Join me in congratulating Mike and Anne Altman as they welcome the newest addition to the Iron Springs Brewing family. Joseph Evan Altman was born at 11:30 last night. Mother and son are doing great.
Particulars:
Original Gravity: 8 pounds, 1 ounce
Style: Boy
Release Date: March 22, 2007, 11:35 p.m.
Label: Joseph Evan Altman
Anne, Joseph and Mike.
When you read this is happening in Utah, perhaps you’ll be less surprised about it, but it’s my feeling that these sorts of attempts at censorship should be fought wherever they happen. Because however innocuous they appear, they always seem to lead to more serious attempts at curbing peoples’ rights of self-expression. Nip ’em in the bud, I say. It seems the State of Utah will not allow a man to keep his vanity license plate that reads “MERLOT” because, according to a UPI story, it violates the state’s ban on vanity plates linked with intoxicants. A similar AP story on CBS News makes a similar claim.
But if you visit the Utah DMV website, this is all that they say on the subject:
Guidelines and Standards
What are the rules or guidelines regarding the combination and numbers of characters on a plate, or the content of the message on the plate?
In general, the statute forbids any combination of letters or numbers that “may carry connotations offensive to good taste and decency or that would be misleading.” In general, this law prohibits combinations that:
- Are vulgar, derogatory, profane or obscene;
- Make reference to drugs or drug paraphernalia;
- Make reference to sexual acts, genitalia or bodily functions, or
- Express contempt, ridicule or superiority of a race, religion, deity, ethnic heritage,
gender or political affiliation.- Express or suggest endangerment to the public welfare.
Now, raise your hand. Who thinks the word merlot is “vulgar, derogatory, profane or obscene?” And it clearly doesn’t fit the third and fourth guidelines, either. So okay, let’s look at the second, that it makes “reference to drugs or drug paraphernalia.” Now I realize that alcohol is technically a drug, but I think it has one unique feature that makes it very different from what I assume the intent of that language was, which is that it’s legal.
Now I know there are some fine beers brewed in Utah, but by and large a healthy percentage of the state’s citizens have chosen to voluntarily abstain for religious reasons. That’s a lifestyle decision. I don’t happen to agree with it personally, but I respect it as a personal decision … except when you try to force that opinion on the rest of us. In this particular instance, the “MERLOT” plate has been on a 1996 merlot-red Mercedes for ten years. The owner was told he must remove it simply because one pinhead “anonymous caller told the state that merlot was also an alcoholic beverage.” It’s hard not to find it a little funny that they had to be told that. But it’s not at all funny that there is at least one person out there who had such a problem with a single word he saw on the back of a car. And not only that, but he felt compelled to do something about it. I can’t even imagine the thought process that led him to rat out a fellow human being for the word merlot. How on earth was this person damaged by the sight of it? How could seeing this one word be offensive? I just don’t get it. Did seeing the word tempt him so much that he was in danger of abandoning his commitment to abstinence? If so, it doesn’t seem too strong a commitment. Was he afraid of his children seeing it? If so, he’s not a very good parent if all it might take to corrupt his kids might be seeing the word “merlot.” Did his religious beliefs blind him to the fact that there are other equally legitimate ways in order to live one’s life? Maybe it’s the progressive in me, but I can’t for the life of me come up with a scenario in which this is in any way reasonable.
Believe it or not, there’s a website where a Salt Lake City man has collected vanity plates he’s seen driving around the Beehive state. Apparently the Utah DMV is also unaware that “CHIVAS” and “WHISKEY” are alcoholic, though they have thoughtfully put up a web page of links to other vanity plate websites.
Perhaps the real joke is that the man who owns the car chose the word “merlot” because that was the color of his automobile, not even because it’s also a varietal wine grape. Apparently, he’s go to fight the state on this one, and I, for one, am glad.
I generally eschew going out on the major holidays, primarily because America — and especially the business sector — has turned them into reasons to get drunk and sell crap that none of us need. Much is written about the commercialization of Christmas but, really, is there a single holiday that Hallmark isn’t trying to sell you on the idea that you should buy your loved ones a card to celebrate it? And perhaps most sad of all is how many holidays that used to be a chance to spend time with family, to commemorate something worthwhile or to celebrate a shared history with your community have been turned into another drunkfest. The most egregious of these are New Year’s Eve, Cinco de Mayo, the 4th of July, Halloween (the #1 keg sales weekend for most beer retailers) and, of course, St. Patrick’s Day. Since I essentially drink most days and as a paid professional, I refer to these holidays simply as “amateur drinking days” because it seems like people just go nuts and drink as much as humanly possible. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the holiday’s original purpose, but is used simply as an excuse to drink to excess. And it’s hard, for me at least, to be around such people. They give drinking a bad name, not to mention providing neo-prohibitionist’s fuel for their bonfires of intolerance.
