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Beer In Ads #7: National Premium & Turkey

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ad-billboard
Today’s ad is more modern, because it’s Thanksgiving Day and I wanted to use one that was done for the holiday. This juicy turkey ad was for National Premium Beer, subtitled a “Pale Dry Beer,” and brewed by National Brewing of Baltimore, Maryland from 1936-1995. While accounts of the brewery’s origin vary from around 1850, 1855 or 1872 (and under several different names), after Prohibition ended, it returned as National Brewing with its most famous beer being National Bohemian, or “Natty Boh,” which today is owned by Pabst and brewed by Miller. This ad is for their premium beer, and is from the 1950s. Hoppy Thanksgiving.

national-turkey

Hoppy Thanksgiving a.k.a. Beer & Turkey Day

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turkey
Hoppy Thanksgiving everybody. “May your joys be as countless as the golden grains.”

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For quite some time now — personally at least — Thanksgiving is really “Beer & Turkey Day.” I love turkey. I could eat it several times a week and not get tired of it. But unlike most people, I like it dry — no gravy. It stems from my Great Aunt Helen, who couldn’t make a turkey juicy to save her life, even though her heart was in the right place. And I never liked gravy all that much; weird, I know. As a kid, it just meant developing a taste for dry turkey. As an adult, it means finding the right beer to counteract the dryness I now love so much. Of course, making it wok with not just the turkey but also cranberry sauce, stuffing, potatoes and the rest of the feast is also a challenge.

For me, I’ve found that spicy beers work best for the Thanksgiving meal, the spicier the better for my purposes. Not everybody likes their beer spiced, I know, but my feeling is there are 364 other days when you can drink those.

My two favorites for Thanksgiving are Anchor’s Christmas Ale and Pike’s Auld Acquaintance.

Though Anchor’s “Our Special Ale” began in 1975 as essentially a brown ale, over the years since it became more holiday-oriented as spices were increasingly added. In my opinion, it’s best years were the later half of the 90’s decade when it was very spicy indeed. Though most people thought they were too spicy during that period of time, I reveled in the complex spiciness and found them to be the perfect complement to dry turkey and the other Thanksgiving fixings.

When Pike began making their Auld Acquaintance, they loaded it with spices and it quickly became my new favorite, especially when Anchor started backing off the spiciness of the Christmas Ale as the new millennium dawned. But early in the 2000s, it was discontinued in the bottle and I was unable to get it, returning instead to Anchor’s Christmas Ale, even though I wish it was spicier.

Happily, Pike under the new/old owners is bottling it Auld Acquaintance again, though it doesn’t appear to be exactly the same. It used to be around 6.5% abv, if memory serves, whereas the new bottle is a more modest 5%. It does contain orange peel, coriander, cinnamon and nutmeg. I also remember it being hoppy, while the 2008/9 version is only 32 IBUs.

turkey

So this year, happily I got to try both beers with dinner. I started with the Anchor, and it delivered almost everything I wanted, though I still pine for it to be even more spicy. But it certainly worked with my meal. The Auld Acquaintance, on the other hand, was slightly disappointing. It was thinner-bodied than I remember it and the spiciness was likewise more restrained. There was a lot there, but I wanted to be hit over the head, rather than be spoon fed. Still, I can’t complain. They both worked well and as I sit here writing this the rest of the family cleans up — and shoots me dirty looks — but I am completely satisfied. Ah, beer and turkey — a match made in heaven.

In past years, there were quite a few suggestions for beer and turkey pairings. Really, they’re almost all good suggestions. The important thing is family and friends. But the beer is the icing on the cake that makes the meal divine.

thanksgiving

Beer Lover’s Britain

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inside-beer
Looking for a nice overview of the beer scene in Great Britain? 2001 British Beer Writer of the Year Jeff Evans has a comprehensive and affordable solution. He’s written Beer Lover’s Britain and it’s available at his Inside Beer online store as a pdf e-book for less than $10.

At a little more than 100 pages, it’s packed with information about British beer, how best to enjoy it and where to find the best beers that England, Scotland, Wales and even Northern Ireland have to offer.

