Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Brit Antrim Returning to the Mainland

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Brit Antrim, who was formerly the head brewer and production manager for Anderson Valley Brewing from 1996 to 2003, moved to Hawaii three years ago to take a position as production manager at Kona Brewing. I found out yesterday that he’s not going to be renewing his contract and will be returning to the mainland after he trains his replacement. Brit is a great person and a terrific brewer. If you need an excellent brewer, production manager or both, he’s your man. If you’re interested, shoot me an e-mail and I’ll put you in touch with Brit.

Britt Antrim (at left), Production Manager of Kona Brewing with Rich Tucciarone, Kona’s head brewer, at last year’s GABF.

From the Glass-Lined Tanks of Old … St. Louis?

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Now that Anheuser-Busch will be brewing Rolling Rock at their facility in Newark, New Jersey, I expected they’d have to change some of the packaging. But in a press release from last Friday, A-B announced their intention to not change almost anything. I suppose that’s not too much of a surprise since their stated goal is to “produce the same beer and maintain its traditional taste,” according to Doug Muhleman, chief brewmaster of Anheuser-Busch.

Andy Goeler, vice president, Import, Craft and Specialty Group, Anheuser- Busch, Inc. said “[o]ur priority is to honor the Rolling Rock brand and its traditions. One way we’re doing this is through our packaging. The Rolling Rock pledge is an historic part of this brand, along with the mysterious ’33’ and the label’s other features. We wanted to take all steps possible to honor this tradition, so we plan to quote the pledge on the label in a tribute to this rich, proud history.”

Next month, when the beer will begin being brewed in New Jersey, the label will continue to read:

“From the glass-lined tanks of old Latrobe,
we tender this premium beer for your enjoyment,
as a tribute to your good taste.
It comes from the mountain springs to you.”

Other items printed on the bottle, including the steeplechase, horse and mysterious “33” will also remain unchanged.

Now is it just me or won’t it be pretty hard to claim that the beer is “from the glass-lined tanks of old Latrobe” when it’s brewed in Newark? Does that kind of announced deception spun as “honoring tradition” bother anyone else? It’s one thing to quietly keep the label intact, but to shout that you’re paying “tribute to this rich, proud history” while not, in fact, doing so seems arrogant in the extreme to me. If A-B had really cared about the tradition of this beer, they would have bought the brewery and continued making it in Latrobe. That would have honored the tradition and paid tribute to its history. This is spin and propaganda at its most openly brash. Curiously, this press release does not appear, at least as far as I can tell, on their corporate website where their other press releases reside. Instead, it came through PR Newswire, an online service that disseminates press releases to journalists and other industry watchers. Draw your own conclusions for that, but it seems at least a little odd.

Also from the press release:

Rolling Rock bottles will continue to have a two-color painted label on green glass from the same supplier in Pennsylvania. The front label will continue to recognize Latrobe Brewing Co., along with a required geographic designation. Anheuser-Busch will first brew Rolling Rock in the northeast, but expansion to other locations is expected. Therefore, the company is opting to place its St. Louis headquarters on the bottle.

Well that seems reasonable. A-B will be making Rolling Rock in Newark, New Jersey, stating on the bottle that it’s “from the glass-lined tanks of old Latrobe” (Pennsylvania) and listing its origin as St. Louis, Missouri. Let’s review once more the letter A-B sent to All About Beer magazine in response to some labeling criticisms beer writer Fred Eckhardt had made in a 1997 article.

We don’t take issue with contract brewing — we just think beer drinkers have the right to know who really brews their beer. We, along with many other traditional brewers and beer enthusiasts, object to those who mislead consumers by marketing their beers as “craft brewed,” when in fact their beers are made in large breweries.

It may not be a perfect fit, but it still shows the King has an arbitrary sense of moral righteousness and some curious notions of right and wrong, very much in the mold of Louis XIV and other Old World royalty. It’s wrong if they do it but when we do it we’re just “honoring tradition.” Uh-huh. We are not amused.

Jesus for the King of Beers

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Pop artist Ron English has been posting public works — most of them illegal billboards — for years now. He claims to have done more than a thousand of them. Some of them are amazing, insightful and poignant. He did one which showed Jesus Christ with a bottle of Bud and the text, “The King of the Jews, For the King of Beers.”

A billboard created by popaganda artist Ron English
 

In Houston, Texas a few weeks ago — and suspiciously around the same day that a new exhibition began at the Station Museum of Contemporary Art, which included the work of Ron English — another billboard with a similar message appeared.