So I was glad to see I’m not entirely alone on this one. An editorial in Pittsburgh’s The Times Leader by Michael O’Hare today discusses what’s happened to our holidays using the recent St. Patrick’s Day as a catalyst. In his editorial, he gives voice to the frustrations of his older Irish-American friend, Seamus, who tells him he didn’t go out on the holiday because he’s no “pop culture Irishman.” Asked to explain, Seamus relates the following.
“Well, you know, the Irish have a reputation for drink. But the Irish were like the Brits, the Welsh, the Scots and any number of nationals and races who at one time shared their time with neighbors in pubs. And, but for the local drunks, they didn’t pound down their beer and whiskey; they savored it, along with the conversation. It was the celebration, not the drink, that was the center of the gathering,” he said.
Exactly. Beer should be savored with good friends and good conversation. I couldn’t agree more.
The magazine Men’s Health has an interesting list of 32 Things You Can Do With Beer.
Here’s the list, but you’ll need to read the article to get their explanation for each.
Notice the list has only 32 on it, the 33rd thing, of course, is using it as intended. There are some interesting non-intuitive ideas here, such as “loosening rusty bolts” or “clearing up brown spots on your lawn.” I’m going to give that one a try this morning. But several of them seem the same, in a way, like the seven cooking with beer suggestions. Isn’t that just one suggestions in seven different guises? And stopping snoring by tying a beer bottle to your back so you won’t sleep on it seems just plain silly, especially since it’s not really the beer but the package you’re using. You could use almost anything for that. That’s true of a few others, too, where it’s the bottle cap that you’re using rather than the beer itself. And frankly, I’m not sure beer suffers from not being versatile enough that we necessarily need to find more uses for it. Even if it’s only purpose was to drink it, wouldn’t that be enough for most of us?
The neo-prohibitionist organization Join Together is reporting on a doozy of a research study today from the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs entitled “Measures of Spirituality Increase with Sobriety.”
The gist of it is that people who drink are less religious or spiritual than teetotalers. According to Join Together, the study looked at a whopping grand total of 154 (actually it was only 123) people from an “outpatient treatment program for alcohol dependence and abuse” and then extrapolated that data to the general population. The study examined “10 measures of spirituality,” whatever that means. These included “views of God, religious practices such as prayer or church attendance, forgiveness, spiritual experiences, using religion or spirituality to cope, and existential meaning.”
More speculation from the Join Together summary:
The study found that half of the measures of spirituality changed over the six-month study period, including daily spiritual experiences, the use of religious practices, forgiveness, positive use of religion for coping, and feeling of purpose in life.
“While people’s actual beliefs don’t seem to change during recovery, the extent they have spiritual experiences, and are open to spirituality in their lives, does change,” said lead researcher Elizabeth A.R. Robinson, Ph.D. “This effect was also independent of their participation in Alcoholics Anonymous which has a strong spiritual aspect.”
Use of alcohol also declined, with 72 percent of participants successfully avoiding heavy drinking for the six-month study period. Participants whose spirituality increased were less likely to drink heavily, researchers found.
Where to begin? Join Together titles the study summary “Measures of Spirituality Increase with Sobriety,” clearly implying that the less you drink, the more religious you are. But the study itself is titled “Six-Month Changes in Spirituality, Religiousness, and Heavy Drinking in a Treatment-Seeking Sample,” indicating something quite different. The study itself states that the people studied were already in a treatment facility and/or attending AA meetings (where a spiritual aspect is emphasized). That means more accurately that people pre-disposed to abuse alcohol are the ones more likely to trade one addiction (alcohol or drugs, for example) for a more socially acceptable one, like religion. In my experience, such people use this personality trait to replace their substance abuse for obsessive spirituality. I won’t argue whether or not that’s a good thing, though clearly for many it’s preferable to alcoholism and often better for the families effected by alcoholism (for the record, I grew up with an alcoholic and abusive stepfather).
