Portland Food Writer Goes Negative

May 22, 2010 By Jay Brooks

This is just disappointing. A writer at the Portland Mercury, Patrick Alan Coleman, missed the point of the Beer City USA poll by Charlie Papazian and the Brewers Association and instead took things negative with this missive.

Normally I wouldn’t be concerned about something from the Examiner. But Asheville, NC? We’ve got to take them down. We’ve got more “beer city” in the backwash at the bottom of our pint glasses than can be found in all of their pubs and breweries.

Dude, you should be ashamed of yourself. This is supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be about civic pride, beer pride, beer community pride and building up support for your hometown. It’s not supposed to be about tearing down the other communities. It’s not about insulting other communities. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you’ve never even been to Asheville or probably any other beer towns, either, because you come off like a provincial bigot. You’re not helping your community. Both towns have a lot to offer, beer-wise. It goes without saying that I’m a huge fan of Portland and have many, many friends in the Rose City. And I hope they all do the right thing and denounce you for being so antithetical to what makes the broader craft beer community so great: the sense of community that’s bigger than any one town.

Stopping Underage Reading

May 20, 2010 By Jay Brooks

websites
This continues to just piss me off — I know, what doesn’t? — but it’s resurfaced again in a HealthDay News report on the television website for Channel 13 WTHR Indianapolis. The article, Alcohol Companies Use New Media to Lure Young Drinkers: Report, is about the time-honored practice of believing that current times are the worst they’ve ever been (not like when we were young) and today’s youth is in more danger (not like the innocent times when we were young). Every generation seems to go through these machinations that the corruption of the young is either a new phenomenon or is far worse now because of some modern innovation that wasn’t around (in those innocent days when we were young).

Today’s bogeyman is the “latest new media technologies — including cell phones, social networking sites, YouTube and other features of the expanding digital universe — [used] to reach young drinkers.” Or at least so says a new report, Alcohol Marketing in the Digital Age, by American University in Washington, D.C. The report naturally singles out Facebook, MySpace and other social media and the web more generally as the new moral vacuum where our youth is being corrupted. It’s slightly more grounded than many of these types of reports, but it’s still fairly alarmist of the-end-is-nigh if we don’t do something variety. The fact that every older generation is afraid for the younger generation and pretends to be protecting it by trying to stop some imagined danger makes such arguments fall flat for me.

But here’s the bit that continues to chap my hide:

One area the study authors want officials and activists to look at is weak age-verification mechanisms, pointing out how easy it is for a young person to enter a false birth date so they are legally “of age” to enter a Web site.

Yet I’m not aware of any website that can dispense beer or any other alcohol. All you can do at the average website is — drum roll, please — read. So why on earth do you have to be 21 to read? Could someone check out a book about beer at the local library if they were under 21? Of, course. But online, now that’s dangerous. Until it’s against the law to read then no one has to be “‘of age’ to enter a Web site,” whether it’s about beer or anything else. Trying to keep people from information, even if it’s perceived to be the wrong sort of information, is a very slippery slope. And frankly, keeping people in the dark about something that’s supposedly bad for them keeps them from the truth, forming their own opinions, and exposes them only to the “approved” message, which is often laced with propaganda and misinformation to promote a specific agenda. That’s in part, at least, why so many people today fall for neo-propagandist arguments about the evils of alcohol. As long as the propaganda is so one-sided and people, young or otherwise, have no access to a balance of perspectives, then ignorance will continue to rule the day, as it so often does.

Henny Youngman was probably the exception to the rule when he quipped “when I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.” Unfortunately, more people probably believed what they read and gave up drinking. And that will continue to be the case if we continue to keep people from reading about things that others believe to be dangerous. That’s the very definition of a society that’s not free. Now I need a drink. See how dangerous this all is?

Esquire’s Worst 9 Beers

May 19, 2010 By Jay Brooks

worst
Esquire has an odd little piece this week choosing the Nine Worst Beers on Earth, a fairly bold claim given how many beers are brewed on our planet. The author, St. Louis columnist Evan S. Benn, has probably not tried everything yet since he’s only been writing his column since last June, but overall his list does include some truly awful beers.