A billboard that appeared June 21 in Houston, Texas
 

According to the Houston Chronicle, “English denied any direct connection to the Houston billboards and said he no longer posts illegal signs in Texas, where legal penalties are far stiffer than in the Northeast.” In Texas, it’s a misdemeanor carrying up to six months jail time and a $2,000 fine.

Clear Channel Outdoor, a division of Clear Channel the giant media conglomerate who has all but ruined radio in our lifetime, owns the billboard, which is not much of a surprise since they own almost all of them you see. “A company spokesman said, the billboard — like at least two others in the past two months — was hijacked” and not paid for. Billboards the size of the Jesus one (6 by 12 feet) run from $300-500 per month, according to Clear Channel. After about two weeks, the Jesus billboard has now been replaced with a paying customer’s advert.

Apparently it’s wildly popular — love it or hate it — and the billlboard’s tagline is currently one of the top searches on Google. Technorati reports over 1,600 (make that 1,601) posts about the billboard.

Also from the Chronicle article:

What does it mean? The faux-Budweiser ad points to the unscrupulous nature of advertising, Ryan Perry, who works at the Station museum, said. “I think it says that nothing is sacred. That if Jesus sells beer, advertisers wouldn’t mind using him.”

Frankly, the two look dissimilar enough that it would be surprising if it turned out English did it, though I suspect the vandals were aware of his art and the exhibition in town. Personally, I find almost all advertising insulting and annoying so I find things that poke fun at it the best kind of social commentary. This is what the magazine Adbusters is dedicated to doing and I think Ron English’s swipes at modern advertising are likewise necessary to expose the lengths to which corporations will go to hawk their wares. The fact that this one was about beer was just icing on the cake.

Coors DWI: A Different Take

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Pete Coors, family scion of Coors Brewing Co. (now Molson Coors) was famously arrested on a drunk driving charge in late May for which his license has now been revoked. I’m sure much will be made of this by the neo-prohibitionist movement, especially since Pete had personally overseen Coors’ “21 Means 21” responsible driving program. Coors himself has said. “I made a mistake. I should have planned ahead for a ride.” But did he really make a mistake?


(AP Photo/Jack Dempsey)		 Predictably, because of who Pete Coors is, this has made the rounds of all the major and minor news outlets, many pointing out the irony of Coors’ responsible drinking program and this incident. But I think there’s a larger issue that needs revisiting. This is an excellent example of how far over the edge neo-prohibitionist groups have gone in their quest to remove alcohol once more from society.

According to Pete Coors’ statement, he had “consumed a beer about 30 minutes before leaving a wedding.” He then ran a stop sign one block from his home in Golden, Colorado, and police stopped him in his driveway. According to the Washington Post, “[i]n one breath test, he registered a blood alcohol level of 0.073 percent. In a second, 20 minutes later, he registered 0.088. In Colorado a blood alcohol count of 0.05 results in a driving while impaired charge, while a count of 0.08 results in driving under the influence.”

But let’s assume Pete’s statement is correct. That means an average size person isn’t able to have even one beer thirty minutes before getting into a car. And I’ll assume he was drinking a Coors beer, which isn’t exactly a strong one. If the Colorado standard is 0.05% to be considered “impaired,” then one Coors was more than enough to make virtually any person unable to have even one beer while out at a social function. It’s a wonder any bars are even open in Colorado anymore. This is an excellent illustration of just how far the pendulum has swung in favor of the neo-prohibitionists. MADD and other similar organizations have been tireless in lowering the acceptable blood alcohol level in state after state. And no politician wants to be seen as being for drunk driving, a fact these vultures prey upon. But let’s look again at what Pete did that signaled the Colorado Highway Patrol that he was a candidate for suspicion. He ran a stop sign one block from his house, and made it there safely since that’s where the police arrested him. And not even ran it, but in the words of the arresting officer, “rolled through [the] stop sign.” In many places that’s known as a “California stop.” Now who among you hasn’t ever done that, especially right by your house where you’re intimately familiar with the driving patterns. At worst, he should have been cited for the stop sign and that’s it.

But over 25 years of scare-mongering tactics have even made police more apt to assume alcohol is involved in practically everything. You could just about here the officer’s mind whirring as he read the name on the license, assuming he didn’t already know who he was pulling over. Once he knew who he had, you just know a breath test was in order. Because there’s nothing else that’s been reported that suggests there was any other probable cause to test for alcohol. Certainly not “rolling through a stop sign” automatically rises to that level and I have a very hard time believing a 59-year old man who’d had one drink thirty minutes before leaving a wedding (plus whatever his driving time home was) would have appeared very drunk at all. It’s ridiculous in the extreme.

