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Cartoon Propaganda

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tiny-toons
Back in the early 1990s, Warner Brothers ran a new cartoon series called Tiny Toon Adventures, and it was presented by Stephen Spielberg. Instead of the iconic Warner Brothers cartoon characters, they featured their nephews, Buster Bunny, Plucky Duck and Hampton J. Pig, among many others.

There were 98 episodes done over three seasons from 1990-92, with the animation done by seven different studios. Some were of middling humor, though the animation quality was often less than stellar. Few, if any, ever came close to the earlier Warner Brothers cartoons prior to 1964.

Episode #68 from the 2nd season was animated by AKOM in South Korea (famous for animating The Simpsons) and was called Elephant Issues. It aired only once in the U.S. (on September 18, 1991) and was thereafter banned. I’m not entirely sure why, though the last of three segments is a horrible piece of anti-alcohol propaganda called “One Beer.” At the YouTube page where it was posted, RayOfHope612 gave only the following information:

This is a banned cartoon from the banned episode, Elephant Issues. It’s about the dangers of alcohol. This cartoon was only shown once in America, when it first aired, afterwards, it was never shown again on TV in America in later channels like Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network.

But watch it for yourself and see if you can spot the propaganda.

Their descent into madness is swift indeed, taking no more than the first slug of beer to turn them into complete degenerates. And curiously, throughout the entire episode that “one beer” lasts all three of them, meaning 4 oz. per person was all it took to get them drunk and keep them that way. So drunk, in fact, that they steal a police car, drive off a cliff and actually die. How subtle. What a great message for kids. And so honest, too. This should keep the wee ones off the sauce. Reefer Madness redone for the toddler set, ’cause they’re the age group at risk. WTF?!? Anybody have a theological take on why after committing so many “sins” they still got their wings and went up to heaven?

Tipping The Sacred Cows Of Addiction

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aa
I have nothing against Alcoholic Anonymous per se. I know that it’s been helpful for thousands, perhaps millions of people since 1935. There are currently estimated to be just under 2 million members in a little more than 114,000 groups around the world, with the majority being in the U.S. and Canada.

I grew up with an alcoholic stepfather who was also psychotic and prone to violence, and many, if not most, of his circle of friends were similarly afflicted. When I was in my early 20s, I even went to a couple of meetings for “Adult Children of Alcoholics,” though I don’t recall if they were affiliated with Al-Anon or Adult Children of Alcoholics (a.k.a. Adult Children Anonymous). Not to disparage those groups, but it wasn’t for me. I was an unfocused, troubled youth, trying to find my way in the world alone. But it didn’t take me long to figure out that I wasn’t that untypical or that it had as much to do with losing my mother to breast cancer at 21 than anything else, not to mention my own personality quirks.

But I’ve never been comfortable with their tacit suggestion that it’s the only way. For A.A. to work, one has to admit being “powerless” when in fact many people are powerful enough to overcome their addiction. I remember seeing a documentary several years ago that contrasted AA with a philosophy common in Japan for working with people with addictive behaviors. To the Japanese way of thinking, a person wasn’t “cured” until they could enjoy the occasional drink without lapsing back into their over-indulging ways. That always seemed more correct to me. The AA way of simply avoiding alcohol never seemed like a cure but a way of circumventing the problem without actually addressing it or the underlying causes.

On their website, under the heading “is AA for you?,” it states. “We who are in A.A. came because we finally gave up trying to control our drinking. We still hated to admit that we could never drink safely” and the general pamphlet about A.A. goes on to say that members “cannot control alcohol. [They] have learned that [they] must live without it if [they] are to avoid disaster for [them]selves and those close to [them].” Their stated purpose “is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.” But, of course,” staying sober for many is a lifelong struggle. For many they believe it’s the only way they can function. But what if it wasn’t the only way, as so many A.A. members insist? Wouldn’t that be something they would embrace? Well, no, apparently not. It appears that the only way being powerless works is to believe it, then the rest can fall into place. So it’s my experience that challenges to the A.A. ethos are fierce and vigorous, because they believe it will undo the base upon which its foundation stands. If they’re not powerless, then it becomes a house of cards.

So with that in mind, the Toronto Star published an article last week entitled Addiction: Could It Be a Big Lie? The article is examining a new book by Harvard professor Gene M. Heyman, a psychologist. His new book carries the incendiary title Addiction: A Disorder of Choice and “argues that addiction isn’t really an illness, infuriating the medical establishment.”

