How Neo-Prohibitionists Target Alcohol

August 11, 2012 By Jay Brooks

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Mark Twain is generally credited with popularizing the phrase: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” He attributed it to British statesman Benjamin Disraeli, though most historians now dispute that. So even when speaking about lying, there were lies. Today’s neo-prohibitionists would be proud, lying with statistics is something they’ve finely honed into its own kind of science. If you haven’t read How To Lie With Statistics or the more recent Trust Us, We’re Experts!, they both provide great insights into just how it’s been done over the years, and continues to be done with alarming frequency.

Thanks to Jason K. for alerting me to this one, which in the news is being portrayed with the intentionally misleading How Alcohol Ads Target Kids. The story concerns a study sponsored by CAMY (the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth) — itself a bit of an anti-alcohol organization who receives funding from the king of the neo’s, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — that examined alcohol advertising in eleven magazines over a five-year period. The study itself was recently published in The Journal of Adolescent Health with the much less misleading title Risky Messages in Alcohol Advertising, 2003–2007: Results From Content Analysis.

When CAMY released a press release about the study, they re-titled it Alcohol Advertising Standards Violations Most Common in Magazines with Youthful Audiences — also not exactly accurate — and by the time it got to the media (who love alarming headlines) it became How Alcohol Ads Target Kids, which was picked up by such high profile websites as Yahoo News, Live Science and Business News Daily.

All of the news stories rely on the CAMY press release and not the study itself, which seems at least a little strange. So here’s the Abstract:

Purpose
To assess the content of alcohol advertising in youth-oriented U.S. magazines, with specific attention to subject matter pertaining to risk and sexual connotations and to youth exposure to these ads.
Methods
This study consisted of a content analysis of a census of 1,261 unique alcohol advertisements (“creatives”) recurring 2,638 times (“occurrences”) in 11 U.S. magazines with disproportionately youthful readerships between 2003 and 2007. Advertisements were assessed for content relevant to injury, overconsumption, addiction, and violations of industry guidelines (termed “risk” codes), as well as for sexism and sexual activity.
Results
During the 5-year study period, more than one-quarter of occurrences contained content pertaining to risk, sexism, or sexual activity. Problematic content was concentrated in a minority of brands, mainly beer and spirits brands. Those brands with higher youth-to-adult viewership ratios were significantly more likely to have a higher percentage of occurrences with addiction content and violations of industry guidelines. Ads with violations of industry guidelines were more likely to be found in magazines with higher youth readerships.
Conclusions
The prevalence of problematic content in magazine alcohol advertisements is concentrated in advertising for beer and spirits brands, and violations of industry guidelines and addiction content appear to increase with the size of youth readerships, suggesting that individuals aged <21 years may be more likely to see such problematic content than adults.

There’s a lot gobbledygook and psychobabble jargon in that, but happily the news reports picked up the additional information in the press release to help out those of us who can’t afford to pay to see the full article. The so-called “study” is not exactly scientific, despite the academic journal publication and pedigree, but suffers greatly from how it’s defined and how the ads were characterized — how those “risk codes” were applied. As the study was sponsored by a particular organization with an agenda, it’s hardly a surprise that the conclusions would support that agenda. After all, they bought and paid for it.

One of the premises is that the 11 magazines they examined were ones with a “substantial youth readership,” which is important since they’re claiming that alcohol companies are targeting kids and/or violating advertising standards. I’d love to know which magazines they targeted, but that information has not been made readily available, even though you’d think that with such a dire problem they’d want to warn parents which magazines not to let their impressionable young children read. Should we wonder why that is? What it really comes down to is how they define “substantial youth readership?” For the study, that meant at least 15% of the readership was estimated to be underage, which is presumably what they mean by “youth.” I think most people would be hard pressed to consider 15% of anything “substantial.” So right from the get go, the study seems flawed; unless of course your goal is to manufacture a particular conclusion.

