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Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Jaime Jurado Hired As Susquehanna Brewmaster

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susquehanna
My good friend Jaime Jurado — who for many years now has been the brewmaster for Gambrinus in San Antonio, Texas — has accepted a new position as the brewmaster for the new Susquehanna Brewing Co. in Pittston, Pennsylvania. He’ll begin in his new position on January 1, 2012.

Jurado’s been the Director of Brewing Operations with Gambrinus since 1997. Gambrinus owns several beer brands, including BridgePort, Pete’s (which they recently discontinued), Shiner and Trumer. Prior to that, Jamie brewed at Stroh’s, Courage Brewing and the Lion in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He was also President of the MBAA from 2005-06.

From the press release:

Susquehanna Brewing Company (SBC), like The Gambrinus Company, is a family-owned company. Owners, Ed Maier, Fred Maier and Mark Nobile have respected the Chairman of The Gambrinus Company for decades. “Gambrinus brews outstanding and varied beers across a broad portfolio, and the creativity, passion and pursuit of excellence is evident in what it has accomplished. We’ve known Jaime for years, and have seen how he has grown and gained impressive depth, which is attributable to The Gambrinus Company. Jaime comes with best wishes of Gambrinus, and no hurdles,” notes SBC President Ed Maier.

SBC represents a new direction in the exciting trajectory of American craft brewing. Founded by the former beer distributors of United Beverage in Pittston, PA, with a rich history of significant regional breweries in one family, as well as a multi-generation beer distribution enterprise in the other, this is the first successful beer distribution company to take up brewing… but being from brewing across generations, there already exists hand’s-on experience from running a regional brewery in the organization in its President.

Whatever that means?!?

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Jaime with Lars Larson from Trumer at the Celebrator’s 18th Anniversary Party.

Questionable press release language aside, I’m happy for Jaime and wish him and SBC the best.

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Jamie with my son Porter and my wife at the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner, Texas.

MADD Rates The States

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drunk-driving
According to a press release sent out by the neo-prohibitionist organization MADD yesterday, it’s the five-year anniversary of the launching of their Campaign to Eliminate Drunk Driving® program, which you can tell is all about the results since they went to the trouble to get a “registered trademark” on the name. I also find it somewhat ironic that an organization whose name is “Mothers Against Drunk Driving” has to start a side campaign within its organization to eliminate drunk driving. Isn’t that supposed to be their main purpose? It was, of course — once upon a time — but it’s moved so far from that simple idea now that it seems it’s almost an afterthought so that five years ago they had to create a new program to address the issue of drunk driving.

So yesterday they released the somewhat arrogantly-named “Report to the Nation, which rates each state on its progress toward eliminating drunk driving.” The news is just what you’d expect, indeed what it is every time. “[W]e’ve made substantial progress together, but there is still much work to be done.” And so it goes. Every time. They have to make progress, or why do they even exist, but there always has to be more to do, or else who would keep giving them money? That dichotomy creates contradictions that call all of their assertions into question. For example, on page 6 of the 32-page report, a splash page entitled “A New Hope,” the headline is “drunk driving fatalities reduced by almost half.” And that would certainly be good news, I don’t dispute that. Except that what they refer to as “remarkable progress” in the first paragraph morphs into something entirely different by the second paragraph, which begins: “Despite great progress, drunk driving fatalities have remained relatively stagnant since the mid-nineties, with roughly one out of three highway deaths caused by a drunk driver.” Now how exactly can fatalities be “reduced by almost half” while at the same time “remaining relatively stagnant?”

It’s a game, sadly. Non-profits may not care about profits the way corporations do, but that doesn’t mean they don’t care about money … a lot. They complain constantly about the money that alcohol companies spend on lobbying or influencing policy, but that’s exactly what these neo-prohibitionist groups do, too. Most non-profits may start out with the best of intentions, with a clear goal in mind, but then seem to collapse under their own weight into money-sucking organizations nearly as bad as those they often rail against as they grow larger. In a sense, they become victims of their own success. They become “institutions,” with fixed costs, offices, salaries to pay, consultant fees, marketing materials, advertising, webmasters, etc. They need a lot of money just to take care of their day-to-day costs, never mind whatever they’re trying to achieve. MADD’s gone so far from their original intent that when my son was in kindergarten, he got a bookmark from them during “red Ribbon Week” so he’d know that drugs are bad. Never mind that he parroted that message the next time we tried to give him medicine when he was sick, not quite old enough to process that not ALL drugs were bad.