According to the article, it’s not the first to do so, but is one of several published in the first decade of the 21st century to challenge the conventional wisdom, which the article calls an “overwhelming scientific consensus that addiction is an involuntary disease.” The Star goes on to give voice to people who disagree, who use the opportunity to insult both the author and Harvard itself for even allowing a dissenting opinion into the world.

Heyman’s goal is nothing short of persuading “us that we have been persistently deceived by so-called addiction experts who do not understand addiction.” The book is complex and the publisher describes it like this:

In a book sure to inspire controversy, Gene Heyman argues that conventional wisdom about addiction—that it is a disease, a compulsion beyond conscious control—is wrong.

Drawing on psychiatric epidemiology, addicts’ autobiographies, treatment studies, and advances in behavioral economics, Heyman makes a powerful case that addiction is voluntary. He shows that drug use, like all choices, is influenced by preferences and goals. But just as there are successful dieters, there are successful ex-addicts. In fact, addiction is the psychiatric disorder with the highest rate of recovery. But what ends an addiction?

At the heart of Heyman’s analysis is a startling view of choice and motivation that applies to all choices, not just the choice to use drugs. The conditions that promote quitting a drug addiction include new information, cultural values, and, of course, the costs and benefits of further drug use. Most of us avoid becoming drug dependent, not because we are especially rational, but because we loathe the idea of being an addict.

Heyman’s analysis of well-established but frequently ignored research leads to unexpected insights into how we make choices—from obesity to McMansionization—all rooted in our deep-seated tendency to consume too much of whatever we like best. As wealth increases and technology advances, the dilemma posed by addictive drugs spreads to new products. However, this remarkable and radical book points to a solution. If drug addicts typically beat addiction, then non-addicts can learn to control their natural tendency to take too much.

But as the Toronto Star points out, it’s “fundamentally based, however, on that last, simple point: Addicts quit. Clinical experts believe addiction cannot be permanently conquered, Heyman writes, because they tend to study only addicts who have entered treatment programs. People who never enter treatment – more than three-quarters of all addicts, according to most estimates – relapse far less frequently than those who do, since people in treatment more frequently have additional medical and psychiatric problems.”

Star reporter Daniel Dale continues:

People who have stronger incentives to remain clean, such as a good job, are more likely to make better lifestyle choices, Heyman writes. This is not contentious. But he also argues that the inability to resist potentially harmful situations is a product of others’ opinions, fear of punishment, and “values”; it is a product of a cost-benefit analysis.

He does not dispute that drug use alters the brain. He does not dispute that some people have genes that make them more susceptible to addiction. He disputes that the person who is predisposed to addiction and the person whose brain has been altered are not able to ponder the consequences of their actions. In other words, he disputes that biological factors make addicts’ decisions compulsive.

I find such discussions fascinating because of my own experiences along with what I’ve seen and read about addiction. In my stepfather’s case, his family enabled him by pretending his aberrant behavior didn’t exist and dismissed or excused his violence as something my mother and I either deserved or exaggerated. My mother was also a party to the dysfunction and was clearly co-dependent, but that’s a story for another day. The point is, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more dysfunctional individual who seemingly could not control himself. And yet every summer we’d take a one-week car vacation and over the course of my childhood we drove (from Pennsylvania) as far north as Canada, as far south as the Florida Keys, and as far West as Indiana. A few weeks before we’d load up the car, my stepfather would inexplicably just stop drinking and work harder than I’d ever seen him (for most of the time, he was a mechanic, and owned his own repair shop) to save up money for our vacation. There was no fanfare, no detox time, he’d simply be drunk one day and decide the next it was time to earn the vacation money. It was usually two weeks and sometimes longer if my folks had planned a more extensive trip. So every year, for between two and four weeks, my stepfather seemingly just flipped a switch inside himself and became sober. There were no side-effects I ever saw, no temptations I ever witnessed, it just seemed as natural as the sun coming up each morning. This odd, almost contradictory behavior, I realized (unfortunately, not until I was older), seemed to seriously fly in the face of what conventional wisdom had to say about alcoholism, that my stepfather had no control over himself or his actions. And his example wasn’t the only one I saw, just the one I knew best.

But when Join Together posted this story, most of the comments were predictably dismissive and downright abusive or insulting. Some took a “how dare he” position as if a contrary opinion constituted a personal attack. They seem to think his opinion was just shot from the hip or has no foundation whatsoever and therefore he had no right to state it, even when none had actually read it. I haven’t read it either, of course, but I’m willing to give it a chance whereas the addiction crowd doesn’t seem capable of that, and I suspect it’s that house of cards idea that it could all come crashing down. But that’s what happens when you build with straw or sticks, an idea comes along and huffs and puffs.