They further claim that these ads “frequently showed alcohol being consumed in an irresponsible manner.” First of all, how you define what “irresponsible” means is at best very subjective and certainly prone to be interpreted differently by different people. One of the examples of what they mean is “showing alcohol consumption near or on bodies of water.” Since when is that the hallmark of irresponsible behavior? Beer can’t be consumed responsibly, or safely, if there’s water nearby? Seriously, WTF?

Other examples they give include “encouraging overconsumption and providing messages supportive of alcohol addiction.” But those are both so vague as to be almost meaningless, and very open to interpretation. They further suggest that “sexual connotations or sexual objectification” were seen in “nearly one in five ad occurrences.” Again, pretty vague and subjective, but beyond that, so what? Isn’t “sex sells” the number one rule of advertising? Even if true, is alcohol advertising the only group using sex to sell their product? Or is that tactic literally everywhere. I remember being shown in an advertising class during college how the word “sex” could be found in the hair of the colonel in Kentucky Friend Chicken advertising. Sex is everywhere. Shock, surprise? Hardly. It’s the reason we’re all here. If you go looking for it, you’re going to find it. And frankly, under the circumstances, finding less than 20% of the alcohol ads with sexual content seems positively rock bottom, and something that they should see as a positive, wouldn’t you think?

But despite such vagueness, CAMY is undaunted, and finds exactly what they’re looking for. CAMY director and study co-author David Jernigan makes this claim. “The bottom line here is that youth are getting hit repeatedly by ads for spirits and beer in magazines geared towards their age demographic.” He goes on. “As at least 14 studies have found that the more young people are exposed to alcohol advertising and marketing, the more likely they are to drink, or if already drinking, to drink more, this report should serve as a wake-up call to parents and everyone else concerned about the health of young people.”

But another similar study by CAMY done in 2010 found that Less Alcohol Advertising Makes No Difference. In that study — covering nearly the same period of time — they found that youth exposure to alcohol advertising in magazines fell by 48 percent, alcohol advertising placed in publications with under 21 audiences greater than 30 percent fell to almost nothing by 2008, and youth exposure in magazines with youth age 12-to-20 audience composition above 15 percent declined by 48.4 percent. So apparently with that no longer a problem, they instead turned their attention to magazines with a youth readership of less than 15%. That must be the problem. There has to be a problem, after all. Without problems, there can be no fund raising. There can be no clarion call to arms against the heathen drinkers and alcohol companies.

This is the modern era of non-profits. There always has to be a problem. Now matter how much progress their organization makes against whatever problem they believe exists — and they will crow about that progress — the problem persists ad infinitum. It has to. But this particular problem has already been disproved. In 2003, a “‘Federal Trade Commission report to Congress indicate[d] that its comprehensive investigation’ found no evidence of targeting underage consumers.” See Alcohol Ads Target Youth? for the full story. The media may call this “How Alcohol Ads Target Kids,” but I can’t help but see it as just the opposite. When you look closer, it seems to me more like “How Neo-Prohibitionists Target Alcohol.”

America’s Geographic Beer Belly

August 10, 2012 By Jay Brooks

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Here’s another interesting set of data from the curiously named Floating Sheep, this one regarding The Beer Belly of America. Essentially, what they did was “a simple comparison between grocery stores and bars.” They anticipated that they’d find more grocery stores than bars, and that did prove to be true. But they were surprised to find what they termed the “‘beer belly of America’ peeking out through the ‘t-shirt of data.'”
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In this chart, the size of the green symbols represents the number of mentions of bars in the Google Maps directory. To see it full size, click here. Chicago, Illnois had the highest number.

In the chart below, yellow dots are area where they found more mentions of grocery stores and the red dots indicate where they found more bars. And while there are red dots … well, dotting the whole nation, there does seem to be a definite concentration of red from Wisconsin/Illinois west to Idaho. That’s the area they refer to as The Beer Belly of America.
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To see it full size, click here.

They also compiled a list of each state and the number of bars per 10,000 people. I don’t know what it means that the top seven states were all within the The Beer Belly of America.