Then there’s the size of the study, a mere 123 people (despite Join Together mis-quoting the size slightly higher) extrapolated to speak for the entire population. For statistics to be meaningful, of course, the sample size must be sufficiently representative of the demographics of whatever population you’re studying. It must be random and there must be demographic diversity of at least several types, be it ethnic, geographic or what have you. The study’s abstract gives no information about the range of who was studied, where they were located, etc., apart from the following: “66% male; mean age 39; 83% white.” But if they were all from the same place, had the same core beliefs, and on and on then it’s meaningless to try extrapolating it out to say something about the entire country. The study was conducted by the Addiction Research Center, itself a part of the Substance Abuse Section of the University of Michigan’s Department of Psychiatry. So it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to think the study may have been conducted at a few or even one rehab facility near the university, further reducing the truthiness of the study’s conclusions. Even if we accept the findings, as a preliminary study with a small sample, no universal truths or really useful conclusions can be drawn until confirmed by additional similar studies using a different sample in terms of size, make-up, etc. But neo-prohibitionist groups like Join Together have no time to wait for details like reality or truth and thus report any study that appears to support their agenda, and even spin them to their own purposes, presumably hoping no one will notice.
Join Together also suggests that the study proves that the more religious you are, the less likely to drink you are. But that conclusion is utter nonsense based on the fact that the study’s subjects were all already in an “outpatient treatment program for alcohol dependence and abuse,” meaning they were already trying to stop drinking. It wasn’t increasing religiosity that made them stop, it was their own efforts at reducing destructive behavior in their lives. There will likely always be certain people who cannot restrain themselves or partake of something responsibly. Some are benign, such as an obsessive hobbyist, a sports fanatic or a collector. Others may be harmful to ones’ self, such as obsessive over-eating. Still others may also be harmful to the persons around them directly, such as smoking; or indirectly, such as an addiction to drinking or using drugs. You probably know people who fit each category. I used to be a wildly obsessive collector, for example, but my wife has largely kept that personality trait in check so that I now collect far less than I used to. And I feel much better for it, but I don’t personally have any difficulties whatsoever knowing when to stop drinking. I am a very responsible drinker, and not just because it’s part of my profession. It’s simply part of the way I am. You may be different. The guy or gal next to you, different too, in their own unique way.
My point is that each of us have a different response to these things, and to make a blanket statement such as you’ll drink less if you pray more is propaganda at its worst. It may feed an agenda, but it’s in no way truthful or honest. And frankly, if you want to advance a position by using faulty statistics then I believe you lose your credibility and whatever sincerity you brought to your position. I know people use statistics however it best serves them, that’s nothing new. But the way Join Together has taken this already questionable preliminary study (at least in my opinion) and selectively used it to support their neo-prohibitionist agenda is irresponsible.
Setting the study portion aside for a moment, I don’t really understand why the neo-prohibitionists — who are usually closely aligned with fundamentalist christian groups — are so against drinking when the Bible is replete with instances of drinking alcohol. There’s the famous story where Jesus turned the water into wine (though it was probably beer, not wine) at a wedding he was attending. And the most important event in many Christian’s minds is the last supper, which is commemorated by one of the most sacred rituals, communion. Jesus poured wine for all of the guests at the supper, telling them it was symbolic of his blood so they would remember him and his teachings. People all over the world repeat that act today, making alcohol an integral part of what it means to be religious in that faith. So why then is alcohol so demonized?
But back to the study. Another problem I have with it is trying to quantify spiritual experience and assuming it’s always positive. The researchers titles of the ten supposed “measures of spirituality” are revealing. They include a “Daily Spiritual Experiences scale, the Purpose in Life scale, S/R practices scale, Forgiveness scale, and the Positive Religious Coping scale.” I’m sure you could get people to assign an arbitrary number to these vague ideas on a daily basis and track the numbers, but how on earth can you ever be sure one person’s “purpose in life” is the same as another persons? The meaning of life has at best a deeply personal definition, that would probably not be the same for any two people. And religious practices? I can only assume that means going to church or praying, etc. But it could also mean lighting incense or taking peyote, depending on the religion. To assume taking any of those actions by themselves will keep you from engaging in addictive behavior ignores that those rituals are also addictive. Have you ever watched people in church going through the motions of worship? When to kneel, when to chant and when to respond with an “amen” are done without thought, out of habit. Apart from social acceptability, how is that different from reaching for a bottle or a cigarette in a habitual response to some stimuli.
The last sentence of the abstract reads. “The results of this descriptive study support the perspective of many clinicians and recovering individuals that changes in alcoholics’ S/R occur in recovery and that such changes are important to sobriety.” That means that it’s something of a self-fulfilling prophecy since the study is said to confirm what anecdotally was already assumed or believed to be true, that religiosity is linked to sobriety. But at least one other study done by the Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse and Addictions at the University of New Mexico concluded that the opposite was true. That study, “Atheists, agnostics and Alcoholics Anonymous,” looked at 1,526 alcoholics (or more than 12 times the Michigan study) attending AA meetings and found that “God belief appears to be relatively unimportant in deriving AA-related benefit, but atheist and agnostic clients are less likely to initiate and sustain AA attendance relative to spiritual and religious clients.” That means people don’t like to have beliefs forced on them and thus stay away from such organizations. It also seems to indicate that religiousness does not equate to levels of drinking among alcoholics.