The “report” also floats yet another made up number of how much it all costs, this time that “drunk driving costs the United States more than $132 billion annually.,” similar to the CDC’s recent $223.5 billion figure, though that was for “excessive alcohol use,” not just driving. Their “research” was done by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE), and their figure “includes $61 billion in monetary costs, plus quality-of-life losses valued at $71 billion,” just as notoriously impossible to quantify as lost wages, though they did still try to include “crashes outside of work involving employees and benefit-eligible dependents.” The full study itself, however, is not included in the “report,” just a one-paragraph summary of it so I don’t know all of the particulars.

Another aspect of the report is about “turning cars into the cure,” which really means just “ignition locks,” one of the most invasive ideas ever implemented, especially for first-time offenders who do not constitute the bulk of the problem. What continues to bother me about this is that MADD, and the rest of the Anti-Alcohol bunch, continue to ignore supporting a much better solution, the technology to create cars that drive themselves. That technology is surprisingly close to becoming a reality, with several prototypes in various states of development and being tested. It would virtually eliminate not just drunk driving, but bad driving, texting and telephone issues while driving, and so much more. Just input the address of where you want to go into a computer and the car takes you there while you sit and watch. Instead, MADD seems to prefer technology that punishes. At a minimum, why not support both?

But the bulk of the “report,” around half of it, is their evaluations of how each state is doing to combat drunk driving, at least according to their criteria. They use a five-star scale, with each star representing whether the state does what MADD wants them to regarding the following:

  1. Interlocks for All First-Times Convicted Drunk Drivers
  2. Sobriety Checkpoints
  3. Administrative License Revocation
  4. Child Endangerment
  5. No Refusal

MADD-rating-states-map

Five states got highest marks:

  1. Arizona
  2. Illinois
  3. Kansas
  4. Nebraska
  5. Utah

And like a good bell curve, five got just 1 (nobody got a zero):

  1. Michigan
  2. Montana
  3. Pennsylvania
  4. Rhode Island
  5. South Dakota

There’s also an interactive map where you can see how your state did. California, for example, got a surprising 4. I’m sure Alcohol Justice would disagree with that one.

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The states that got a five are still, of course, encouraged to do more. And by more, MADD means for each state to accept what they think is the best approach. Do what we say, or risk a bad rating, that seems to be at least part of the message. With most states receiving a three, there’s plenty of room for improvement, and plenty of need for more fund-raising.

Fomenting Female Fear

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women
The purported scientific journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research has just published another doozy, this one entitled The Legacy of Minimum Legal Drinking Age Law Changes: Long-Term Effects on Suicide and Homicide Deaths Among Women. The idea was to compare people drinking before the age was raised to 21 with when 18-year olds could still legally imbibe, but the conclusions are .. well, off the deep end and unnecessarily alarmist. So, of course, anti-alcohol groups are running with the results, just as you’d expect.

Despite it being in a “scientific journal” it appears to be nothing more than junk science. They start with this premise. “Prior to the establishment of the uniform drinking age of 21 in the United States, many states permitted legal purchase of alcohol at younger ages. Lower drinking ages were associated with several adverse outcomes, including elevated rates of suicide and homicide among youth.” Really? So the other 139 nations who allow people 18 or under are all killing their kids, getting them to commit suicide more often or generally simply not caring about their health. Most of the rest of the world allows their citizens to drink before they turn 21. Apart from the eight countries where it’s illegal for everyone — mostly for religious reasons — only a dozen countries are as high as 21 (only 5 according to Alcohol Problems & Conclusions), like us. Clearly, the rest of the world hates its kids, right?

Here’s the rest of the Abstract:

Methods:  Analysis of data from the U.S. Multiple Cause of Death files, 1990 to 2004, combined with data on the living population from the U.S. Census and American Community Survey. The assembled data contained records on over 200,000 suicides and 130,000 homicides for individuals born between 1949 and 1972, the years during which the drinking age was in flux. Logistic regression models were used to evaluate whether adults who were legally permitted to drink prior to age 21 were at elevated risk for death by these causes. A quasi-experimental analytical approach was employed, which incorporated state and birth-year fixed effects to account for unobserved covariates associated with policy exposure.

Results:  In the population as a whole, we found no association between minimum drinking age and homicide or suicide. However, significant policy-by-sex interactions were observed for both outcomes, such that women exposed to permissive drinking age laws were at higher risk for both suicide (OR = 1.12, 95% CI: 1.05, 1.18, p = 0.0003) and homicide (OR = 1.15, 95% CI: 1.04, 1.25, p = 0.0028). Effect sizes were stronger for the portion of the cohort born after 1960, whereas no significant effects were observed for women born prior to 1960.