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From the press release:

The first e-book in the series is Beer Lover’s Britain, a comprehensive guide to enjoying beer in the United Kingdom, written by award-winning British beer writer Jeff Evans. With the UK pound trading low against most foreign currencies, including the US, Canadian and Australian dollars, there’s never been a better time for beer fans to check out what the British Isles have to offer, especially with this new publication to guide them through.

British pubs are often spoken of as ‘the envy of the world’, with their historic charm and embracing conviviality, and Beer Lover’s Britain reveals how to make the most of them with tips on everything from which type of pub will suit you best to how to order a pint. Essential information on pub food, games, gardens, opening hours, children’s facilities and entertainments is also provided, along with recommendations for the very best pubs to visit around the UK.

The British brewing industry – father of such beer styles as pale ale, IPA, stout, porter and barley wine – is explored in just enough detail for visitors to understand the context of what they are drinking, with recommendations provided for beers and breweries to seek out as they travel around the country.

What is real ale? Where can I find it? Should my beer be warm? Have I been overcharged? What can I eat? Where should I stay? These are just some of the important questions Beer Lover’s Britain answers in more than 100 packed pages.

According to author Jeff Evans, travellers are often baffled and a little intimidated when they first encounter British beer and the British pub.

‘The British pub is quite unlike many pubs and bars found elsewhere in the world and visitors can be more than a little confused if they don’t know the procedures and etiquette’, he explained. ‘Beer Lover’s Britain aims to demystify the pub and the British beer scene for travellers from other countries by offering sound advice and handy hints to smooth the course of their travels and boost their enjoyment of British beer.’

Utopias 2009

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utopias
On Thursday of last week, Boston Beer brewer Bert Boyce was in town o the last leg of a three-city tour of California to introduce the 2009 edition of Samuel Adams‘ Utopias. Boyce is originally from California, and I first met him while he was working at Drakes in San Leandro a several years ago. The beer dinner was held at Monk’s Kettle in San Francisco, and they did a great job both with the food generally and also pairing the beer with the dishes served.

Bert Boyce, Boston Beer brewer
Bert Boyce, Boston Beer brewmaster, addressing the crowd and talking about his beer.

The Utopias comes in a cool ceramic bottle, shaped like a copper color mash kettle (discolored in this shot)
But the pièce de résistance was, naturally, the Utopias. I confess I’d already tasted this year’s version, both from the barrel in Boston and also from the sample bottle that I was sent, but this beer is so good and so different from any other beer that I know that it’s hard to pass up an opportunity for some more, especially with a great meal to boot.


Below is a slideshow of the Topias beer dinner. This Flickr gallery is best viewed in full screen. To view it that way, after clicking on the arrow in the center to start the slideshow, click on the button on the bottom right with the four arrows pointing outward on it, to see the photos in glorious full screen. Once in full screen slideshow mode, click on “Show Info” to identify each photo.

Bottle Openers Made By Blacksmiths

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opener-metal
A few years ago, my friend Tom Peters, the co-owner of Monk’s Cafe in Philadelphia, celebrated a big anniversary, I can’t recall which one it was — five years maybe, ten? Anyway, he had a local blacksmith experiment with making the perfect bottle opener.

monks-opener

Then, once he had the best design, he had 100 of them made with his logo stamped on the handle. I was somehow fortunate to be given one (thanks Tom!) and to date it’s been my favorite bottle opener I’ve ever owned. It just feels right in your hand, the perfect heft. It pops any crown with very little effort and makes a pleasantly satisfying sound in the process. In short, it’s a pleasure to use. It makes me want to open more beer bottles.

Last month, I was in Asheville, North Carolina on vacation with my family. In addition to wanting to check out their growing beer scene, there was a show we wanted to go to, the Craft Fair of the Southern Highland Craft Guild. My wife and I are huge fans of artisan crafts, hand made objects. It’s the same impulse that makes me love craft beer. We came home with a number of beautiful objects. But as we were first going in we happened upon a blacksmith set up outside the hall where the show was taking place. We stopped to watch him work and got to chatting. The blacksmith’s name was Alwin Wagener, and his business was known as Wagener Forge. He had a very interesting, cool looking corkscrew, so I told him the story of the Monk’s Cafe opener. He said he also had made bottle openers and asked how long we were going to be at the show, and we went inside for several hours. When we returned, he had made the opener pictured below.