I’m not against these studies per se, but their capacity for misuse is increasingly rife in these divisive times. As a result, I think they must be examined very carefully, especially when they so often are said to say one thing but on closer examination either do not or are flawed in some other way so as make the argument made based on their findings meaningless. To accept everything we read without questioning it is to invite manipulation, blind acceptance and coercion.
I’m in the middle of reading a fascinating book right now entitled “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?” It’s edited by John Brockman, who created the Edge, an online think tank of sorts, whose mission is the following. “The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.” Each year, a question is posed to the loose membership and last year’s was the book’s eponymous title. There are over a hundred short (about two pages on average) essays by some of the world’s best minds relating their dangerous idea, which is defined as ones which threaten or challenge the collective wisdom of the age. A historical example might be the Copernican revolution that replaced the earth with the sun as the center of the solar system. I think my own dangerous idea might be that there is no one right way to live or view the world. This is dangerous because so many people seem committed to the idea that everyone must believe as they do, and failing that should be pushed aside at best or, at worst, killed simply for disagreeing. To not notice how polarized the world has become of late it to not have been paying attention. This is true even of so seemingly inconsequential an issue as drinking alcohol, where there are entire societies and religions that forbid it. And it appears that they won’t rest until we either capitulate or die. I think this idea transcends religion, nation identity, race or ethnicity. Choosing how to live should be a matter of personal choice, from the big things like what to believe down to the smaller ones, like whether or not to enjoy a beer.
But Neo-Prohibitionist groups have chosen to dedicate themselves to taking away that choice from people like me and you. Such groups are growing in power and influence and will not rest until they achieve their goal of another Prohibition. They appear willing to say or do almost anything to achieve that goal, as their twisting and use of this flimsy study illustrates. They care only about their agenda, and not one wit about how you want to live your life if it’s in any way different from their own views. And that, in the end, is as scary a future as I can imagine, where all my decisions on morality, what to think, what to believe and how to live are made for me. Let’s not let that happen. I need a drink.
Another “Here’s to Beer” effort to try bringing people back into the beer fold is “Clink,” within the social networking website MingleNow. There, members are encouraged to post photos to the site of friends clinking their glasses together. So far, a few hundred have been uploaded, many similar to this one.
Anheuser-Busch is the exclusive advertiser at the Clink portion of MingleNow, but that of course won’t stop the clinking glasses or bottles being filled with all manner of different beer. In one of my favorites currently at the site, a trio of Oktoberfest attendees enjoy mugs of Spaten.
Unfortunately, in their drive to entice younger people, most of the photos have a voyeuristic feel to them that I’m not entirely sure brings out the best in beer. Some of the photos do appear to be genuine expressions of friendship and good times shared over a pint, but a majority are exactly what you’d expect, mere titillation, especially as evidenced by the most popular photos which are voted on by MingleNow’s 300,000+ members. There are also contests for submitting pictures, such as one running now where you can win a VIP Trip to the Bud Light Aspen Spring Jam, a four day live concert festival.
As a recent BusinessWeek article put it, A-B is in “pursuit of the elusive 25-year-old Everyman. There’s the struggle to recalibrate how the brewer sells big brands in stupendous volumes amid the vicissitudes of an uncooperative and fractionalized market.” MingleNow focuses on the 21-35 nightclub demographic, which is ideal for A-B’s purposes though really it’s the 21-25 age bracket that gets most of the attention. ClickZ News and BizReport also have their own take on this story.
So my initial reaction is that this part of Here’s to Beer phase 2 push is much more helpful to Anheuser-Busch in recapturing the youth drinker than to beer as a category. It does little that I can see to realize the supposed goal of increasing beer’s share among all alcoholic beverages. Unless I’m missing something, can’t you clink a wine glass or tumbler of whiskey just as easily? As Silicon Valley business blogger Tom Foremski notes, “beer has helped build social relationships for centuries—maybe online social networks can now help build sales of beer.” Maybe, but I get the distinct impression that nobody thought through how this is really going to help persuade people to order a pint of beer instead of something else. Again, like the new Here’s to Beer website, Clink is not without it’s charms but hardly seems capable of changing anybody’s mind about the respect that good beer deserves.
