Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Hay Fever Symptoms Lessened By Drinking Beer

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According to Dr. Daniel More, a new study of persons with pollen allergies shows a decrease in sneezing (60%), runny nose (55%) as well as allergy symptoms generally from drinking Sapporo beer.

From Sapporo:

Sapporo Breweries Ltd, the company that makes Sapporo beer, has found that their beer is useful in treating allergic rhinitis symptoms because of the presence of hop flavonol glycosides, a natural anti-histamine. The company plans to also study the effects of beer on allergy symptoms related to dust exposure.

Beer Sampling Coming to Wisconsin

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Surprisingly, in the great state of Wisconsin — okay, you caught me, I’m a Packers fan — retail stores can sample customers on wine, but not beer. But now Assembly Bill 122 is winding its way through the state legislature. So far it has “passed unanimously out of the Senate Affairs Committee and will be scheduled soon for a full floor vote.” If passed, beer retailers will be able to sample customers on two 3-oz. samples.

Retailers and small breweries will benefit most if the bill becomes law, because it will greatly increase opportunities for consumers to try new products, possibly for the first time. Regular Bulletin readers will not be shocked to learn that not everyone is so thrilled about the proposed law. To wit, from an article in the Green Bay Press Gazette.

But some in law enforcement and alcohol abuse prevention fear it’s bad public policy.

Wisconsin has the highest rate of binge drinkers in the country.

“There are a lot of places in our community for people to get a drink,” said Portage County District Attorney Tom Eagon. “People with alcohol issues can’t stop at one or two. One of the ways they deal with their problem is to avoid situations where they will be tempted. A grocery store should be a safe place.”

“A grocery store should be a safe place?!?” What the hell does that even mean? Safe for whom? People who can responsibly enjoy a 3-oz. sample of beer should be punished because others can’t? Does that make any sense? This is the mentality that passes for law enforcement? Let’s restrict all citizens because some people abuse themselves. What great policy thinking. It would appear Mr. Eagon has never been to a bar, because he suggests that having a sample is the same as any of the other “places in our community for people to get a drink.” I’m not entirely sure he understands what sampling is, but I’m certainly glad he’s not looking out for my best interests.

Then, of course, there’s the inevitable “it’s for the kids” gambit.

Some argue, however, that having beer available at the grocery store sends the wrong message to kids shopping with their parents.

“The environment we create for our young people is critical to their long-term health,” said Lauri Rockman, the coordinator of Portage County’s Coalition for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention. “We need positive adult modeling. Making alcohol part of a trip to the grocery store is just another way to make it so pervasive and casual in our culture.”

Yes, by all means we wouldn’t want our kids seeing “positive adult modeling” that involves alcohol. She’s fallen into her own neo-prohibitionist trap that sees all behavior involving alcohol as inherently negative. It’s impossible for her to recognize that an experience with alcohol could be positive. But it’s just as reasonable to argue that Wisconsin may have the highest “rate of binge drinkers” (though I can’t imagine how you could accurately measure such a claim) precisely because kids never see adults engaged in responsible, moderate drinking.

And the most egregious part of these nay-sayer’s arguments is that they all fail to account for the fact that in Wisconsin it’s already legal to sample wine and yet none of these predicted problems have come to pass. Groceries are already not safe from wine and kids already see wine pervasively and casually as part of a trip to the grocery store. Has the sky fallen as a result? Let’s take a look outside the window. Nope, it’s still there.

What this does illustrate quite starkly, however, is the very different perceptions people hold about wine vs. beer. Wine, on average, has almost three times the percentage of alcohol as beer, yet there are no (or at least) less perceived societal problems associated with it. Beer, on the other hand, is continually demonized as the root of all evil. The way to change that perception should be simple, and allowing sampling should be a good step toward such change. But that also assumes that beer is not under constant attack which, with so many neo-prohibitionists at work today, it so often seems to be.

Whenever there’s a potentially positive story about alcohol, such as this one, it is undermined. Allowing sampling increases awareness, education and possibly the availability of non-binge beers (because no one’s going to be sampling Corona). That would increase the market share of craft beer and better imports, beers which generally speaking are less prone to quaffing at huge frat parties. This in turn, could lead to more responsible drinking and a lowering of Wisconsin’s binge-drinking statistical infamy. So that should make this a story to be celebrated, shouldn’t it? Yet of the article’s 472-word count, 281 of them — or just under 60% — are given over to people and groups voicing objections instead of examining the positive aspects. I’m sure the newspaper is just trying to be fair and balanced in their reporting. But if that’s true, why doesn’t every negative beer article give the other side of that story? Because there are plenty of responsible, upstanding citizen beer drinkers. We just never hear about them.