It works as well as the Monk’s opener and is very cool looking, too. I love the green man’s face, with the hair looped up to hang it from. Because of strange state laws, we couldn’t buy it from him there and met him later at his studio, where we also picked up a handmade matching hook. The tile above it was also something we picked up at the craft fair. They two just seemed to compliment each other so I hung them together on the wall in our kitchen.

asheville-opener

Anchor’s Christmas Ale Artwork

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anchor-xmas09
The Monday before Thanksgiving is the traditional date that Anchor Brewery used to release their Christmas Ale (a.k.a. Our Special Ale), undoubtedly the first annual holiday beer in the silver age of brewing. For the last few years, it’s been released earlier, usually the first week of November. Last year I lamented that loss of seasonality and I continue to celebrate what I call Anchor Christmas Ale Day on that Monday before Thanksgiving. This year is the 35th annual release of the beer, which except for the first few years has been a different recipe every year.

anchor-xmas09-btl
For the past few years, Anchor’s Christmas Ale has been fairly similar each year, unlike the roller coast years of the mid-1990s, which, I confess, I remember with a special fondness. (Plus I also have several magnums of each year stretching back a decade and 12 oz. bottles a little farther.) I had an opportunity to try some last weekend and it’s about how I remember it last year, still tasting quite good and will undoubtedly be the beer I enjoy with my Thanksgiving dinner.

anchor-xmas09
The reason I bring this up today, instead of on Monday, is that the San Francisco Chronicle profiled the 82-year old Jim Stitt, the artist who’s drawn virtually all of Anchor’s beer labels, including 35 different Christmas Ale labels, beginning with Anchor Porter in 1974. (There’s also a photo gallery with more of Stitt’s labels.)

This year’s label features the “iconic Monterey cypress near Stanyan and Fell Streets, where the Panhandle meets Golden Gate Park. Lit up from head to toe shortly after Thanksgiving every year, it’s San Francisco’s unofficial Christmas tree. And this year, it becomes the very first San Francisco native to have its portrait on Anchor Brewing Co.’s Christmas Ale.”

My favorite quote from Stitt is this. “It’s a handmade beer, so the label should be hand-drawn.” Below are all 35 of Stitt’s hand-drawn labels for Anchor Christmas Ale.

Anchor-Xmas-poster09

Beer In Ads #6: Biere d’Alsace

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ad-billboard
The artist for today’s ad was born in the Alsace, in 1873, in what is today part of France. But two years before he was born, it belonged to the German Empire, who had annexed it after the Franco-Prussian War that began in 1870. Why is that relevant? Because Jean-Jacques Waltz, better known as “Hansi,” grew up hating the Germans and early in his career drew editorial cartoons poking fun at them. This won him few friends in Germany and in fact he even spent time in jail, “imprisoned several times by German authorities for making fun of the German military and professors.” In addition to putting down his captors, he wrote and drew scenes extolling Alsace’s virtues. One of his most famous works was a history of Alsace for kids by “Uncle Hansi,” L’Historie d’Alssace. The ad today features a girl in the traditional costume of the Alsace, and in fact it shows up in a number of Hansi’s works. I’m not sure if the illustration is advertising for a specific brewery of just beer from the Alsace generally. There is a brewery in Luttenbach (near the border between France in Germany in the Alsace) today known as Les Caves de la Brasserie. The date in the star, 1648, seems to suggest an older brewery, one that perhaps is no longer with us.