And while it wasn’t my intention to disparage Benn, in a recent column, Navigate Beer Fests Like a Pro Drinker, he does recommend spit buckets with the following. “You would be surprised how quickly the alcohol in 2-ounce samples can catch up to you. You’d also be surprised at how many beers you thought would be great but end up being disappointing. Don’t be ashamed to use the spit buckets stationed near every table. If you feel like one sip is enough but still have more in your glass, dump the rest into the bucket and move on.” I think he means the “dump buckets,” which is what they’re called in the beer world, but it almost sounds like he’s suggesting not swallowing at least that first sip, a pretty important step in fully tasting any beer. I know judges who occasionally spit second, third, etc. sips when tasting a large number of beers, but that first sip, at least, must be swallowed.

But back to his list, with which, in fact, I can’t disagree with any of his choices except for one, though to be fair I haven’t tried the new Game Day Light. I received an offer to get samples, but maybe I should answer it after all, just to be sure. But the beer I strongly disagree with is the Samuel Adams Cranberry Lambic. It’s not that I’d champion it as one of the world’s best, but from his write-up it appears Benn doesn’t realize that beer has been around since 1990 and the sweetness he finds so distasteful is from maple syrup. While the Sam Adams’ version of a lambic may not make my top 100 beers, it’s nowhere near my bottom 100 and I can think of sweeter, less appealing fruit lambics just off the top of my head.

Here’s Esquire’s list:

Bud Light & Clamato Chelada
7-11 Game Day Light
Rock Ice
Sleeman Clear
Michelob Ultra Pomegranate Raspberry
Camo 24 Extra Smooth Super Premium High Gravity Lager xxXxx
MGD 64
Samuel Adams Cranberry Lambic
Olde English 800

Why nine, and not ten — especially with so many bad beers out there — I can’t explain. But there are certainly many more beers that I’d put on such a list, beers that if offered to me outside of work, I’d politely decline. Corona and Heineken (and their light versions) leap to mind, as does Stella Artois and most of the nearly interchangeable American-style, European-style, New Zealand-style, Latin American-style, etc. mass produced light lagers. It’s not that they’re poorly made, in fact most are quite well-constructed, but I’m still not interested in drinking them. I want something with flavor … or more flavor, at least.

What beers would make your list of the worst?

Alcoholismo

May 14, 2010 By Jay Brooks

It appears the U.S. doesn’t have a lock on goofy, over-the-top anti-alcohol propaganda. Mexico has some pretty bad propaganda, too. This comes courtesy of I-Mockery, a humor website, and its founder, Roger Barr, who describes the Mexican Crazy Mexican Monografias: Alcoholismo propaganda:

When it comes to public service announcements, America is really quite tame compared to the rest of the world. While we have the ultra-corny NBC celebrity spots which always end with “The more you know…”, other countries aren’t nearly as sheepish when it comes to displaying the harsh realities of life. This became even clearer to me when I stumbled upon an incredible collection of Mexican monografias posters in the basement of a Philadelphia art gallery last year. Some of them were extremely graphic, and others were pretty friggin’ hilarious… needless to say I purchased one of each.

Barr then goes on, in often hilarious fashion, to translate and comment on each of the images, such as this example below.

alcoholismo

Hmmm, I’m getting a few mixed signals here. From what I can tell, if you become an alcoholic, one of several things can happen to you: a) you can crash your car into a telephone pole, b) you’ll appear in your very own television commercial, or c) you’ll somehow fall into a huge glass of liquor which a giant will then pick up to drink and you’ll die in his stomach. See what I mean? Those Mexicans aren’t gonna shy away from the truth about alcoholism. Harsh reality, people.

And this very surreal piece of art:

alcoholismo-2

“Some bottles of alcohol contain miniature humans who don’t have any genitals, and oh yeah, Death likes to hangout inside bottles too. Kind of like a genie, but the only kind of wish he’ll grant is your wish for the sweet release of death.”