North Dakota 6.54
Montana 6.34
Wisconsin 5.88
South Dakota 4.73
Iowa 3.73
Nebraska 3.68
Wyoming 3.4

I’m also not convinced that this type of per capita statistics are that useful. Because of economies of scale, it seems that states with less people always do better in per capita comparisons. The same thing happened when looking at per capita brewery distribution by state, with perhaps the exception of Oregon.

The final chart is similar to the first, but shows the number of bars “normalized” based on the average number of mentions for all locations. That means that where you see color are the places where there were mentions of bars exceeding the average. In this view, it’s easier to see where there are more bars, or at least more Google Maps mentions of them.
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To see it full size, click here.

Russian River Toronado 25th Anniversary Beer

August 9, 2012 By Jay Brooks

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Today Russian River Brewing‘s newest beer is being released, and it’s been some time in the making. It’s a blended beer made with six beers, only two of which are actual finished beers made before, with the other four being brewed just for blending purposes. Some of the beers had been aging for many months before finally being blended and bottled in April of this year, with additional yeast added to referment in the bottle. The beer, if you haven’t guessed, is the Toronado 25th Anniversary, made for the San Francisco pub’s silver anniversary which takes place next week, though the celebrating has already begun.

Tuesday night there was an intimate beer dinner in the back room of the Toronado, to introduce the new beer for their 25th anniversary, which was called the “Toronado 25th Anniversary Dinner and Blending Session.” Homebrew Chef Sean Paxton did the food but was told he could only use one plate. In typical crazy Paxton bizarro world, he did exactly as he was told, but found the biggest plate any one of us had ever seen. The ginormous plate of many foods was paired with all six of the base beers used to create the beer.

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Known as “The Plate,” it included 547 Pate (Willie Bird turkey thighs, Liberty Duck — breasts, hearts, livers — and Sonoma County pork, marinated in Toronado 25th Anniversary, mixed with bay leaves, cloves, cinnamon, thyme and pistachios), Haight Street Sausage (Sonoma County pork — shoulder, jowl and belly meat — cold smoked in Russian River Consecration barrel staves and mixed with currants soaked in Toronado 20th Anniversary, caramelized shallots and lemon thyme), Egg Head Customers (quail eggs pickled in malt vinegar infused with coriander, bay leaves, chilies and salt with red beets and sugar, garnished with a mushroom flaked sale), Fungi Dave (Petaluma chicken sous vide in Russian River Beatification, chopped and mixed with fennel, candied lemon peel and a Beatification aioli with paper thin mushroom slices, garnished with fennel pollen and truffle salt), Duck Duck Canapé (Liberty Duck confit in Toronado 25th Anniversary, made into rillettes infused with dried sour cherries topped with confit duck hearts on a hemp chia and sesame seed cracker), Riff Riff Salad (Mixed marble potatoes, green bean, yellow wax bean, apple smoked bacon and hydroponic watercress salad tossed with a Beatification funkigrette), Bejkr Bread, Humboldt Fog Goat Cheese, Beatification Jelly, Fatted Calf European-style Ham, and a slice of ripe melon.

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The six base beers were:

Sonambic
Blonde Ale
Strong Pale Ale
Ale Aged with Currants
Strong Dark Ale
Baltic Porter

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Around 60-70 people in the back room of the Toronado for the Toronado 25th Anniversary Dinner and Blending Session.

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I was fortunate enough to be seated at the table with my friend (and Washoes partner), Toronado owner Dave Keene, along with ….

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Natalie and Vinnie Cilurzo from Russian River Brewing.

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Each table setting included a pipette and an empty tulip glass so that everyone could use the six base beers to blend their own beer.

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Arne Johnson, from Marin Brewing, working on his own blend.

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Jen Garris, from Pi Bar, Dave’s wife Jen Smith, and Natalie Cilurzo.