Hansi's Biere d'Alsace

Monk’s Blood Dinner

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monks-blood-can
Monday night a beer dinner was held at the 21st Amendment Brewery & Restaurant in San Francisco to celebrate the release of their newest beer in a can, Monk’s Blood, the first in a new series they’ve dubbed the “Insurrection Series.” The cans themselves will be out in four-packs in about two weeks. Here’s what they’ll look like:
The Monk's Blood can
The text around the can reads as follows (thanks to the beer sage for transcribing it, and most importantly, saving me from having to do it):

Legend has it that in the evenings, the monks would retire to their chambers & settle in with a few passages from the Good Book. But Brothers Nicolas and O’Sullivan [21st Amendment partners] had other plans. Working in the brewhouse all day, they were forced to repeat the same old recipes the elder monks had invented years before. They needed a little diversion. And found it in the cellar of the monastery with a fresh twist they put on the beer and the way they enjoyed it. Brother Nicolas (or Nico to his close friend) brought some hand-rolled cigars. O’Sullivan, the outspoken one, broke the vow of silence by spinning a remix of some Gregorian chants. Together, they’d throw down a couple nice hands of Texas Hold’Em and savor the handcrafted brew they created in secrecy. Everyday was good. Or so it seemed. But deep in his heart, Nico knew they were drifting into the ‘dark side’ of beer. Next thing you know they’d be skipping Lent. Then on night they’d face the Judgment for their actions with a hard knock at the door. Outside, the Abbots and elders would be holding stone in the air. A threat the brothers were sure would lead to the spilling of Monk’s Blood.

From the press release:

Monk’s Blood pays homage to the monks of Belgium’s monasteries who have been brewing some of the world’s great beer for centuries. During times of fasting, the monks subsist solely on beer, which they refer to as “liquid bread”. Beer, quite literally, is in their blood. The most sublime of the monk’s premium brews is dark like blood, rich and nourishing.

21st Amendment founders Nico Freccia and Shaun O’Sullivan traveled to Belgium to develop the recipe for this special beer, visiting small, traditional breweries in the hop fields of west Flanders, not far from the famous Trappist abbey of Westvletren. Monk’s Blood is designed to pair beautifully with rich winter stews, creamy cheeses, unctuous desserts or just by itself, in a Belgian tulip glass, with a good book by the fire.

The beer itself is a strong, dark Belgian-style beer that’s 8.3% abv. It’s 34 IBUs, using Centennial, Magnum and Amarillo hops. In addition to the eight malts (including Special B and oats), an Abbey ale yeast, it is flavored with dark Belgian candi sugar, cinnamon, vanilla beans, and dried black Mission Figs. Then it’s aged on oak. The result is a complex, delicious beer with a sweet nose consisting of a melange of aromas. The flavors, too, are complex with caramel and candy sweetness balanced by American hop character that works surprisingly well. The finish is long and sweet.

A toast by the Homebrew Chef, Sean Paxton
The Homebrew Chef, Sean Paxton, relaxing with some Monk’s Blood after the end of the beer dinner.

Sean Z. Paxton, put on the five-course dinner using all of the Belgian-style 21st Amendment beers from the BRU/SFO Project that’s going on all month at 21A and Magnolia. To see the meal and the beers poured at the dinner, see the photo gallery below.

Me and My Own Frites (by Jesse Friedman)
My favorite part of the dinner was the frites, of course, and while most table shared a basket or two of them, because Sean knows my love of frites, I got my own basket of frites. (Photo by Jesse Friedman. To see his account of the dinner, see his Beer & Nosh post.)


Here is a slideshow of the Monk’s Blood Beer Dinner. This Flickr gallery is best viewed in full screen. To view it that way, after clicking on the arrow in the center to start the slideshow, click on the button on the bottom right with the four arrows pointing outward on it, to see the photos in glorious full screen. Once in full screen slideshow mode, click on “Show Info” to identify each photo.

Want A Healthier Heart? Drink More Beer!

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health
This has got to drive the anti-alcohol lobby nuts, and especially their medical co-conspirators who continue to insist that a binge drinker is simply someone who drinks five or more drinks in one session. The UK newspaper, The Independent, had an interesting article today, provocatively titled “Drink half a dozen beers every day and have a healthier heart: Teetotallers more likely to have heart attack than drinkers, study shows.”

According to the article, “Drinking a bottle of wine a day, or half a dozen beers, cuts the risk of heart disease by more than half in men, it has been shown.” That’s based on a study just published in the medical journal Health entitled Alcohol intake and the Risk of coronary heart disease in the Spanish EPIC cohort study.