My rumors of Here’s to Beer’s demise were premature, it seems, as evidenced by some e-mails sent to me by colleagues and a call from Anheuser-Busch. I guess they were just taking a break. Brandweek is now reporting that “Phase 2” of the Here’s to Beer (HtB) campaign is about to be launched, coinciding with the warmer Spring weather that signals the beginning of beer’s big selling season (which generally continues through Halloween). When the Brandweek article begins by stating that “Skeptics and craft brewers in particular said that once Anheuser-Busch has wrung out whatever benefit it sought with ‘Here’s to Beer,’ it would drop the category-promoting campaign and move on to corporate priorities,” it would probably be presumptuous to think they meant me. Perhaps there were others, too.
But after I suggested HtB was a dead parrot, in part based on the fact that the website had not been updated since late summer of last year, A-B’s PR department gave me the opportunity to speak with Bob Lachky, the mastermind behind the Here’s to Beer campaign and the newly named Executive Vice-President for Global Industry Development. We talked for almost an hour about two weeks ago. Bob talked about the future of the HtB project with his now familiar polished enthusiasm. He characterized my criticisms as “fair” and indicated that they were in fact taking a break on the project and working behind the scenes on phase 2.
The second phase will consist of several steps. First, beer distributors and wholesalers around the country will start receiving generic materials that they can use to promote beer as a category. I haven’t seen the display pieces yet but if the distributors can manage to get them into retail stores, where consumers can see them, that might indeed be worthwhile, assuming that they do in fact have some educational value. There are many retail stores, including some large chains, that do not accept outside display materials as a matter of policy. Often these are high end stores who want to achieve a particular look that is more sophisticated than the corner liquor store. And though the high end stores are where the materials would likely find more customer willingness, any beer education at any level seems like it should be useful to the industry as a whole.
Also coming over to HtB will be Food Network chef Dave Lieberman. I don’t necessarily see anything in his bio or on his website that indicates any special affinity for pairing beer with food or cooking with beer, but at least he appears to be a prominent chef. But apparently he’ll be creating “educational videos about brew styles and food pairings” so I’d sure like to believe he knows more than having read a book or two. Then they’ll be a comedian impersonating historical persons such as Genghis Khan, Ben Franklin, Confucius, and Catherine the Great in online commercials about who you’d want to share a beer with if you could choose any person throughout history. And Chicago’s DDB advertising agency will create new spots in the continuing saga of who you’d share your beer with, including singer/songwriter Lyle Lovett and Columbian model/actress Sofia Vergara, which seems like the same old thing A-B is doing in their regular advertising.
All of these and more are now available at the new Here’s to Beer website which launched this morning. It has a decidedly green feel to it owing presumably to it being March, with St. Patrick’s Day around the corner. It’s marked Web Volume 1.01 (and further inside as Vol. 1 – March 9, 2007), so I presume content will be changing on a monthly basis. The new site reminds me a lot of A-B’s other new venture, Bud.TV. There are loads of little tiny videos at almost every part of the website. Some are introductions, some are more detailed and all are fairly short.
This is helpful in raising beer’s reputation and status?
So maybe it’s because I’m an old curmudgeon — and a reader — but I’m not convinced that these little video presentations are the way to reach people. Sure, it’s cutting edge technology and has that gee whiz factor but this is information we’re talking about. I can read it much more quickly, and I don’t need to be entertained every second of my day. I actually like reading and learning new things. Does that make me out of step with the modern world? Because if we use the internet as the arbiter of what people want, you’d think no one had any patience for reading but needed passive watching to amuse themselves à la television. But if I want to watch TV, I can turn mine on. If I want sound files, I can turn on the radio or fire up my iPod. In my opinion, the internet works best when it disseminates text and pictures, the other stuff is just empty bluster most of the time. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy the occasional viral video as much as the next guy, but it’s not necessarily the best way to educate. Just because there is new technology doesn’t mean it has to be used. But all the big corporations — A-B is certainly not alone here — insist on using flash technology and online video to make their websites seems more modern but the end result is just that it’s less useful and there’s so much less information that you grow tired of it more quickly and move on to something with more meat in it.
The lead story in the new HtB website is “The Pen and the Pint: Pub Fiction” (the first part of which I actually floated as a potential title for the beer bloggers “The Session” project) and it’s a mere 441 words, far shorter than my average blog post and about half the size of the average short magazine article. There are also video segments such as “Fresh” and “Thirsty Artist” which, while not without some interest, have little to do with teaching people about beer. And so it feels more like entertainment and less like there’s a lot of good information about the beer. Some of it is downright distracting although there still is some basic information available. But also some of the information that was part of the original website, such as beer and industry news, the beer archives, the brewhouse and more is curiously gone.