Heineken in Takeover Bid for Scottish & Newkie

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According to today’s Scotsman, Heineken is the leading contender in a takeover bid for the world’s tenth largest beer company, Scottish & Newcastle. According to S&N’s website, in Europe they’re the fourth largest brewer in volume terms and the number two in profit terms. I believe Heineken is number one in both.

The article relates some interesting history of breweries in Edinburgh and though it alludes to pictures of these old breweries, does not include them in the online version. Though S&N no longer operates a brewery in Edinburgh, they do still employ around 1,000 people there locally. The Scots, naturally are not thrilled at losing so large a company, but S&N long ago lost sight of any sense of community to the areas where they originated and eventually built their empire so it’s hard to get too worked up about this one.

The old Scottish & Newcastle brewery in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh, taken in 1992. The brewery was closed in 2005. This cool photograph was taken by Peter Stubbs and can be found on EdinPhoto, a website dedicated to photographs of Edinburgh and Scotland.

Vending Beer

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Two years ago, two business entrepreneurs had an idea to get beer into the hands of more people, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They talked to Pilsner Urquell, who agreed to bankroll the pair. The idea was simple enough. Vending machines currently dispense almost every thing under the sun already, from a pack of gun to expensive iPods. Why not beer? And actually beer is already dispensed in vending machines in some places, Japan for example, as shown below. Notice they even dispense beer bottles, too.

And in other places in Europe, such as the train station in Brussels, where I snapped this picture in January. Along with a wide array of food and other beverages, for a few Euros you could get a can of Hoegaarden, Heineken or Grimbergen beer.

And when I was in the Army in the late 70s, stationed in New York City, we had a vending machine in our day room that dispensed cans of beer for a few coins, something like 50 or 75 cents. But that’s a relative rarity here in the U.S., where we’re completely out of step with the rest of the civilized world in our approach to alcohol. For example, we have no problem showing bloody scene after scene of violent murder and death on television, yet it’s illegal to show someone drinking a beer. The idea is, as I understand it, showing people drinking might lead kids to take up drinking. So using that logic, does that mean it’s okay if our youth turn into murdering psychopaths? It does say something profound, I think, about our priorities as a society though, and especially how screwed up they are. Death, murder, and crime: perfectly acceptable as entertainment. Alcohol: gasp, oh no, not that. Don’t show that. People might get the idea that having a good time is okay.

In the Czech Republic, where per capita beer consumption is the highest in the world, the only problem with a beer vending machine is how to keep people under the age of eighteen from buying it, so Karel Stibor and David Polnar came up with a solution, a card reader that solves this basic problem. From the Prague Post report:

“We’ve developed a special reading device that can scan buyers’ IDs and passports, in order to determine their age,” Stibor explains. “If a buyer is under 18, coins inserted in the machine’s slot are returned and the machine does not dispense the beer can.”

The scanner recognizes not only Czech IDs and passports, but also all EU cards.

The developers have applied for Czech and international patents and would like to offer the technology to other businesses where the age of customers is a factor.

“This technology can also be applied to door systems, turnstiles, gaming machines, Internet terminals or cigarette vending machines,” Polnar says.

Curiously, the most obvious American objection isn’t even mentioned. If someone tried this here, the hue and cry would undoubtedly be about how easy it would be for kids to borrow or steal their parents or another adult’s I.D. In the Czech Republic (and most of the rest of Europe) that’s not even an issue because alcohol is not the stigmatized taboo it is in the U.S. So this might actually work in Europe, but it would requite a paradigm shift in thinking before it would be viable here.

Alstroms Profiled in “The Pour”

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A Bulletin reader in Hawaii sent me this link (thanks, Doug). Eric Asimov’s New York Times’ column The Pour, is one of the few columns in a big, mainstream paper to write about beer in a respectful tone, without the condescension so prevalent in much of the media’s mis-handling of better beer. I’ve always enjoyed his pieces, and am pleased so prominent a paper as the Times seems to “get it” more often than the rest. Today’s column, entitled “Overcoming a Frat Party Reputation,” features a nice profile of Todd and Jason Alström, the founders of Beer Advocate and their new monthly magazine (for which I have written a few feature articles). Asimov discusses those of us associated with craft beer and better imported beer and our desire for such beers to be treated with greater respect. The Alströms have certainly been at the vanguard of our grassroots movement for ten years now, and much progress has been made here of late. It’s great to see beer celebrated in this way. Congratulations, guys.
 