Barr has broken down every one of the nearly two dozen graphic works cautioning people about the dangers of alcohol. And before I get another rash of comments, I’m not making fun of those dangers, just this ridiculous attempt to warn people about them using these illustrations. But take a look for yourself at the Alcoholismo, it’s pretty funny stuff.

alcoholismo-3

Sucked Into The Vortex

May 7, 2010 By Jay Brooks

miller-lite
This came out a month ago but somehow it escaped my notice then. MillerCoors unveiled their latest gimmick to sell more beer to wholesalers meeting in Las Vegas. According to Brand Week, it’s called the Miller Vortex and described as “a bottle with specially designed interior grooves that ‘create a vortex as you’re pouring the beer,’ according to a rep, who explained that the brand’s goal is to ‘create buzz and excitement and give consumers another reason to choose Miller.’ The Vortex bottle, which begins hitting shelves this month, will be supported by advertising from DraftFCB.”

Miller-Vortex-bottle

As Peter Rowe succinctly put it in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Miller’s Vortex bottle is, at first glance, stupid. The neck swirls your beverage as it’s poured. This, if we remember our Beer Chem 101, stirs up the aromas and unleashes a larger head.
All of which can be done by, what, pouring beer from an un-Vortexed bottle and giving your pint glass a twirl?

Exactly. This is one of those things nobody needed being touted as the savior of mankind. You can see how it works in the short video below.

In related news, I also saw a television commercial yesterday for Miller Lite‘s aluminum pint bottle, which they debuted to several test markets in 2008. I guess it must have gone well.

miller-lite-alum-btl

And now yesterday, I saw a press release that Miller is bringing out “improved” packaging for their Miller High Life. Perhaps most humorously, the release is titled Common Sense Gets A New Look. The release begins with this gem. “Miller High Life, the brand synonymous with common sense, is bringing a new look to store shelves this month with the debut of new primary and secondary packaging across all bottle and can offerings.” Synonymous with common sense? What does that even mean? Marketing Daily has the story, too. Below is the new 12-pack.

Miller-Hi-new12

And here it is side-by-side with the old package. Wow the difference is so amazing, the beer’s just going to fly out of the store.
Miller-Hi-new-compared

So that’s three cosmetic changes all geared to sell more beer, which is not bad in and of itself: a new gimmick bottle, an aluminum bottle and new packaging all designed to turn around slowing sales. And this is why I think the big guys will continue to slip. They never once considered it was what was inside the bottle that might be the problem. Sure, packaging needs to be updated from time to time, but gimmicks are never a good idea, at least to my way of thinking. Maybe they’ll get an initial trial sales bump from the curious, but I can’t see that it will last. The vortex is completely ridiculous, even embarrassing. The aluminum bottle doesn’t seem any better than the can, but is more expensive to produce. New packaging will, of course, become old packaging in time.

The real reason that sales are falling is that people are turning to other products, notably craft beer. But Miller still sells an awful lot of low-calorie light beer — I don’t understand for the life of my why anyone buys light beer — and so there’s really no impetus to change it or abandon it. As a result, they’ll keep throwing whatever they can think of against the wall to see what might stick and thus drive sales. And apparently, anything they can think of is a very broad range indeed. Given what they’ve tried in the past and what they’re currently trying, I’d love to know what some of the ideas that didn’t get out of the meetings might be. That should be a pretty funny list.

Rethinking The Can

May 5, 2010 By Jay Brooks

John Heylin, who runs the Nor Cal Beer Guide, has an interesting article he posted today about the untold costs of aluminum cans, entitled Why Craft Breweries Should Stop Using Cans. In it, his main argument is that while cans have benefits once they’re made, that the process of creating aluminum cans have significant costs to the environment from the mining and processing of them. I hadn’t ever thought about it from that angle, and it’s certainly worth looking into further. He concludes with this.

The bottom line is this: aluminum is in no way environmentally friendly. Sure, after it is ripped from the Earth, smelted, shipped, refined, and made into a product it is easily recyclable and very light weight, but the cost is far too great. The cost to the environment and to the people living around these areas is just too much. Clean aluminum is like the myth of clean coal, it’s a total lie.

So what about glass? Heylin remarks that “at least glass comes from sand, is reusable, and when thrown away goes back to sand. Aluminum? It lasts forever.” I’m assuming, though, that taking sand and turning it into glass also has environmental costs associated with it, though what they are I don’t know off the top of my head.

