through these machinations that the corruption of the young is either a new phenomenon or is far worse now because of some modern innovation that wasn’t around (in those innocent days when we were young).

Today’s bogeyman is the “latest new media technologies — including cell phones, social networking sites, YouTube and other features of the expanding digital universe — [used] to reach young drinkers.” Or at least so says a new report, Alcohol Marketing in the Digital Age, by American University in Washington, D.C. The report naturally singles out Facebook, MySpace and other social media and the web more generally as the new moral vacuum where our youth is being corrupted. It’s slightly more grounded than many of these types of reports, but it’s still fairly alarmist of the-end-is-nigh if we don’t do something variety. The fact that every older generation is afraid for the younger generation and pretends to be protecting it by trying to stop some imagined danger makes such arguments fall flat for me.

But here’s the bit that continues to chap my hide:

One area the study authors want officials and activists to look at is weak age-verification mechanisms, pointing out how easy it is for a young person to enter a false birth date so they are legally “of age” to enter a Web site.

Yet I’m not aware of any website that can dispense beer or any other alcohol. All you can do at the average website is — drum roll, please — read. So why on earth do you have to be 21 to read? Could someone check out a book about beer at the local library if they were under 21? Of, course. But online, now that’s dangerous. Until it’s against the law to read then no one has to be “‘of age’ to enter a Web site,” whether it’s about beer or anything else. Trying to keep people from information, even if it’s perceived to be the wrong sort of information, is a very slippery slope. And frankly, keeping people in the dark about something that’s supposedly bad for them keeps them from the truth, forming their own opinions, and exposes them only to the “approved” message, which is often laced with propaganda and misinformation to promote a specific agenda. That’s in part, at least, why so many people today fall for neo-propagandist arguments about the evils of alcohol. As long as the propaganda is so one-sided and people, young or otherwise, have no access to a balance of perspectives, then ignorance will continue to rule the day, as it so often does.

Henny Youngman was probably the exception to the rule when he quipped “when I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.” Unfortunately, more people probably believed what they read and gave up drinking. And that will continue to be the case if we continue to keep people from reading about things that others believe to be dangerous. That’s the very definition of a society that’s not free. Now I need a drink. See how dangerous this all is?

Esquire’s Worst 9 Beers

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worst
Esquire has an odd little piece this week choosing the Nine Worst Beers on Earth, a fairly bold claim given how many beers are brewed on our planet. The author, St. Louis columnist Evan S. Benn, has probably not tried everything yet since he’s only been writing his column since last June, but overall his list does include some truly awful beers.

And while it wasn’t my intention to disparage Benn, in a recent column, Navigate Beer Fests Like a Pro Drinker, he does recommend spit buckets with the following. “You would be surprised how quickly the alcohol in 2-ounce samples can catch up to you. You’d also be surprised at how many beers you thought would be great but end up being disappointing. Don’t be ashamed to use the spit buckets stationed near every table. If you feel like one sip is enough but still have more in your glass, dump the rest into the bucket and move on.” I think he means the “dump buckets,” which is what they’re called in the beer world, but it almost sounds like he’s suggesting not swallowing at least that first sip, a pretty important step in fully tasting any beer. I know judges who occasionally spit second, third, etc. sips when tasting a large number of beers, but that first sip, at least, must be swallowed.

But back to his list, with which, in fact, I can’t disagree with any of his choices except for one, though to be fair I haven’t tried the new Game Day Light. I received an offer to get samples, but maybe I should answer it after all, just to be sure. But the beer I strongly disagree with is the Samuel Adams Cranberry Lambic. It’s not that I’d champion it as one of the world’s best, but from his write-up it appears Benn doesn’t realize that beer has been around since 1990 and the sweetness he finds so distasteful is from maple syrup. While the Sam Adams’ version of a lambic may not make my top 100 beers, it’s nowhere near my bottom 100 and I can think of sweeter, less appealing fruit lambics just off the top of my head.

Here’s Esquire’s list:

  1. Bud Light & Clamato Chelada
  2. 7-11 Game Day Light
  3. Rock Ice
  4. Sleeman Clear
  5. Michelob Ultra Pomegranate Raspberry
  6. Camo 24 Extra Smooth Super Premium High Gravity Lager xxXxx
  7. MGD 64
  8. Samuel Adams Cranberry Lambic
  9. Olde English 800

Why nine, and not ten — especially with so many bad beers out there — I can’t explain. But there are certainly many more beers that I’d put on such a list, beers that if offered to me outside of work, I’d politely decline. Corona and Heineken (and their light versions) leap to mind, as does Stella Artois and most of the nearly interchangeable American-style, European-style, New Zealand-style, Latin American-style, etc. mass produced light lagers. It’s not that they’re poorly made, in fact most are quite well-constructed, but I’m still not interested in drinking them. I want something with flavor … or more flavor, at least.

What beers would make your list of the worst?

Beer In Ads #111: Bud On Ice

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ad-billboard
Tuesday’s ad is for Budweiser, who on this day opened not one, but two new plants. They opened a new brewery in Tampa, Florida on this day in 1959 and in Houston, Texas in 1966. I’m not sure of the date of the ad, but judging by the look of the cans, and the “Tab Top” text around the bottom of each can, I’d guess the early 1960s. But I do like the simplicity of the ad and the playful pun.

bud-on-ice