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All six base beers with the finished product in the middle, the Toronado 25th Anniversary. If you look closely in the center, you can see the proportions for my two attempts at blending my own beers. Both of them turned out pretty well, with the second being more sour than the first (which was what I was going for).

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There was also extra pate and the Toronado 25th Anniversary along with a taste of the Toronado 20th Anniversary beer, too.

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Sean slipped in a second plate, with a dessert on it, a Toronado ‘Bar’ Cookie (a dark chocolate brownie topped with grafitti composed of oats, pistachios, dried cherries and ribbons of malt syrup).

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Dave Keene showing off the special bread Sean Paxton made for him.

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At the end of the evening, Vinnie revealed the actual blend percentages for the base beers used to create the Toronado 25th Anniversary, which were:

Sonambic = 4%
Blonde Ale = 16%
Strong Pale Ale = 36%
Ale Aged with Currants = 28%
Strong Dark Ale = 12%
Baltic Porter = 4%

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Dave Keene and Vinnie Cilurzo at the end of a great evening, holding a bottle of the Toronado 25th Anniversary.

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After which, the stogies came out and the evening began, with Matt Bonney, from Brouwers in Seattle, and Dave Keene getting things started. Thanks Dave, Jen, Sean, Vinnie and Natalie for spectacular evening. As of today, the new beer is available for sale. Pick up some as soon as you can, because when it’s gone, it’s gone. There’s more details on the Russian River Blog on how to get a bottle of your very own. Basically it’s $25 per bottle with a limit of two bottles per day, and it’s very limited. But stop by Russian River’s brewpub tonight for a taste of it on draft.

Mammoth Festival Of Beers & Bluesapalooza 2012

August 9, 2012 By Jay Brooks

mammoth-new
This past weekend, in the middle of a road trip visiting breweries, I attended the 17th annual Mammoth Festival of Beers & Bluesapalooza. It was my second time at the music and beer festival, and it’s a really great event. It’s sponsored, in part, by local brewery Mammoth Brewing. The downside is, of course, that Mammoth Lakes, California is a remote and hard place to get to, but the upside is that it’s worth it once you’re there. The best way to go is to make a weekend, or more, out of it (and take the family) because there’s a lot to do there. It’s close to Yosemite, Mono Lake, hot springs and the Devils Postpile, and a whole lot more.

For the Bluesapalooza music festival, they get some great blues musicians and the setting is wonderful — literally in a wooded grove. There’s music Friday night, and all day Saturday and Sunday (plus a jam session Thursday night, too). The beer festival portion of the event, which is Saturday only, has also grown considerably since the last time I went, possibly doubling or more. There were 70 breweries pouring their beer this year. If you’re used to seeing a lot of the same Northern California breweries at festivals, Mammoth gets a lot of central and southern California breweries, which makes it a special treat, too.

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The beer festival is a major fund raiser for the California Craft Brewers Association, a very worthwhile organization that I support and volunteer with. This is me at the brewer’s reception the night before the festival with CCBA executive director Tom McCormick.

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The Bluesapalooza stage Saturday morning.

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Shaun O’Sullivan, from 21st Amendment.

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The beer festival was in the back, behind the stage area, among the trees, and spread the entire length of Sam’s Wood Site.

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L.A.’s Golden Road brewer Jon Carpenter and social diva Cambria Griffith.

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It was also great seeing Travis Smith from Societe Brewing and getting a second chance to try his wonderful beers.

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As the festival beer sponsor, Mammoth Brewing had two booths, one with the tap trucks. Thanks to owner Sean Turner for putting on a great festival and being a gracious host.