Conclusions:  Lower drinking ages may result in persistent elevated risk for suicide and homicide among women born after 1960. The national drinking age of 21 may be preventing about 600 suicides and 600 homicides annually.

Okay, the first thing that should stick out is the statement that “[i]n the population as a whole, we found no association between minimum drinking age and homicide or suicide.” But then they go on to suggest “significant” findings for just women, even though their findings show that for suicide, a woman is only 12% more likely to commit suicide if she starts drinking legally at 18, and 15% more likely to be murdered. That hardly sounds “significant” and seems small enough that statistical error alone could account for some of the difference. But more importantly, it makes no allowance for any of the literally millions of other factors that lead to any person committing suicide or being murdered. And there’s just no causation or direct correlation linking the two outcomes. The difference in time alone could account for the statistical difference. The time when the age was 18 was different than later, when it was 21. Times change, and so accordingly would how people react to it.

And again, even though it’s only women who the “study” found were affected, they note that the “trends were not mirrored among men,” but examining all this data that “proves” a link for women, their answer to why it doesn’t increase a risk for men is this. “It’s hard to say why that happened.” Well, how scientific. When the results are what they’re looking for, they point to the data. When the data doesn’t support the conclusion they want, they don’t know what happened. Hmm.

Join Together’s headline, Lower Legal Drinking Age Linked to Higher Risk for Homicide, Suicide in Women, claims there is a definite link (which the study itself never says). And their graphic shows a presumably passed out woman in front of a blurry empty bottle of liquor. At the end of their article, lead researcher Richard Grucza says the following. “In fact, what we have here is a natural experiment that supports that idea, by demonstrating an unintended but positive consequence that comes from having raised the drinking age.” But there’s nothing natural about that conclusion. Just like MADD in the past has claimed victory against drunk driving deaths while ignoring improved car safety, mandatory seat belt laws and countless other factors, this “study” looks at two cohorts of numbers and jumps to a conclusion worthy of Evel Knievel’s rocket car leap over the Snake River without ever showing a connection actually linking the two outcomes. Really, they just assume there is a connection, presumably for no better reason than they’re looking for one.

It just feels like there’s no real evidence to truly support such far-reaching conclusions, more like they’re using the data to force an outcome. They’ve certainly over-simplified society and the complex ways in which people determine they want out or want to take someone else out. So they blame alcohol, and when people started drinking.

Lew Bryson *Is* The American Beer Blogger

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A new project was announced yesterday on Kickstarter starring my friend and colleague Lew Bryson. The project is being produced by Rudy Vegliante of Green Leaf Productions and the idea is to create a series of six half-hour television shows starring Lew. Here’s how the project is described on the Kickstarter project page for American Beer Blogger:

AMERICAN BEER BLOGGER is a half hour television series dedicated to all facets of the ever growing craft beer market. From home brewing, to micro beer; viewers will experience the very best of the craft beer culture. In each episode, Lew will visit a different brewer, each of which has their own sets of quirks and ways of doing things. Lew will talk to these brewers, get to know them, will show us first hand the various methods and techniques used in creating a craft beer. From the tiniest bottler to the largest manufacturer, Lew will get his hands dirty. Topics such as bottling, food pairing, manufacturing, distribution, history, technique (and so much more) will all be touched upon as Lew spends a day with these brewers. Some doing well in the business, others not so well. Thankfully, the DIY nature of this business can lead to some pretty unforseeable results as Lew lends a hand and helps out in any way he can. Lew will show us all the kinds of micro-breweries currently out there. From the smallest, hippest label to large manufacturers.

AMERICAN BEER BLOGGER sets out to entertain the viewer as well as educate on this rapidly growing industry. Through humor and a charming, hands-on host, our show will not only be entertaining for the microbeer enthusiast, but also enjoyable for the average viewer as well.

They’re trying to raise $60,000 in two months to fund the project. There’s a variety of pledge levels available if you’re interested in seeing Lew in his very on TV show — and who doesn’t want that? Levels range from a buck to $10,000, with everything in between, getting you various thanks, credit and goodies for each successive level. For example, at the $1,000 level you get an “associate producer” credit and all six episodes on DVD, along with some additional tchotchkes. Below is video of the proposed project.