I realize that it’s unpopular to say so, but we’ve gone too far in punishing the majority for the sins of the minority. We do it all the time. Most of our laws are based on this theme. Look at airport security for a recent example. Certainly we need security at the airport, but all that’s really happened is people are more and more inconvenienced for very little, if any, benefit to increasing actual security. Who believes you’re safer flying now due to the “heightened security” at the airport? Investigation and surveys continually prove otherwise. The fact is if a terrorist really wants to harm a plane, he’ll figure out a way, and it won’t be by putting a bomb in his shoe even though everyone now has to take off their shoes because that happened just one time. But every problem demands that politicians make some show of addressing the problem. Usually this takes the form of new laws, procedures, etc. which do no real good and serve only to get them re-elected while the measures themselves really just screw the rest of us.

And so it is with drunk driving laws. There will always be people too stupid to know when not to get behind the wheel of a car. Before MADD, I concede that society didn’t handle those problem people very well and they truly were — and are — a menace. But making it impossible for the rest of us who maybe can exercise reasonable judgment about whether to drive or not was not the only solution, and it certainly wasn’t the best solution. Personally, I hate paternalistic laws that seek to tell people how to behave. Seat belts are a good example of this. Now I agree that we should all wear seat belts, but I bristle at the idea that it’s a law. It should never have been a law. People should have been encouraged to wear them but if they were too stupid to listen that’s where it should have ended.

But by lowering the blood alcohol standards, the number of people arrested for driving drunk has predictably gone up. Are the roads safer now? The statistics at MADD don’t seem to suggest that. The ones I looked at appear to simply fan the flames of fear and intimidation. One in every 121 drivers has been arrested for driving drunk. Does that seem even remotely reasonable? Are there less alcohol-related accidents now than before 1980? It only appears everything is getting worse, which means MADD can stay in business and keep soliciting funding for years to come without really solving the problem.

By now, perhaps you think I’m advocating driving drunk. Nothing could be farther from the truth. But how we define what being drunk is and how we deal with a person who showed poor judgment by driving when he or she was in no condition to do so, is at the heart of this problem. Making the standard for being intoxicated lower and lower has not made the roads safer and has victimized thousands, perhaps millions, of innocent people. It has had a chilling effect on legitimate businesses that serve alcohol and made most Americans afraid to get behind the wheel if alcohol has touched their lips at all. Is that really the kind of society we want to live in? We should definitely punish those people who show time and time again that they cannot be trusted to make good decisions. Such people are menaces to society and they should not be allowed to drive and should be punished for any crimes they commit. And most of the crimes a person could be charged with existed before 1980, such as vehicular manslaughter, unsafe driving, etc.

So all MADD did was make more people vulnerable to prosecution. The founder of MADD, Candy Lightner, began the neo-prohibitionist movement after her 13-year old daughter was killed by a drunk driver who “had three prior drunk driving convictions and was out on bail from a hit-and-run arrest two days earlier.” I would have been pissed off, too, and I can’t even imagine how I’d feel if my son, Porter, or my daughter, Alice, was taken from me in that way. But the way to have addressed that problem was to strengthen enforcement of drunk driving as it existed. That person should never have been allowed behind the wheel two days before or after the second or third conviction. The justice system failed in that case and was definitely in need of reform. I don’t think anyone would dispute that.

But out of that incident, everyone else who lives in our society has been punished for that person’s crime. We’ve all become the victim of people’s grief run amuck. An entire industry has been stigmatized as evil because some people can’t enjoy it responsibly. We all have suffered because of those folks and they’re the ones who deserve to be punished. There’s nothing I hate worse than a bad drunk. My stepfather was one. And I know a few others, even a couple in the beer business. I hate being around them. They’re the problem, there’s no doubt of that.

Contrast that with mobile phone use in an automobile, which has been shown to impair a person’s driving as much as or in some cases more than that of a drunk person. Where is the outrage toward phone companies that breweries face? Why aren’t phones stigmitized as harmful to society? Why is restricting phone users from getting behind the wheel of a car any different if the potential for harm is at least the same? Where are the websites and non-profit organizations to combat this growing problem on our nation’s highways? Why isn’t AT&T being picketed for putting our youth in danger on the road? I think this very disparity points to the unspoken agenda lurking beneath the surface with many neo-prohibitionists: alcohol is a moral issue and they’re using it to tell you and me how we should live our lives, which is to say like they want to live their own.