Don’t Fear The Beerd

August 7, 2012 By Jay Brooks

My friend and new neighbor Fred Abercrombie is even more of a graphics nerd than I am, but then he does it for a living. For his day job, he runs his own ad agency, while at night — after donning cape and cowl — writes at his beer blog Ünnecessary Ümlaut. He noticed one day that no one has really taken a look at all the beards, mustaches and facial hair that grace so many of the beer labels we see dotting the craft beer landscape. Sensing a hole in our deeper understanding of the world, he decided to do something about it. And so began Craft Beerds, subtitled “a well-groomed collection of craft beer labels.” Fred researched, photographed and laid out his hirsute book, but after it ballooned to 300 pages with over 175 breweries represented, he realized that he could no longer afford to publish it on his own. Undaunted, he turned to Kickstater (I love Kickstarter!) for a little help from his friends — or at least other like-minded whackadoodles.
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With 19 days to go, he’s raised over half of the $8,000 he needs to print the book. The minimum to get a hardback copy of the book is a mere $25. For higher pledges, there are cooler rewards, such as getting your name in the book, t-shirts, prints and a signed copy of another book, The Facial Hair Handbook by two-time World Beard Champion, Jack Passion.

Below are some sample pages from the book:

Shmaltz Brewing’s Coney Island Human Blockhead.
Blockhead8.2.12

And FullSteam’s Certificate of Awesome and their Liborius Gollhardt Southern-Style Sour Rhubarb Ale.
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So I would encourage every lover of beer and every lover of beerds to help ensure this book gets printed and published. Check out the Kickstarter page and see if you can help. Here’s more reasons why you should:

WHERE YOUR FUNDS ARE GOING:

Printing. Every single cent. The project grew from something cool that we could afford to self-publish, to something really cool we really need your help on. Really. Turns out, printing an almost 300-page hairy book is kinda expensive.

We’ve already collected, photographed and laid everything out. It looks beautiful — and handsome — but it needs your help to live the printed dream.

WHY DOES THIS NEED TO EXIST?

Because no one’s paid a tangible tribute to all the killer art and packaging from the recent craft beer explosion. (There’s enough to fill a book)
Because it’ll give exposure to many breweries you already love and want to succeed further.
Because it’ll give exposure to many local, regional breweries you may not even know you love. Yet.
Because we’ve broken the book into themed chapters that keep it fresh, every time you pick it up—Devilish Beerds, Royal Beerds, Side-Beerds and of course, Red Beerds, to name a few.
Because craft beer and facial hair are a natural combo. Ever been to a beer fest? You can’t swing a growler without grazing a beard.

Go ahead, pledge. You know you want to. Even if you don’t want to, you really do. You just don’t know it yet. Check out the Kickstarter page and see all the potential rewards and good karma you could receive. Then try to resist. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

And finally, here’s two pirate-themed bearded beers.
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Craft Beer Grows 14% In First Half Of 2012

August 6, 2012 By Jay Brooks

More great news for craft beer. The Brewers Association announced today that dollar growth for craft beer is up 14% over the first half of this year. For the same period, volume was also up 12%.

From the press release:

“Generally, most craft brewers are continuing to see strong growth in production, sales, brewing capacity and employment, which is to be celebrated during challenged times for many of today’s small businesses,” said Paul Gatza, director, Brewers Association. “Plus it’s a fact that beer drinkers are responding to the quality and diversity created by small American brewing companies. India pale ales, seasonal beers, Belgian-inspired ales and a range of specialty beers are just a few of the beer styles that are growing rapidly.”

The other piece of great news is the rising number of breweries, with new ones opening seemingly every day. The American brewery count now stands at 2,126, representing 350 new brewery openings since June 2011!

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Bistro IPA Festival Winners 2012

August 4, 2012 By Jay Brooks

For the second straight year I missed the Bistro IPA Festival, but owner Vic Kralj was kind enough to send me the list of the winners. Matt Cole’s IPA, Head Hunter, from Fat Heads in North Olmstead, Ohio, was chosen best in show at the 15th annual IPA Festival today at the Bistro in Hayward, California. The full list of winners is below.

1st Place: Head Hunter IPA (Fat Heads Brewery & Saloon)
2nd Place: Sculpin IPA (Ballast Point Brewing)
3rd Place: Green Horn (Triple Rock Brewery)

People’s Choice: Aroma Coma (Drake’s Brewing)

Hokey Smokes! Cartoons Are Only For Kids?