Beer Advocate founders Jason and Todd Alström, profiled today in the New York Times.
(photo by Jodi Hilton for The New York Times)

Lewes Arms Boycott Reaches 100 Days, Greene King Still Clueless

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I wrote about this before, the residents of Lewes, in East Sussex, England, have been boycotting their historic local pub, the Lewes Arms, because the new owner, Greene King, stopped serving Harveys beer, which is brewed just a few blocks away. The locals have set up a protest website, the Friends of the Lewes Arms. According to the British newspaper, Argus, the boycott today has been going on for 100 days and shows no signs of slowing down. In a prepared statement, Greene King shows how clueless they really are. And mind you, that means it’s not just a spokesman responding to an Argus reporter’s inquiry extemporaneously, off the top of his head. Somebody actually thought long and hard about what to say, probably going through several drafts before being satisfied with the final language to represent the company’s position. So let’s examine what the spin doctors came up with:

“All over the country, brewers sell their own beer in their own pubs — it’s a practice as old as the pub itself.

We recognise that some of our customers at the Lewes Arms don’t accept this practice but we are proud of our wonderful beers and proud to sell them.

Greene King is one of the biggest supporters of community pubs in this country. Last year we invested nearly £40 million on improvements to our pubs.

The direct feedback we receive on a daily basis is central to the way that we shape our service and our pubs.

We have been serving communities by running great pubs for more than 200 years and intend to carry on doing so for another 200 whatever challenges are thrown our way.”

So let’s look at this so-called statement:

  1. Brewers selling their own beer in their own pubs — “it’s a practice as old as the pub itself.” So what? I’m all for tradition when it’s a good tradition but the tied house rule is a terrible tradition and what’s more is why the English pub scene is so dire today. Because large companies are buying up pub chains and turning them into the fern bars of England: they all look the same and have the same beers in them. Yawn. I talked to Roger Protz about this in January when I was in London and he was adamant that these big chains were killing the good pubs.
  2. “We are proud of our wonderful beers and proud to sell them.” Go ahead, be proud, but don’t be stupid. Can Greene King really be so thick as to think this argument carries any weight whatsoever in Lewes? Is it really possible so shrewd a business could actually be this monumentally stupid? Doubtful, but this arrogant and clueless, well there you have me. When not biblically excessive, pride can be a wonderful thing that shows one’s own dignity, importance, and civic loyalty. So what should the people of Lewes be proud of? Hmm, let’s see. How about the local brewery that has been there for over 200 years, employing local residents and bringing all manner of economic benefits to the town. Should a small town support their local businesses that in turn make where they live a good place to be? I guess to Greene King, pride is only useful if it’s their kind of pride, the first person kind. Third person pride, as in what others might be proud of, well that just gets in their way.
  3. They’re the “biggest supporters of community pubs in this country” and spent almost “£40 million on improvements to our pubs.” Talk about a disconnect. They spent 80 million dollars to fix up their own places that they own. Well, whoop de f-in’ do! I bought flowers and planted them in my front yard. Does that make me a community supporter? I can’t really see how spending money maintaining their vast property holdings of pubs can equate to supporting communities. They’re spending the money on themselves, to improve their business. They’re not spending that money on the communities where those pubs are located. As this episode so nicely illustrates, they don’t give a rat’s arse about the local communities where Greene King pubs happen to be.
  4. Daily “Direct feedback” shapes their “service and [their] pubs.” And not just peripherally, but it’s “central” to how they run their pub business. There are kinder, gentler words for what this kind of language is; propaganda, PR, spin. But I think we can dispense with such euphemisms given how insulting this rhetoric is and call it by it’s true name, a lie. And not a little white one, but a great big whopper of a lie. I’d say they’ve been getting some pretty direct feedback about their service and their pub in Lewes for the past 100 days. Their response has not exactly been to listen carefully to their customer and shape their service there accordingly. Even with an estimated 90% drop in business at the Lewes Arms, Greene King refuses to give in to consumer demand. Now that’s customer service.
  5. For 200 years, Greene King has been “serving communities by running great pubs” and they will continue to do so “for another 200 whatever challenges are thrown our way.” Which is another way of saying F-you, Lewes, we’ll do whatever the hell we want. It’s pretty hard to accept that the community is best served by doing exactly what the community (including the mayor, the local MP and many prominent townspeople) does not want them to do and has quite explicitly asked them not to do. And as for this 200 years proclamation, I suspect that’s utter nonsense. I’m sure Greene King the brewery has been around that long, but for most of those years they owned local pubs around the Suffolk area. It probably wasn’t until around the 1980s that they started expanding rapidly to the point where today they “employ nearly 11,000 people, have a pub estate of around 1,700 houses, and operate distribution depots in Abingdon near Oxford, Crayford in Kent, and Northampton.” So “serving communities” outside their home area is most likely a relatively new phenomenon. According to their website, their “objective is to become the leading pub retailer-brewer, in terms of profitability and market share, in the south of England.” Notice there’s no mention of communities in that mission statement. Greene King pubs were all but ubiquitous during my last trip to London this January, and the city was much the poorer for it. We had to actively look for pubs with a decent and varied selection, and it was not an easy task. In recent years, they have bought out brewery/pub chains Belhaven, Morland, Ruddles, Ridley’s and Hardys and Hansons. Of these, only the Belhaven Brewery is still operating, meaning they shut down at least four historic breweries in their drive for domination. CAMRA has frequently lambasted them for their business practices.