The history of science is filled with examples of individuals who theorized beyond the scope of the conventional wisdom of the day and were insulted, disgraced, ruined or worse before later being vindicated. Obviously, I can’t say with any certainty that Heyman’s ideas will stand up to further scrutiny and testing, but history suggests we should at least listen to him and explore his ideas further, and not so quickly dismiss them out of hand, as appears to be what’s happening. The only news organizations to even cover the book’s publication are from Canada. A Google News search came up with not one American article, which in and of itself I think is telling.

The other Canadian piece is an interview in Maclean’s, essentially Canada’s weekly Time magazine and Newsweek rolled into one. It’s a very interesting and enlightening read. Heyman, I’m not surprised to learn, comes across as very even-handed and practical, even saying kind things about A.A.’s effectiveness, despite the addiction crowd’s apparent attack on him.

To the question about how on earth “the idea that addiction is a disease governed by uncontrollable compulsion [took] root?” Heyman replies.

The first people to call addiction a disease were members of the 17th-century clergy. They were looking at alcoholism and they didn’t describe it as sin or as crime. I have a theory as to why they thought this—and why we think it even today. It’s this problem we have with the idea that individuals can voluntarily do themselves harm. It just doesn’t make sense to us. Why wouldn’t you stop? In the medical world, in economics, in psychology and in the clergy, they really have no category for this, no way of explaining behaviour that is self-destructive and also voluntary. The two categories available to them are “sick” or “bad.”

And that does seem to conform to how I see addiction and alcoholism portrayed, yet I have witnessed so many people who have been able to simply quit of their own volition that on reflection it seems almost obvious that it can’t be a disease. It would be like deciding to cure your cancer and then just doing so by simply making such a decision. It would be like saying “that cancer was ruining my life so I just decided to quit having it.” If one person did that, it would be a miracle. But if thousands, perhaps millions of people can effectively just quit doing something considered to be a disease, wouldn’t you have to reevaluate or reconsider that very notion?

And on the other side of the coin, I see lots of people who get drunk and use being drunk as an excuse to do things and get away with doing things that wouldn’t be tolerated from a sober person. To me, that’s the really bad side of viewing alcoholism as a disease. It allows people to not be responsible for their actions when they can persuade others that it was the alcohol that “made them act that way.” Sure it was. I’ve known — and still know — plenty of bad drunks who still play that game. Many people let them get away with it, and I contend it’s because they accept the idea that they can’t help themselves when they’re drunk, that they’re somehow not responsible for their actions. Bullshit, I say. People should be held accountable for their actions, whether sober, falling down drunk or somewhere in between. So I imagine a lot of people who’ve been getting away with acting badly and blaming alcohol will be quite unhappy with Heyman’s assertions, after all it undermines their ability to be jerks and get away with it. But I also believe such people are ruining it for the rest of us, who don’t turn into assholes when we drink too much. I get more talkative and eventually more sleepy. I get friendlier and am probably better company as I’m less reserved in person than usual. But that’s about it, I retain my ability to judge right from wrong, to know what’s acceptable behavior and what’s not. I don’t harass people or get in their face. I’m usually acutely aware of my own level of intoxication. Most importantly, I don’t think I’m unique in that. The majority of people I drink with regularly are similarly self-aware and don’t become a drunken Mr. Hyde to their sober Dr. Jekyll.

So who’s right? Obviously, it’s a complicated question and one not easily decided. But like most things, it’s worth at least discussing the possibility that alcoholism is not a disease, even if it makes some people uncomfortable and may undermine conventional wisdom. We can only evolve in our intellectual understanding of the world if we remain open to new ideas. Some of us can discuss such ideas over a beer, others not so much, at least as long as we cling to the idea they just can’t help themselves.

World’s Worst Beers

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worst
Well, at least according to Rate Beer these are the world’s fifty worst beers as rated by their members. Here’s the introduction to RateBeer’s list:

Below is a list of worst beers in the world as rated by the thousands of beer enthusiasts at RateBeer.com. Dare to try them? We don’t advise it. We provide this list in the name of beer education. We aren’t picking on the fat kid as much as we’re making a few big brewers accountable for their products that are more about beer hype and marketing than substance.

So one has to assume that by worst they mean ones that people generally don’t like drinking, worst in the sense of their popularity among beer geeks, worst in the sense of having very little flavor or worst in the sense of being made by very large companies with bad reputations among the fans of small breweries and specifically not in the sense that they aren’t well made. Because like it or not, most of the beers made by the big breweries are technically very well made, it’s just that a majority of people who are passionate enough about beer to go to RateBeer and rate the beers that they try tend not to like American-style light lagers and similar styles.