August 2, 2012 By Jay Brooks

rocky
As a lifelong lover of all things drawn — comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, cartoons and animated films — there’s an argument that the neo-prohibitionist wingnuts make from time to to time that absolutely frys my bacon. And they’re at it again. The increasingly neo-prohibitionist group Alcohol Justice (AJ) is unhappy once more with Anheuser-Busch InBev (are they ever happy?), this time because they’re using — gasp! — cartoons to promote their association with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). In Bud Light and UFC Push Beer to Kids with Comics, AJ makes the same tired argument they always do whenever anybody uses an image that’s been drawn in an advertisement. Here’s how they put it this time:

So how does a company that says it’s committed to not advertising to kids choose to spend millions of its marketing dollars? Get this: comic strips, posted on Facebook, targeting fans of mixed-martial arts fighting, also known as Ultimate Fighting Championships. As the primary sponsor of the brutal and offensive UFC, A-B InBev gets the Bud Light logo delivered directly to the computer screens of millions of kids worldwide. Moreover, they use the quintessential child-friendly format of comic strips to do it. The only way they could top this direct advertising to youth is if they plastered Sponge Bob SquarePants’ picture on Bud Light cans.

Well get this, comic strips and other animated fare is NOT JUST FOR KIDS. They never, ever have been. Yes, there are cartoons aimed at kids, but many, many are either for all ages or are for more mature people. People able to separate content from delivery, something that AJ is apparently incapable of, understand this. The folks that come up with these arguments must be the least fun people to be around, if they avoid anything that’s been animated because they believe it must be for kids only. Think what they’re missing.

But just a short history should convince even the most jaded neo-prohibitionist that comics have long been for all ages, and many were aimed at adults since they were first created. The very first comic strip, The Yellow Kid, began in newspapers in the last decade of the 19th century. It tackled social and political topics, and was for the adults who read newspapers. The first animated film, Gertie the Dinosaur, created by Windsor McCay in 1914, was similarly not exclusively kiddie-fare. McKay used it in his vaudeville act, which was not for kids.

All those Looney Toons, Tom & Jerry’s, Popeye’s and other cartoons we grew up watching Saturday mornings and after school began as the cartoon shown before the main attraction started at movie theaters. And we’re not talking about kiddie files, but all films. They were aimed at either the adults there to see an adult film or were for all ages (Disney being exception and the prime example of a studio that did more family-friendly stuff). That’s why there are lots of old Warner Brothers cartoons (and others) that are never shown on television when they repackaged them for TV, because their subject matter is seen as inappropriate for today’s youth.

Comic books in the 1950s covered a wide range of subjects, not just superheroes, but another wingnut wrote “Seduction of the Innocent,” a deeply flawed book that equated violence with reading comic books, and comic books were reduced to only kid-friendly stories (at least until the 1980s).

Try to watch Rocky & Bullwinkle or Beany & Cecil and not see all the adult political references. You’d have to be utterly clueless to not see that cartoons have never been the exclusive realm of children. Many mature adults love cartoons now, and have since people first started drawing them.

That AJ and other anti-alcohol folks claim this is, for me, more proof of how they’re willing to bend the truth, and common sense, to push their agenda. I don’t even like the UFC, or any type of fighting sports like boxing, etc. (except for the NFL), but just because they use a comic strip promoting it does not ipso facto mean they’re targeting kids. You’d have to be a child yourself to make, or swallow, that line of reasoning.

Another interesting tactic that AJ uses again here is claiming they’re not the only one outraged, when they state that “Culinary Workers Union recently sent a forceful letter to A-B InBev expressing disgust at the company’s ‘socially irresponsible behavior.'” Except that when you look at this letter, it’s also signed by AJ’s executive director Bruce Lee Livingston, meaning it’s more likely AJ’s letter, or at a minimum a joint letter. But that fact is conveniently left out of their press release, most likely because it would weaken their already questionable argument. As I said, I’m no fan of the UFC, or similar spectacles, and I tend to believe the world would be a better place if people didn’t enjoy violence quite so much, but any meaningful public discussion has to start by being honest. And starting that discussion by claiming that if anybody uses a cartoon then they’re only targeting kids, is hardly honest. Now I need a beer, and the Simpsons is on.