So at every line of Greene King’s response to the Lewes Arms boycott they have not been truthful or even shown any understanding. This is the way of modern corporations, and it’s more than a little sad to see it so nakedly on display. I have nothing personal against Greene King or their beers, but this whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And I don’t think it can be washed down with a Greene King beer anytime soon.

Laurelwood at PDX

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A friend of mine (thanks, Shaun) was going through the airport at Portland and happened upon the new temporary space for Laurelwood at the airport and thought he’d share some photos. It’s certainly nice to see better beer making inroads at airports. There are several other rumors of breweries planning spots at airports all over the map, which is a great trend for those of us who do some traveling.

This way to Laurelwood.

Not everyone — gasp — wants a beer when they fly so there are also coffee and pastries available.

And a case filled with bottled beer for those of us who do.

Four Points Announces CBO

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The votes are in, the interviews are over, and the glasses are empty. Four Points Sheraton announced today that Scott Kerkmans, Beer Director of Phoenix, Arizona-based Draft Magazine, has been named Chief Beer Officer (CBO). He will ring the bell to open today’s New York Stock Exchange. I’m not quite sure what that has to do with beer, but what the heck, I’m sure it will be fun.

Kerkmans beat out finalists Brad Ruppert, an information technology professional from Huntington Beach, California, Chris Nelson, a Web developer from Carmel Valley, California, and Jennifer Talley, research and development director at the Salt Lake Brewing Co. in Utah, Kerkmans along with over 7,500 applicants from more than 30 countries to get one of the most-highly sought after temp jobs in history.

From the press release:

Kerkmans earned a seat at the Four Points boardroom table by impressing not only the brand’s executives, but also the beer-loving public. Nearly half of the 12,759 people from around the world who cast their vote for their favorite finalist felt Kerkmans was the perfect fit for this fabulous opportunity. Since the night his brother gave him a home brewing kit, Kerkmans has been extremely passionate about everything beer, from its production and pairings to sampling stouts and sharing his rich knowledge.

Kerkmans has dedicated both his professional and personal life to beer. This 27-year old Phoenix resident and former Head Brewer / Brewery Manager spent the past year starting and growing DRAFT, a national lifestyle magazine focused on beer and beer culture, in which he reviews this glorious libation on a weekly basis. He is also a certified beer judge who spends much of his free time seeking out new brews.

“It is an honor to be Four Points first-ever CBO,” said Kerkmans. “I look forward to sharing my love for beer with the thirsty public and introducing this fun beverage to those who have yet to discover the joy that can be found in a perfectly poured cold one. Being named the Four Points CBO and working with the brand on its outstanding Best Brews Program is the job of a lifetime.”

Raising a Glass

On Monday, March 26th, Kerkmans will officially pull his bar stool up to the boardroom table and meet his new Four Points by Sheraton colleagues in White Plains, New York. Starwood executives and hundreds of associates will be on hand to lead the Four Points team and its newest chief in a celebratory toast.

Over the next few months, Kerkmans will collaborate with the Four Points by Sheraton team to work on the Best Brews program, host “happy hours” at select Four Points properties across the country, as well as attend high-profile beer festivals as the company’s representative.

“We are thrilled to have Scott join us as CBO,” said Four Points’ Vice President Sandy “Suds” Swider. “We took our search for our newest executive very seriously, and Scott’s passion for beer and brew eloquence is truly unparalleled. We look forward to working with him to further develop the Best Brews program and spread the word about this wonderful simple pleasure in the year ahead.”