And most, if not all, of these beers were not sampled blind, meaning there was more than likely strong bias against them in rating them. Because also, like or not, many of the beers on this list are also some of the most popular beers in the world. No. 36, Bud Light, for example, is the highest ranked brand in the world according to the 2009 Millward Brown Optimor Top 100 and the second most popular beer brand in the world according to Plato Logic. I’m no fan of these beers personally and I’m certainly not trying to champion any of the ones on this list, but I do want to put this into perspective.

The World’s Worst Beers

  1. Halsnæs Poulsen / Halsnæs Bryghus (Denmark)
  2. Busch NA / Anheuser-Busch InBev
  3. O’Douls / Anheuser-Busch InBev
  4. Gluek Stite Light Lager / Cold Spring Brewery
  5. Olde English 800 3.2 / Miller Brewing Company (MillerCoors)
  6. Pabst NA / Miller Brewing Company (MillerCoors)
  7. Hurricane Ice / Anheuser-Busch InBev
  8. Sleeman Clear / Sleeman Brewing & Malting Co. (Canada) (Sapporo; Japan)
  9. Black Label 11-11 Malt Liquor / Miller Brewing Company (MillerCoors)
  10. Natural Light / Anheuser-Busch InBev
  11. Natural Ice / Anheuser-Busch InBev
  12. Tooheys Blue Ice / Tooheys (Lion Nathan Co.; New Zealand)
  13. Michelob Ultra / Anheuser-Busch InBev
  14. Milwaukee’s Best / Miller Brewing Company (MillerCoors)
  15. Coors Non-Alcoholic / Coors Brewing Company (MillerCoors)
  16. Diamond White Cider / Matthew Clark Cider (England)
  17. Miller Sharps / Miller Brewing Company (MillerCoors)
  18. Tuborg T-Beer / Carlsberg Brewery (Denmark)
  19. PC 2.5 g Low Carb / Brick Brewing Company (Canada)
  20. Jacob Best Ice / Miller Brewing Company (MillerCoors)
  21. Coors Aspen Edge / Coors Brewing Company (MillerCoors)
  22. Bud Light Chelada / Anheuser-Busch InBev
  23. Molson Kick / Molson Breweries (MolsonCoors; Canada)
  24. Bud Ice Light / Anheuser-Busch InBev
  25. Genesee NA / High Falls Brewing Company
  26. Busch Ice / Anheuser-Busch InBev
  27. Rockman High Gravity Lager / Sleeman Brewing & Malting Co. (Canada) (Sapporo; Japan)
  28. Molson Ex Light / Molson Breweries (MolsonCoors; Canada)
  29. Old Milwaukee Ice / Miller Brewing Company (MillerCoors)
  30. Labatt Sterling / Labatt Breweries (InBev; Canada)
  31. Blue Ice Beer / San Miguel Brewery (Hong Kong)
  32. Hek Original Lager Blonde Beer (Blue label) / Groupe Geloso (Canada)
  33. Pabst Ice / Pabst Brewing Company
  34. Tooheys Blue Bitter / Tooheys (Lion Nathan Co.; New Zealand)
  35. Fosters Light / Fosters Brewing (Australia)
  36. Bud Light / Anheuser-Busch InBev
  37. Busch Light / Anheuser-Busch InBev
  38. Camo Silver Ice High Gravity Lager / City Brewery (Melanie Brewing Co)
  39. Tooheys Extra Dry Platinum / Tooheys (Lion Nathan Co.; New Zealand)
  40. Milwaukee’s Best Light / Miller Brewing Company (MillerCoors)
  41. Pabst Extra Light / Pabst Brewing Company
  42. Molson Ultra / Molson Breweries (MolsonCoors; Canada)
  43. Camo 900 High Gravity Lager / City Brewery (Melanie Brewing Co)
  44. Matt Accel / Matt Brewing Company
  45. Adelskronen Mix Alsterwasser/ Radler / Feldschlößchen Braunschweig (Carlsberg; Denmark)
  46. Lucky Lager Force 10 / Labatt Breweries (InBev)
  47. Busch Beer / Anheuser-Busch InBev
  48. Schlitz Red Bull / Miller Brewing Company (MillerCoors)
  49. Molson Exel / Molson Breweries (MolsonCoors; Canada)
  50. Fosters Light Ice / Fosters Brewing (Australia)

There are some obvious problems with the list. For example, six of the beers are non-alcoholic (I marked them in blue). I know they’re trying to duplicate the taste of beer, but with less than 0.5% alcohol, I’m not sure they should be a part of this list. They’re designed for a very specific purpose, that is for people who can’t tolerate alcohol for whatever reason. A casual drinker would never choose one of these beers absent some specific need. For that same reason I’d argue that gluten-free beers should also not be on such a list, but there aren’t any on the list surprisingly enough. Also one of the items on the list, No. 16, is hard cider, not a beer at all. In the original list, Nos. 33 and 41, Pabst Ice and Pabst Extra Light, respectively, are attributed to MillerCoors, though they only brew them under license for Pabst, who owns the labels.