Is the new website better than the old one? To me, that’s trickier because the new one at least promises to change more often and as such may bring people back more regularly. I think I’d still like to see a basic component of educational information that was always available there for people to learn about if they wanted to. After all, if the ultimate goal is to have more people drinking beer then we have to provide reasons why they should rather than simply entertain them and hope that’s enough persuasion.
When I spoke to Lachky, he indicated that A-B was prepared and expecting to go it alone with HtB. There were no plans to encourage industry-wide participation as a trade effort, though he certainly seemed willing to embrace cooperation if it was volunteered. With an almost 50% market share, A-B felt it was enough to help themselves and further believed that they’d be helping the industry as a whole, as well. He again used the aphorism of a rising tide lifting all boats to illustrate this point.
As he put it in Brandweek:
“We’re a 50-share market leader, we’re an American beer company primarily, so it is incumbent upon us to grow this industry here,” said Lachky. “Other brewers may not have the same mission we have. Our mission is to grow the beer category, and others may have a mission to cannibalize the category. I don’t know; you’ll have to ask them what their mission is. Does Anheuser-Busch want to grow Anheuser-Busch? Yes, but if you make the pie bigger, everybody gets a bigger slice.”
Hmm. Maybe, but only if the effort does indeed celebrate all beer and doesn’t get stuck in one company’s agenda. Since A-B maintains complete control over what is essentially presented as an industry project then only one message is being sent. Right now that’s not necessarily problematic, but it may not always remain so. Imagine if “Got Milk?” was only funded and managed by the largest dairy or if “Pork, the Other White Meat” was done solely by the largest pig farm and you have some idea of what problems could arise for everybody else.
Is it working? Bob Lachky certainly believes it is and takes at least “partial credit” for the increased amount of beer stories in the mainstream media of late. Is that even in part because of HtB’s efforts? It’s hard to say, of course, but I have a hard time accepting that theory though it’s certainly possible HtB played some role, however small. Because the big three brewers (plus Pabst) gained a mere 0.5% in 2006 over 2005 whereas craft beer was up 11.7% for the same period. To me, the resurgence of craft beer is the story and more likely the catalyst driving increasing attention in the media. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, when microbreweries were new and hot, the media paid plenty of attention. Then the fledgling industry went through a shakeup and media attention dried up. But now renewed interest has sparked more coverage as well as more consumers. It’s not all been rosy, as any regular Bulletin reader can tell you, I think many of the stories have been downright injurious to the cause of raising the level of beer to where it belongs. But if you accept the theory that there’s no such thing as bad publicity then yes I guess it’s all good.
Something else that struck me while I was doing some research before interviewing Lachky was that in terms of the volume of sales beer far outsells the rest followed by spirits and then wine, trailing at the end. This is exactly opposite of the attention paid to these broad categories by the mainstream media with wine getting the lion’s share of attention yet accounting for the smallest slice of the sales pie. Most newspapers have a food and wine section, making them completely out of touch with the reality of what people are really drinking. So clearly the beer industry needs to do something to reverse this situation.
Phase 2 of HtB also brings more projects outside the website, too. Happily, the Roger Sherman documentary American Brew will finally air April 7 — the anniversary not of Prohibition’s repeal, but the return of low-alcohol 3.2 beer — on A&E at 10 p.m. EST (meaning 7:00 here on the left coast). It will also be available for sale on DVD shortly at the HtB website with loads of great extras. I’ll review the film later in a separate post.
Then in May, for Father’s Day, the slogan “give your dad something he will use.” As Lachky put it. “He will use beer.” Having worked for an alcohol retailer, I like this idea. For some reason it was virtually impossible to get people to buy dad beer for Father’s Day. Wine and spirits, yes, but beer’s bad image made it akin to buying dad a carton of smokes as a present. Years of dumbing down beer as a drink for the masses made it a poor choice to show dad how much you cared about him, even if was something he really wanted. It would be nice to see that change, but I can’t say I’m overly optimistic since I also believe it was the large breweries who created that poor image in the first place.
One last issue I have with the HtB website, though I want to stress that this has nothing to do with A-B per se, is the age verification entry to the website. Since the HtB website is purely for educational purposes, why on Earth do you have to be 21 to learn about beer? I know it’s illegal to drink beer before you’re 21, but is it likewise forbidden to read about it or learn about it? If you wanted to check out one of Michael Jackon’s beer books from the library, would you have to show I.D. to prove you were 21? I’m not just being facetious when I ask that, because it seems strange that minors are not allowed to even read about alcohol and educate themselves about it. It’s sadly consistent with America’s neo-prohibitionist and puritanical leanings, but isn’t this just one more self-fulfilling prophecy? If you don’t make it possible for kids to learn about beer then it’s a fait accompli that they’ll become ignorant binge drinkers in their late teens and early twenties. And how is that good for society or battling underage drinking as the neo-prohibitionists pretend to care about?