I think it’s time to say that. It’s time to stand up and say our alcohol laws have become ridiculous in the extreme and have gotten in the way of how we live our lives. In my opinion, laws should be nothing more than a balance of competing interests that produce the greatest good for the most people. People who put themselves and others at risk by getting behind the wheel of a car when they’ve had too much to drink should be punished. But we’ve gone so far out of whack in defining what that means that literally no one can use their own prudence or good judgment because having even one beer makes us all criminals. So because of a few, the many can no longer responsibly enjoy themselves with a reasonable amount of alcohol.

I realize Pete Coors must show deference to the law because of his position and because of his business. But I think the rest of us should use this incident to let our politicians know that our alcohol laws have gone too far and we must reform them in such a way that they’re fair and reasonable. People should be able to enjoy the legal pleasures of a free society without fear and without being treated like criminals. Otherwise, we will no longer have a free society at all in which to enjoy that beer.

Barton Beers to Import Corona Nationwide

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When it was announced back in early March that Gambrinus had lost an arbitration and more significantly the contract to import Corona — and other Grupo Modelo brands — throughout the Eastern half of the U.S., speculations ran high as to who would be awarded that lucrative contract. Well, the wait is over and as many predicted, it will go to Barton Beers of Chicago. Barton Beers currently imports Corona in the western half of the U.S. so with this move, Grupo Modelo will have one importer for the entire country. In addition to Corona and the other Modelo brands — Modelo Especial, Negra Modelo and Pacifico — Barton also imports St. Pauli Girl and Tsingtao. Barton in turn is owned by Constellation Brands, a giant in the world of liquor and wine.

The Gambrinus contract ends next year, when Barton will take over Corona nationwide on January 2. The new contract with Barton will last for ten years. According to a press release put out by Constellation Brands, the new relationship between the two companies is actually a joint venture.

Corona is, despite its weak flavor and lack of character, the number one selling import beer in America, having eclipsed Heineken for that dubious honor in 1997.

“It’s For the Kids”

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The neo-prohibitionist organization Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) released a statement yesterday claiming that beer logos on cars, toys and at the NASCAR track “Confuse Young Kids About Drinking and Driving.” Boy these organizations think kids are pretty stupid, don’t they.

Now I’m not a fan of car racing. I follow some sports, but it’s just not a huge part of my life. I have nothing against them per se although I do think our obsession with sports in general distracts people from more important issues, but that’s probably just me. And the strange thing is I don’t really like the big beer companies sponsoring sports and the attendant ads very much, but on wholly different grounds. For me it’s about the message they’re sending about what beer is and how it should be consumed where I believe most of their advertising perpetuates false and misleading information about beer itself. And I think this has done great harm to beer’s image over the last several decades making it harder for craft brewers to compete.

But the one sport I hate with a passion even more is using kids as an excuse to further an agenda. It’s a time-honored strategy and neo-prohibitionists have honed it to a fine art. Don’t like something other people are doing? Claim it’s bad for the kids. It’s always about the freaking kids. This just so frys my bacon. I have kids. Many, if not most, of the hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of people whose livelihoods depend on beer from brewers to distributors to salesman to truck drivers to the ad agency people who come up with the ads have kids, too. I don’t see them coming unglued because a toy car has a Budweiser logo on it. Now I wouldn’t buy my son a Bud car because I don’t like Bud. But he does have a Radeberger Pilsner truck I bought him in Germany. And he has some trucks with craft brewer logos on them and some with other import beers like Murphy’s (before Heineken bought them). Do I think he’s going to be harmed because of this? Of course not. Only someone uninvolved with their children could come to that conclusion. There are plenty of real threats I’m worried about in raising my children. Even just talking about this one is a waste of my time.

But the neo-prohibitionists are serious. They really think this is the problem that needs addressing. Anything, anything that has to do with adults enjoying alcohol must be stopped. It must not be allowed. If anyone can abuse it, then none of us are safe until alcohol is once again outlawed. And we all now how well that worked out the last time we tried it. In fact, it’s never worked out when any body’s tried it. They may dress it up as concern for the kids and even for the public at large but this is just a grubby little attempt at controlling the lives of all Americans in a way the majority of Americans don’t want. That’s supposed to matter in a democracy, what the majority of people want. But minority opinions are increasingly pushing their way to the front of the line with misinformation, propaganda and deep pockets.

And while I’m ranting, how about euphemistic names that neo-prohibitionists use to obfuscate their true purpose. This one cracks me up: “Science for the Public Interest.” Science? Their press release is just anecdotal hogwash with no scientific basis whatsoever. It’s pure opinion, and that would be fine as long as they said so. And who’s public interest are they representing. Not mine. Not the thousands and thousands of brewery and related industry workers and their families. Their mission statement claims they “represent the citizen’s interests” but are all citizen’s interests the same? How could they be? So they’re really pushing a particular, if unstated, agenda. But if they want truth in advertising isn’t it only right that they should begin with their own name? If their very name is misleading and doesn’t really convey their true purpose why should we believe anything they have to say? I have a hard time giving credence to any organization who claims a higher moral ground but can’t even manage honesty in their own name.
 