In the Abstract:

Background
The association between alcohol consumption and Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) has been broadly studied. Most studies conclude that moderate alcohol intake reduces the risk of CHD. There are many discussions on whether the association is causal or biased. The objective is to analyse the association between alcohol intake and risk of CHD in the Spanish cohort of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (EPIC).

Methods
Participants from the EPIC Spanish cohort were included (15,630 men and 25,808 women). The median follow up period was 10 years. Ethanol intake was calculated using a validated dietary history questionnaire. Participants with a definite CHD event were considered cases. A Cox regression model was performed adjusted for relevant covariables and stratified by age. Separate models were carried out for men and women.

Results
Crude incidence rate of CHD was 300.6/100,000 person-years for men and 47.9/100, 000 person-years for women. Moderate, high and very high consumption was associated with a reduce risk of CHD in men: HR 0.86 (95% CI= 0.54-1.38) for former drinkers, 0.64 (95% CI= 0.4-1.0) for low, 0.47 (95% CI= 0.31-0.73) for moderate, 0.45 (95% CI= 0.29-0.69) for high and 0.49 (95% CI= 0.28-0.86) for very high consumers. In women a negative association was found with p values above 0.05 in all categories.

Conclusions
In men aged 29-69 years, alcohol intake was associated with a more than 30% lower CHD incidence. Our study is based on a large prospective cohort study and is free of the abstainer error.

The Independent distills it in clearer language:

In one of the largest studies of the link between alcohol and heart disease, researchers have found that the protective effects of a daily tipple are not limited to those who drink moderately but also extend to those who consume at what are conventionally considered to be dangerously high levels.

The research was conducted among 15,000 men and 26,000 women aged from 29 to 69 who were followed for 10 years.

The results showed that those who drank a little — a glass of wine or a bottle of beer every other day — had a 35 per cent lower risk of a heart attack than those who never drank. Moderate drinkers, consuming up to a couple of glasses of wine a day or a couple of pints of ordinary bitter, had a 54 per cent lower risk.

The surprise was that heavy drinkers consuming up to a bottle of wine or six pints of ordinary bitter had a similar 50 per cent reduction in risk of a heart attack to moderate drinkers. Those drinking at even higher levels were still half as likely to suffer a heart attack as the teetotallers.

Larraitz Arriola, who led the study, said alcohol caused 1.8 million deaths a year around the world and 55,000 deaths among young people under 30 in Europe alone. “The first thing to say about our research is that alcohol is very harmful. If you drink heavily, you should drink moderately. The more you drink, the worse off you will be.” The researchers only looked at the effect of alcohol on the heart and confirmed what 30 years of studies have shown — that it is protective. The effect was independent of the form in which the alcohol was taken, as beer, wine or spirits. However, people who only drank wine had slightly less protection.

Not surprisingly, British “scientists” are calling the results “flawed,” most likely because it flies in the face of their politically-motivated advice and the ridiculous (and recently revealed to be completely arbitrary) “units of alcohol” that set the nation’s alcohol policy for over twenty years. In a BBC article, they’re still treating the guidelines as if they mean something, which is almost funny.

In May of 2006, Danish study that also found healthy heart benefits for alcohol drinkers, though in that study they concluded that drinking levels above moderate would not increase benefits. This new Spanish study appears to conclude otherwise. In every article I’ve seen on this study, everyone is scrambling to make sure to tell people not to go out and start drinking more, due to other risks from heavy drinking. I’d say anyone that suddenly started binging based on this study probably deserves whatever ill effects they experience. But seriously, do health professionals really believe people are that stupid? I’m sure there are a few stupid enough (P.T. Barnum had it right) but it’s more likely they were already unhealthy drinkers just looking for an excuse.

What I take away from this is simply that the arbitrary and self-serving definitions of binge drinking are not only wrong, but very, very wrong. I attend beer dinners all the time, drinking an average of four, five or six different beers (and sometimes more) over several hours, paired with several courses. These dinners cost $50, $75, $100 (and sometimes more). They are attended by people who can afford that, people with good jobs, professionals, people with families, upstanding members of their communities. Yet in the U.S., the CDC claims if you have “five or more drinks in a row,” you’re an unhealthy binge drinker, endangering your own life, and possibly those around you. That makes every one of the people at all the beer dinners I attend, binge drinkers, and, to some in the anti-alcohol movement, automatic alcoholics, too. Could any standard be farther from reality?