But it looks like HtB is back, at least, to make an effort in promoting beer. As much I embrace and encourage this idea, I also remain a skeptic and hope like hell I’ll be proven wrong in the end. And I certainly hope they stop undermining their own efforts with commercials that reinforce old stereotypes about beer. It will be interesting to see how it plays out over the coming months and whether or not they will continue to add useful and educational information to the website or if remains largely entertaining with some education thrown in. So I’ll try to reserve final judgment until we see what else the coming months will bring to the table from the in-store display pieces to the documentary American Brew. There’s so much that’s good about beer in almost all its myriad forms. Let’s hope that message comes across from Here’s to Beer and the rest of us.
If you’ve ever been interested in becoming a brewer or a better brewer, this may be your chance. It’s time once again to apply for one of two brewing schloarships offered by the Glen Hay Falconer Foundation. It’s a terrific organization started by Glen’s brother Quentin to honor the memory of Glen and help other brewers perfect their craft.
The press release:
APPLICATIONS ARE NOW BEING ACCEPTED FOR FALCONER FOUNDATION BREWING SCHOLARSHIPS
ABOUT THE BREWING SCHOLARSHIPS
In co-sponsorship with the Seibel Institute of Technology, the Glen Hay Falconer Foundation is offering two full-tuition brewing education scholarships in 2007.
One scholarship is for the World Brewing Academy Concise Course in Brewing Technology held at the Siebel Institute in Chicago in October/November 2007. The Concise Course in Brewing Technology is a two-week intensive program that covers every topic critical to successful brewery operations. The program is designed for brewers pursuing a wider knowledge of professional brewing standards and techniques in order to advance their brewing careers as well as individuals planning to enter the brewing industry.
The second scholarship allows candidates to apply for one of three two-week modules from the International Diploma in Brewing Technology Program held at Siebel’s Chicago campus in September/October 2007. This specialty brewing scholarship is intended for those brewers who seek an in-depth understanding of a specific brewing discipline. Candidates must designate which module they wish to attend.
Both scholarships are open to professional brewers as well as homebrewers from the Pacific Northwest (including Alaska and Hawaii) and Northern California regions (San Francisco Bay/Monterey Bay areas and north). Each scholarship includes a $750 stipend to help offset travel and lodging expenses.
For information on how to apply, visit the Siebel Institute website.
ABOUT THE FALCONER FOUNDATION
The Glen Hay Falconer Foundation is a non-profit organization created to commemorate and celebrate the life, interests, and good works of a well-loved and leading Northwest brewer.
The Foundation’s cornerstone event is the annual Sasquatch Brew Fest. The fifth annual Sasquatch Brew Fest will take place Saturday, June 2, 2007 in downtown Eugene, Oregon. Come join the fun and enjoy over 60 beers, live music, great food, and a lively silent auction and raffle. The Foundation is continuing the homebrewing competition with judging to coincide with the Sasquatch Brew Fest.
The Foundation also produces the Sasquatch BrewAm, a golf tournament pairing all levels of golfers and beer lovers with celebrity brewers. The third annual Sasquatch BrewAm will be held at McMenamins Edgefield on July 27, 2007 concurrent with the Oregon Brewers Festival in Portland, Oregon. Don’t miss the opportunity to play a fun-filled round of golf with brewing luminaries. Full information and registration details are posted on the Sasquatch website.
ABOUT GLEN HAY FALCONER
Passion, dedication, and creativity defined Glen Falconer’s beers and his entire approach to life.
Glen began his brewing career as an avid homebrewer and dedicated member of the Cascade Brewers Society, a clan of skilled homebrewers based in the Eugene/Springfield, Oregon area. As a professional brewer, Glen continued to support the craft of homebrewing by providing access to brewing ingredients, procedures and unique beer recipes.
In 1990, Glen followed his dream and pursued a professional brewing career, beginning at Steelhead Brewery in Eugene. Glen completed the Siebel Concise Course in Brewing Technology in 1994. Glen then refined his skills at the renowned Rogue Ales in Newport, Oregon, working side-by-side with his close friend and mentor John Maier.
In 1996, Glen became head brewer at the Wild Duck Brewery in Eugene, providing six regular beers on tap as well as a wide variety of specialty ales and lagers each season. Glen continued as head brewer at the Wild Duck until his untimely death in 2002.