In the end, I really don’t know how to balance which does the greater harm or is gentler on the planet. It seems no matter what we choose, some harm is done. I’m certainly not willing to give up packaged beer while so many other manufactured goods, and for that matter entire industries, are doing far worse damage. I guess today I’ll stick with draft beer. But wait, isn’t that one big aluminum can? Damn. Okay, I guess I’ll search out a wooden cask. Hold up, isn’t that chopping down forests for the wood? In the Joe Jackson song Cancer, a line in the chorus is “everything gives you cancer” and at one point in the song just after singing that line, a piano riff begins and Jackson yells out, “hey, don’t play that piano.” And in a sense, I guess my point is, like the song, that everything causes some harm and choices have to be made. Every brewery is built with mined metal, industrial processing plants, smelting, iron and steel, and goodness knows what else.

Should we try to make responsible choices? Of course. But in a world where every decision has consequences, and usually bad ones, even Thomas Hobson might have trouble making a choice.

Still, it’s always good to consider and rethink our assumptions on a regular basis. Any day that makes us think is a good day, in my opinion, at least, even if it’s driving me to drink.

GQ Top 50 Beer Trainwreck On CBS

May 2, 2010 By Jay Brooks

While I realize that I’m Mr. Negative and always see the pint glass as half empty almost every time craft beer is featured on mainstream television, I just can’t jump for joy when there’s so little respect paid to beer by the media and so much misinformation. If I have to be the lone voice in the wilderness, so be it. The GQ Top 50 Beer List that the recently released — and which I initially applauded for the most part — has morphed into something else entirely for television. In print, it was merely 50 Beers To Try Right Now but on CBS it has transformed into 50 Beers to Try Before You Die, a very different list indeed. I liked the idea of just suggesting some great beer to try, but making it a “bucket list” gives it too much gravity, too much pressure for the choices to be just right. Plus there’s the whole copyright issue. I recently contributed to a book, 1001 Beers You Must Try Before You Die, and this seems like a pretty blatant ripoff by CBS. It’s not really copyright infringement, I realize, it just seems like a bad idea given how good the original framing of the list had been. But give the video with host Harry Smith and GQ’s style editor Adam Rapoport a look.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Okay, it started out with the copyright infringing re-named list, which is just plain odd since the actual list they’re talking about is not beer to try before you die. Then, they can’t help but mention that it’s too early to drink and snigger about it like school children. What happened to being professional? Then there’s the horror of seeing an Allagash White with a lemon and orange wedge in the glass, which GQ’s Rapoport characterizes as a wheat or weiss beer, even though it’s a wit beer. With the second beer, Ommegang, the host remarks, surprised or incredulous. “Look at this, it even has a cork!” OMG, a cork. Alert the media. Oh, wait, he is the media. You’d think Harry Smith had never seen a beer with a cork before the way he overreacts. Then there’s his reaction to the glass. “Wow, look at the beer glass!” Rapoport: “It’s like a wine glass.” Harry Smith: “Almost.” Then he references tasting with Michael Jackson several years before and talks about how he tasted, calling it “like drinking wine, you do the nose….” Geez, I’m so tired of this analogy, as if wine holds the patent on how to taste liquids. You don’t think that absolutely every drink that’s tasted critically — be it wine, beer, whisky, cocktails, coffee, tea, whatever — is tasted by smelling it and tasting it in virtually the exact same way. Are their nuanced differences? Probably, but not enough to matter and the point is anytime someone tries to drink a beer by some other method than swilling it at a tailgate party, it’s compared to how wine is tasted because apparently the mainstream media seriously lacks any imagination.