A couple of my son Porter’s toy trucks. Radeberger, who makes a fantastic pilsner and Anderson Valley Brewing, an environmentally friendly brewery that is a huge part of its local economy. And the problem with these is …? Let’s see, global warming, no universal health care, a war in Iraq, record deficit, secret spying on Americans by our own government, the Patriot Act, AIDS in Africa, the growing scarcity of oil and water, and on and on but no, this is the big problem. Could we please get some perspective?

Miller Strike Looming

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According to UPI, the Teamsters are warning distributors of Miller beer throughout Milwaukee, Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Minneapolis that a strike is imminent. Apparently healthcare benefits are the sticking point in negotiations between the union — who represents more than 1,400 employees of the brewery — and SABMiller, Miller’s parent company.

Miller’s union workers voted to authorize a strike back in the third week of June. The Teamsters press release today discusses possible strategies for this potential strike and yesterday they warned that SBMiller was risking US Market share by ignoring healthcare concerns of union workers.

Beer of the Times: Wheat

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Eric Asimov has a good article in today’s New York Times about wheat beers, well-research with lots of history. The Times also did a tasting of wheat beers, and here I think they made a few key gaffes. They stated from the outset that they were “looking for American versions of Bavarian-style brews” but tasting director Bernard Kirsch added “a few German sleepers.” That Bernie, what a cut-up. And they found that “as expected, the American wheat beers were all over the map, with brewers taking great liberties with the style.”

But here’s the thing. Not all of the beers they tasted were in fact Bavarian-style hefeweizens. Now is that the brewer’s fault or Bernie’s fault for the beers he chose? Either on purpose to confuse the panel or through ignorance of the style, he picked several non-German-style hefeweizens, inlcuding Widmer Hefeweizen. Widmer is in fact an American-style hefeweizen that is a completely separate style for GABF judging. Widmer defined that style, a fact panelist Garrett Oliver was well aware of. But when the panel dismissed Widmer, they said it “bore little relation to the style.” Of course it did, it was a different style.

So when Garrett’s own Brooklyner Weisse was chosen as the winner of their tasting, he “was unembarrassed by the panel’s unanimous approval.” Frankly, I think he should have been, at least a little bit. Generally speaking I think it’s a bad idea to sit in judgment on a panel in which one of your own beers is present. If you’re judging at the Great American Beer Festival you can’t even judge a category in which you’ve entered a beer, even if the flight you’d be judging doesn’t include your own beer. I’m sure he can be objective and personally I feel quite certain he was. Unfortunately, it’s all about the perception of impropriety. A few years ago, I judged at a beer festival sponsored by a brewery. When one of that brewery’s beers was chosen as the winner of a particular category, they disqualified themselves to remove that very perception.

Now I like Garrett Oliver and think he’s done as much to promote good beer as any living human could, especially in regard to advocating beer and food. In that area he’s been the leading expert. If he’s giving a seminar, talk or dinner I always try to attend. They’re invariably very worthwhile events, with much good beer education to boot. So this seems like a strange faux pas for him. He’s been involved with many of the Times’ tastings in the past and I suspect when they asked him, he felt he couldn’t say no. I honestly felt connflicted about posting anything negative about Garrett, because I do hold him in such high regard. Ultimately, I had to mention it because to not do so would have been to compromise my position on this issue even though I knew that Garrett is one of those rare people who could walk above such controversy and be objective under the circumstances. So I think he either should have removed his own beer from the tasting (which for business reasons I imagine might have been difficult) or excused himself for this tasting, even though very few people, and no one who knows Garrett, would have a problem with it.

Three of the beers they gave poor marks to were, according to the panel, “well past their prime” which I take to mean out of code, past their pull date, in other words no longer in a condition to drink. This is undoubtedly the fault of a distributor or retailer as beer should be pulled from the shelf once it’s past its code date. And Bernie should never have accepted samples of this type. Perhaps they weren’t clearly marked and I don’t know the method Bernie used in collecting his samples. But unless he got them from the brewery itself, in my opinion, the Times should not have penalized the brewers who made these beers with a bad review because they got an old sample.

They did at least like my favorite of the style, Franziskaner Hefe-Weissbier. It’s especially good on draft though the bottled beer is excellent, as well.