Enlarging on the tradition of brewing, laughing heartily and embracing adventure fully represented Glen’s life. While Glen won numerous professional craft brewing prizes and accolades, perhaps his finest accomplishment was the back-to-back Gold Medals received posthumously for his Auld Gnarly Head Barley Wine at the 2002 and 2003 Great American Beer Festival.
The small town of Lewes, England (population @16,000) is located near the southern coast, due south from London in the district of East Sussex. It’s also home to Harvey’s Brewery, which has been there along the Ouse River since the late 1700s. According to an e-mail I received from Florrie, a Lewes resident, Greene King‘s Pub Company, which bought the Lewes Arms eight years ago, has dropped local brewer Harvey’s from the pub. A website has been set up by the “Friends of the Lewes Arms” to help bring back the local beer to the local pub. Here’s what the locals have to say:
The Friends of the Lewes Arms are campaigning to have Harveys beer, brewed in Lewes, restored to their local pub.
Greene King own the pub and after eight years of failing to sell their own beers in competition with Harveys defied the regulars by withdrawing Harveys completely. This was despite a 1,200-signature petition and a campaign led by the local MP, Norman Baker, and the Town Mayor, Merlin Milner.
The campaign includes a successful boycott which has cut trade to a fraction of previous levels. Volunteers maintain a vigil outside the pub at what used to be peak times. We continue to appeal to Greene King to restore Harveys to the Lewes Arms and save the remarkably diverse group which used the pub as a communal living room.
As recently as last November, the Lewes Arms was a vibrant, quirky pub, crammed to the rafters at busy times and no doubt highly profitable.
The campaign has nothing to do with the company which brews Harveys. It has everything to do with local communities, genuine local pubs, and consumer choice and all things Greene King claims to support.
We are keen to make contact with other pubs and communities who feel they have suffered at the hands of Greene King, for whatever reason.
The Harveys Brewery in Lewes.
| This is one of the reasons that the landscape of authentic British pubs is fast becoming a distant memory. The tied house system that exists in the UK is undermining communities and diversity. It makes perfect sense that a small town would want to support one of their local businesses by drinking their beer. Undoubtedly Harvey’s employs a number of the local residents and pours money back into the local economy. That a large corporation could care less about that is an unfortunate facet of our modern business-dominated society. One has to wonder why Greene King cannot understand the local loyalties at work here and accept that fact as a part of doing business in a town with a local brewery. |
Or perhaps they can indeed understand it but ignore it in the drive for ever more growth and profits as irrelevant. But it’s this very insistence of profits before people that so undermines what’s really important in our world. I think it’s a sad fact that most people see work as a necessary evil that must be done to further more important ends, such as putting food on the table, raising and educating their children, and putting a roof over their heads. Few people, I think, truly love what they do for a living. It may be a cliche, but it’s still true that nobody ever said on their deathbed that they wished they’d spent more time at the office. Yet business increasingly sets the agenda of how are lives are shaped and managed in a bewildering array of ways.
Otherwise, how is it possible that an entire community, including the local government, can come together and make their wishes known only to have them completely ignored by a business entity wanting to business in that community? It’s not as if the pub wasn’t profitable (at least according to what I’ve read), but as far as I can tell, Greene King simply wanted to make more money by offering only their own beer instead of having to buy the Harvey’s locally. Plus, their own beer hadn’t been selling in the pub, either, which was undoubtedly costing them money in spoilage. Now a smart Publican might think the way to run a successful business is to offer the products that his customer wants. But I guess that’s not the British way and it’s certainly not the corporate way. Greene King is large enough that they could just shut down the pub rather than give in to local pressure. And the Friends of the Lewes Arms acknowledges that possibility, too. I think it says something about how askew our priorities are that Greene King’s hegemony is more important than customer happiness which leads to profitability. It simply isn’t enough that Greene King turn a profit, they have to do it the way they want to, everyone else be damned. And I’m certain Greene King is well with their legal rights, because the court system favors business, too. Corporate citizenship is as much a joke in the UK as it is here, hollow words bandied about to get positive PR whenever necessary. But the longer we forget that corporations are made up of people and hold them as accountable as we would would anyone else, the more frequently these sort of incidents will become.
The Friends of the Lewes Arms website has many suggestions on how to help them in their struggle and includes links to the many ties their plight has been chronicled by the British press.
Local residents outside their local, the Lewes Arms.
There was interesting article in Advertising Age yesterday called Why A-B Is King of ‘USA Today’s’ Puffed-Up Poll. It’s about the USA Today Ad Meter, which is the standard used to judge the effectiveness of commercials aired during the Super Bowl and specifically whether or not it represents an accurate measurement. Since A-B is usually the winner of this contest and spends much more money than anyone else, I found it interesting to see what the advertising experts thought about their effectiveness.