Moving on to Dale’s Pale Ale, Rapoport tells us that hops cause bitterness … and sourness? But apart from beers made sour on purpose from the specific yeast used, sour or acedic flavors are almost always a defect, usually a bacterial infection. Can there be a sour undertone from certain varieties of hops? Maybe, but it’s usually in combination with other factors and it’s certainly not the second thing you think of when listing hops’ effects on beer. Next up is Rodenbach Grand Cru, in the “fancy bottle” and then Anchor Steam Beer. Rapoport at this point claims he loves Budweiser, but says there’s “a role beyond Budweiser,” also stating that Anchor Steam is a lager. And while California Commons do use a lager yeast, nothing else about brewing one is like a typical lager, or anywhere close to a Budweiser or any other adjunct macro lager. Most people, if designating them at all, would place them in a hybrid category. They continue to laugh and joke their way through Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout. Now the last time I ranted about one of these shows, somebody commented that he wanted them to have fun and not be too serious. Fun, yes, I’m all for that, but laughing at the beer they’re tasting and acting immature is just not that fun to me. Couple that with the misinformation, and I’m not entirely convinced these shows do more good than harm for craft beer. Yes, the exposure is good, but it always seems to be at a steep price.

The Tyranny Of The Disgruntled Minority

April 30, 2010 By Jay Brooks

Tomme Arthur, from the Lost Abbey, has an incredibly restrained post up about the travails created by a single individual person who went to the trouble to lodge a complaint about every beer tasting room in the San Diego area. “Apparently they were concerned that we didn’t have a GIANT BLUE “A” on our cold boxes!”

a-card

So Tomme and every other San Diego brewery has spent the week, and boat loads of money, getting up to “code” to satisfy an army of inspectors who didn’t know there was a problem — and in fact there wasn’t — until some pinhead decided to bring it to their attention. Perhaps most remarkably, winery and brandy tasting rooms are exempt from any regulations — so typical — but I certainly hope they find out who this “concerned” soul is. Read all about it at Tomme’s latest rant, I’d Like To Thank Some People.

Today Show Today: Good Beers, Bad Ideas

April 26, 2010 By Jay Brooks

today-show
The Today Show today aired another segment on craft beer, which they still insist on calling microbrews, though I guess it’s better than boutique beers, which they used way too much in a previous segment. Overall the segment was comme ci, comme ça, with some good points made, some great beers, but also some of the same nonsense that always bothers me when mainstream media covers beer.

The guest was the Today Show’s Food Editor Phil Lempert, who also bills himself as the Supermarket Guru. While the beers he chose were all pretty good (all GABF winners, he said), the mix and the way he presented them showed he doesn’t know as much about beer as he thinks he does. The beers they tasted were, in this order:

Firestone Walker Union Jack IPA
Arcadia Cereal Killer Barley Wine
Hopworks Urban Brewery Ace of Spades (Organic)
New Glarus Totally Naked
Lost Abbey Carnevale
Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale
Hopworks Urban Brewery IPA

All great beers, but it’s the order in which they tasted them that was awful: IPA, Barley Wine, Imperial IPA, pale lager, saison, brown ale and another IPA. Does that seem like the right order to anyone?

That, coupled with calling them microbrews, bothered me, though I know the rallying cry will be at least they’re covering craft beer. And while I agree that’s a good thing, I’d still be happier if they didn’t cover it quite so badly. This is especially true because Lempert characterizes himself as an “expert analyst on consumer behavior, marketing trends, new products and the changing retail landscape.” For someone whose job description is predicting trends and being on top of what’s going on, you’d think he’s realize that no one’s been calling them microbrews for at least a decade, probably longer. I know it’s a small point, but it’s indicative of a larger problem with food “experts” who read a few websites, maybe glance at a book or two, and think they’re beer experts, too. I just think there should be beer experts on TV, too, not just food and wine pretenders.

Then there’s the subtle snarkiness, the ubiquitous jokes about drinking in the morning that never seem to accompany wine tastings on morning shows. Why can’t they treat beer with the same seriousness? Why must is always accompany casual jokes and no respect. When Jillian Michaels, the trainer on “The Biggest Loser,” joined the tasting, she remarked about Dogfish Head’s brown ale by smacking her lips and saying “it’s very masculine,” whatever that means. She then admits, seemingly grudgingly, that beer has health benefits but frames it that “dark beer has some health benefits,” which Lempert agrees with by saying dark beers are healthier. WTF is that? All beer has health benefits. Since when are all the health benefits in roasted malt? And that’s what I mean about them being pretenders. Yes, it’s good to see beer on TV, but the price is misinformation almost every time.

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