The teaser trailer was filmed at Stoudt’s Brewery in Adamstown, Pennsylvania, near where I grew up. And it features Lew doing what Lew does best: drinking, talking, eating and laughing … a lot. And that, I think is a very promising beginning. It seems very natural, a casual look at the brewery and the people behind it. I hope lots of people queue up to help the project get made. I know I’ll help out as best I can. You should to.

I think my only quibble — and it’s really a tongue-in-cheek one — is that title. Lew Bryson is the American Beer Blogger! Certainly he’s “an” American Beer Blogger, but “the” American Beer Blogger? It makes it sound like he’s the only one, or at least the only one who can call himself that; the Steam Beer among us California Commons. Plus, it makes him sound like a superhero.

super-lew

Bistro West Coast Barrel Aged Beer Fest Results

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bistro
On Saturday, the 6th annual West Coast Barrel Aged Beer Fest took place at the Bistro in Hayward. 67 different barrel-aged beers were served to a packed house on a beautiful fall day. Festival goers voting for their favorites chose the following three for the People’s Choice Awards:

  1. Brette Davis Eyes, from Drake’s
  2. Rumpkin, from Avery Brewing
  3. Big Woody Barleywine, from Glacier Brewhouse

Congratulations to all the winners.

Next Session A Dickens Of A Topic

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Our 58th Session should be a fun one. Our host, Phil Hardy from Beersay, is apparently hoping for an old-fashioned Christmas this year, and at the top of his list is Charles Dickens’ immortal classic A Christmas Carol. Hardy is attempting to merge the two, which, as Dickens himself said of the goal of his novella in the preface. “I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.” We should all aspire to such heights. The basic idea, which by now you must have guessed, is to write about the beers of Christmas past, present and future, or as Hardy tells it in his announcement post, A Dickens of a Topic for December 2011:

A Christmas Carol

The idea for me was based loosely around the visits of three ghosts to Ebenezer Scrooge, but relayed in a post about the beers of Christmas past, present and future.

What did you drink during Christmas holidays of old, have you plans for anything exciting this year and is there something you’d really like to do one day, perhaps when the kids have flown the nest?

Do you have your own interpretation, was Scrooge perhaps a beer geek?

Or maybe it’s all one day. What will you drink Christmas morning, Christmas afternoon and what will you top off the holiday with that evening?

Just a few examples there, but the idea was to keep the topic as open as possible to allow you free rein to write about a subject with a seasonal twist in whatever way the title grabs you.

My own favorite interpretation of A Christmas Carol is the Bill Murray film Scrooged, which I watch each year without fail, tearing up at the end … every … single … time. There, now you now; I’m a sentimental old fool.

Scrooged

Acid rain. Drug addiction. International terrorism. Freeway killers. Now more than ever, it is important to remember the true meaning of Christmas. Don’t miss Charles Dickens immortal classic; Scrooge. Your life might just depend on it…

Or maybe not, but just to be sure, why not write your Dickensian blog post anyway, and post it up on Friday, December 2.

Belgium’s Liquid Communication

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The NPR program PRI’s The World had an interesting piece yesterday by a Clark Boyd entitled In Belgium, It’s Not Just Beer. It’s ‘Liquid Communication.’ I like that turn of phrase, “Liquid Communication,” though the gist of the article is that the author, understandably, worries that ABI might start capitalizing on the romance of Belgian beer as they attempt to launch their “Belgian Beer Cafe” chain in the U.S. There are already 55 of them worldwide, but now they’re seeking to franchise them in the states, too. The concept appears to be making the Belgian beer cafe as famous as the Irish bar or the English pub that can be found in every big city in the world, and probably just as authentic.

ABI, of course, has several Belgian beers in its portfolio, including Hoegaarden, Leffe, Belle-Vue and the ubiquitous Stella Artois. According to the pitch, the cafes would also carry non-ABI Belgian beers, but you know which ones would get the most attention and focus. They would no doubt appeal to consumers who are not hardcore beer geeks but have heard the news that Belgium makes some world class beers. And while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s hard not to share the author’s concerns that ABI would fuck it up for everybody. Stella Artois is not exactly the best or most representative Belgian beer, yet it’s now the one most people are aware of. But it’s as far away from what makes Belgian beer great as Bud is from Trumer Pilsner or Radeberger. But I would certainly like to communicate liquidly.

Drunk Off … Er, In Your Ass?