Bud Light Beer Camp?

August 1, 2012 By Jay Brooks

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Did anybody else see this? I was watching the Colbert Report last night, as I often do, and happened to catch a commercial for “Bud Light Beer Camp.” If I’d had a beer at the time, I might have done a spit take. As litigious as Anheuser-Busch InBev has been, is it really possible that they could not have noticed that Sierra Nevada has been running a pretty high profile beer camp now for several years? Sierra Nevada Beer Camp has to date done at least 43 beer camps (I did #41), which is how many are listed at the Beer Camp website. But since 43 was held in 2011, it’s probably closer to 50 by now. Certainly, there’s been enough of them for ABI to have noticed. [UPDATE: Since I originally posted this, a colleague sent me a note that they knew someone who did Beer Camp #67 and believe that it’s closer to 80.]

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I can just hear ABI’s lawyers, if the situation was reversed, arguing that this would create confusion in the mind of the consumer. I couldn’t find any of the commercials on YouTube, so I just photographed it on my television screen.

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Doing a Google search, all I could find was links to a few comedian’s websites talking about how they were involved in a series of “Bud Light beer camp” ads for Comedy Central. One conedian, Adam Newman, even had an embedded video, but it has been taken down. That site said it was a “six-part Bud Light ‘Beer Camp’ series” and included “other hilarious comedians Trevor Williams, Zack Poitras, Craig Rowin, and Jermaine Fowler.” He said it was “running this summer on Comedy Central.”

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A second Bud Light Beer Camp commercial ran at the end of the Colbert Report, and that one included a screen promoting the Port Paradise Music Festival, which appears to be a two-day music festival and cruise to the Bahamas that they’re sponsoring.

I assume that even with all of Sierra Nevada’s resources, they still won’t be taking ABI to court over this, though I imagine if the situation was reversed, that’s exactly what Bud would do.

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New Albion Beer Coming Back

July 30, 2012 By Jay Brooks

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Here’s some terrific news that I can finally talk about. I was there when discussions began during last year’s Great American Beer Festival. At the annual Samuel Adams media brunch — where the Longshot winners are announced — Jim Koch started talking with Jack McAuliffe, founder of the New Albion Brewery in 1977, America’s first modern microbrewery. A idea was hatched, and I was sworn to secrecy. But thanks to my friend John Holl, the cat is out of the bag. He’s got the full story at All About Beer, entitled The Return of New Albion: America’s First Craft Brewery Gets a Revival.

After talking and negotiating since last year, on July 3, Jack McAuliffe and Jim Koch mashed in the first New Albion beer Jack has made in many years. They’re making his pale ale, or at least as best Jack can recall it.

First, he had to hash out details with Koch and brewer Dean Gianocostas. The memories came mostly easy to McAuliffe who recalled temperatures, ingredients, and processes. While the brewers had sketched out a plan in advanced, but much was changed.
“We should do it Jack’s way,” said Koch with wide eyes as he listened to McAuliffe recall the recipe.
What they settled on was New Albion Ale, a pale ale “as faithfully” as McAuliffe could recall. Malt variations that replaced strains used in the 1970s were substituted, for example.

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Jack McAuliffe and Jim Koch at the Boston brewery in Jamaica Plain.

The beer itself will debut at this year’s GABF. “Then, additional batches of New Albion Ale will be brewed at” one of the Sam Adams breweries and “distributed nationwide in 12-ounce 6-packs starting in January 2013. This is designed to be a one-shot deal so when it’s gone, it’s gone.” That will definitely be one to pick up.

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It appears the new label will be very similar to the original.

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