Despite all the warnings of binge drinking, it appears by defining it in a way that’s so far removed from ordinary experience, that it actually makes it completely meaningless. Certainly there are people who drink too much and put their health at risk. But lumping them together with those who occasionally drink “five or more drinks in a row” safely and without sinking into alcoholism, the problems of the people who really need help never get addressed. All it does is give the AnAl’s more ammunition to scare people with, and few media outlets ever call them on it. After all, it has the stamp of a government agency. But we all know it’s not accurate by any stretch of the imagination to call the average beer dinner attendee a binge drinker. At least now we know their heart will get a boost. In the end, I think the best advice is “everything in moderation … including moderation.”

First Bay Area Holiday Fest A Good Start

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bevmo-holiday
Last Sunday, my old company, Beverages & more, where once upon a time I was the beer buyer for almost five years, hosted the first holiday beer fest in the Bay Area. Dubbed the BevMo Holiday Beerfest, it was organized by local beer festival promoter Jeff Moses, who also does the Monterey Beer Festival, among others. It was held at the Herbst Pavilion at Fort Mason in San Francisco.

Inside the Pavilion before the fest began

It was a good space and they wisely used only a portion of the hall so it wasn’t too large inside. I’ve long thought San Francisco needs a holiday beer festival, Pacific Coast Brewing’s holiday tasting notwithstanding. Winter and Christmas beers are some of my favorite seasonals because brewers tend to really be creative with them. Plus, I like spice beer more than most.

Samuel Adams' cool bottle tree

I’d guess only about one-third of the beers there were in fact winter seasonals or holiday beers, but still, it was a good start. Unlike many festivals, beer from abroad was also served, which allowed a greater range of beers to be available. I think this could, over time, develop into a great annual festival, especially if the focus on holiday beers increases. Organizer Jeff Moses only had a few weeks to put this year’s festival together, so I expect next year’s to be even grander (no pressure, Jeff). Naturally, I couldn’t try everything there, but of what I did have, here are a few stand-outs:

  • Anchor Christmas Ale 2009: The last few years have not seen the roller coaster flavor changes of the late 1990s, more’s the pity. But it’s as solid as ever and still one of my all-time favorite holiday beers and one of my go-to beers for Thanksgiving.
  • Anderson Valley Winter Solstice: For years, this beer has been too vanilla-forward for my tastes, but this year they’ve got the balance just right, with just a delicious hint of the vanilla.
  • Ayinger Weizen Bock: A great mix of wheat character and the dark, malt strength of a bock.
  • Grand Teton Pursuit of Hoppiness Double Red Ale: A terrific big, hoppy beer; one of two great double reds at the festival.
  • Lhasa Beer: A clean pilsner brewed in Tibet. Despite the politics surrounding the beer, it tastes pretty decent.
  • Mad River John Barleycorn Barleywine Style Ale: Another beer that continues to improve. The last few years, this beer has been fantastic, and this year’s edition is no exception.
  • Ninkasi Believer Double Red: Not yet in the Bay Area, but soon, I’m told. Keep an eye out for this, and their entire line. If you love hoppy beers, Eugene, Oregon’s Ninkasi Brewery will quickly become one of your favorites. Brewmaster Jamie Floyd has a deft hand with big, hoppy beers. The Double Red is a terrific hop monster with great balance.
  • Okocim Polish Porter: I haven’t tasted this porter in a few years, and it’s even better than I remember. A really nice example.
  • Uncommon Brewers Rubidus Red Ale: A beer brewed with mushrooms that nicely captures the savory flavors of Candy Cap mushrooms balanced by the addition of maple sugar.


Here is a slideshow of the BevMo Holiday Beerfest. This Flickr gallery is best viewed in full screen. To view it that way, after clicking on the arrow in the center to start the slideshow, click on the button on the bottom right with the four arrows pointing outward on it, to see the photos in glorious full screen. Once in full screen slideshow mode, click on “Show Info” to identify each photo.