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A mix of thanks and “how could you” to Stephen Beaumont for tweeting this story, because now that I know it, I can’t unknow it. According to Digital Journal, a growing trend among Phoenix, Arizona, area youths — disturbingly both girls and boys — is to get drunk by soaking a tampon in vodka and inserting it … well, you get the idea. According to the report, the practice was first identified in 1999, in the Oxford Journal of Alcohol and Alcoholism, although in that instance they wrote about just three case studies all of whom were adults in their late twenties to their mid-thirties. Also, in April of this year, the same thing was reported to be happening in Germany, too.

The latest story’s origin is a Channel 5 KPHO Phoenix TV report, where a Dr. Quan is the medical source, saying they’ll get a “[q]uicker high, they think it’s going to last longer, it’s more intense.” School Resource Officer (whatever that is) Chris Thomas adds “[w]hat we’re hearing about is teenagers utilizing tampons, soak them in vodka first before using them. It gets absorbed directly into the bloodstream. There’s no barrier, there’s no stomach acid to prevent it.” Dr. Quan agreed. “I would expect it to absorb pretty quickly as well, because it’s a very vascular structure.” Okay, that’s probably enough to give you the idea of what “butt chugging” is. Two things leap to mind.

One, this has got to be a hoax. Kids messing with adults and them falling for it hook, line and sinker. Maybe it’s just me, but when I was a kid, not only would this have never occurred to us, but even if it had, we would never have tried it. Heroin addicts shoot up between their toes to avoid detection. Same deal here, apparently, but there are just too many simpler ways to avoid detection than this. It’s just too much committed effort for most people. Or is that just me? Plus, mainstream media, and television in particular, loves a good scare story, something that puts fear into its viewers. This story is dripping with cautionary words, something else for parents to be “concerned” about. Perhaps some idiots did try it, but a growing trend? I’m just not buying it. You?

Second, if it is true, however doubtful, it shows the futility of having 21 be the minimum legal drinking age and avoiding any real education before that time. People will find a way to do almost anything if properly motivated. And few things motivate a teenager more than being told they can’t do something. I keep hearing that line from Jurassic Park in my head. “Nature will always find a way.” And so it goes.

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UPDATE: Thanks to Rick at Pacific Brew News for sending me this Tiny Cat Pants post In Which I Debunk the Vodka-Soaked Tampon Myth.

Wikio Beer Blog Rankings For November 2011

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The November 2011 standings have just been released for Wikio’s Beer Blogs. Beervana increased his streak at the top to three consecutive months, with the rest of the Top 10 shuffling around. Here’s what happened to the Top 20 over last month:

Wikio November 2011 Beer Blog Rankings

1Beervana (=)
2Brookston Beer Bulletin (+2)
3Brewpublic (+4)
4A Good Beer Blog (+10)
5Appellation Beer: Beer From a Good Home (-2)
6The New School (-4)
7Drink With The Wench (-1)
8It’s Pub Night (+4)
9Washington Beer Blog (-4)
10Top Fermented (Not in Top 20 in October)
11Hoosier Beer Geek (-3)
12Seattle Beer News (Not in Top 20 in October)
13Yours For Good Fermentables (Not in Top 20 in October)
14Oakshire Brewing (Not in Top 20 in October)
15KC Beer Blog (+4)
16San Diego Beer Blog (+4)
17Road Trips for Beer (-6)
18Seen Through a Glass (=)
19The Brew Site (-4)
20Beer PHXation (-4)

Ranking made by Wikio

As usual, I included the relative movements of each blog from last month. Four new blogs emerged in the Top 20 that weren’t there last month, which is exactly what happened last month. Otherwise, there were a number of moderate swings, with movement 4 or 6 places being the most common. As always, I continue to stress that this is just a bit of fun and that we shouldn’t take it too seriously. Until the final month of 2011 ….

Pink Beer … You Know, For The Girls

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Apparently there’s yet another misguided attempt to reach women with the aim of tempting them to try beer by making the color of the beer pink. This time it’s a group of young South African women attending Durban University of Technology who came up with the idea for the beer, which they’re calling Pink Fantasy, according to a post yesterday on Beer Universe. Needless to say, all of the women I know who love craft beer drink it because of how it tastes, not because it matches their shoes. Are there really women in the world who, when pressed, would actually say, “well, I’d try beer if only it wasn’t that unpleasant orange … or golden … or brown … or black? But if it was pink, like Barbie, maybe I would actually get over my ignorant phobia that beer is bitter and how I just know I won’t like it. Maybe I’ll finally give this kicky new pink beverage a try.” Sheesh. I could keep ranting, but I think Ginger Johnson from Women Enjoying Beer said it best in these two posts: Still Not “Getting It” and Marketing Beer to Women, Part 4: No Pink.