 
Also, just as a matter of curiosity, here’s some additional interesting data I gleaned from the list:
 

Company Distribution

  1. Anheuser-Busch In Bev = 12 (24%)
  2. MillerCoors = 11 (22%)
  3. MolsonCoors = 4 (8%)
  4. Carlsberg = 2 (4%)
  5. Fosters = 2 (4%)
  6. Labatt/InBev = 2 (4%)
  7. Pabst = 2 (4%)
  8. Sleeman/Sapporo = 2 (4%)
  9. Toohey’s/Lion Nathan = 2 (4%)

Country of Origin Distribution

  1. United States = 31 (62%)
  2. Canada = 9 (18%)
  3. Denmark = 3 (6%)
  4. New Zealand = 3 (6%)
  5. Australia = 2 (4%)
  6. England = 1 (2%)
  7. Hong Kong = 1 (2%)

Style Distribution

  1. Light Lagers = 28 (56%)
  2. Ice Beer = 11 (22%)
  3. Malt Liquor = 7 (14%)
  4. Non-Alcoholic = 6 (12%)
  5. Spice/Herb/Vegetable Beer = 3 (6%)

The Top 50 Annotated 2008

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ba
This is my third annual annotated list of the Top 50 so you can see who moved up and down, who was new to the list and who dropped off. So here is this year’s list again annotated with how they changed compared to last year.

  1. Anheuser-Busch InBev; #1 last year, no surprises, apart from the name change
  2. MillerCoors; ditto for #2, including a name change
  3. Pabst Brewing; Moved up 1, thanks to Miller/Coors merger
  4. Boston Beer Co.; Moved up 1, thanks to M/C, before that 2 years at #5
  5. D. G. Yuengling and Son; Moved up 1, thanks to M/C
  6. Sierra Nevada Brewing; Moved up 1, thanks to M/C
  7. Craft Brewers Alliance; Widmer moved up 4 & Redhook 5 as a combined company
  8. New Belgium Brewing; Same as last year
  9. High Falls Brewing; Same as last year
  10. Spoetzl Brewery; Same as last year
  11. Pyramid Breweries; Up 2 spots, their 2nd two spot jump in a row
  12. Deschutes Brewery; Up 4 from #16 last year
  13. Iron City Brewing (fka Pittsburgh Brewing); Up 4 from #17 last year
  14. Minhas Craft Brewery; Up 1 over last year
  15. Matt Brewing; Down 1 spot, switched places with Minhas
  16. Boulevard Brewing; Up 2 from #18 last year
  17. Full Sail Brewing; Up 2 from #19 last year
  18. Magic Hat Brewing; Up 4 from #22
  19. Alaskan Brewing; Up 2 from #21 last year
  20. Harpoon Brewery; Same as last year
  21. Bell’s Brewery; Up 3 from #24 last year
  22. Goose Island Beer; Up 3 from #25 last year
  23. Kona Brewing; Shot up 14 from #37 last year, after dropping Down 14 the year before
  24. Anchor Brewing; Down 1 from #23, 2nd year Down 1
  25. August Schell Brewing; Up 1 from #26 last year
  26. Shipyard Brewing; Up 1 from #27 last year
  27. Summit Brewing; Up 1 from #28 last year
  28. Stone Brewing; Up 5 from 33, after moving Up 4 last year & 11 the year before
  29. Mendocino Brewing; Same as last year
  30. Abita Brewing; Same as last year
  31. Brooklyn Brewery; Up 1 from #32 last year
  32. New Glarus Brewing; Up 4 from #36, after dropping 1 last year, but jumping 10 spots the year before
  33. Dogfish Head Craft Brewery; Up 5 from #38, after being Up 4 the year before
  34. Long Trail Brewing; Up 1 #35
  35. Gordon Biersch Brewing; Down 4 from #31, from Down 6 the previous year
  36. Rogue Ales; Down 2 from #34, canceling being Up 2 the year before
  37. Great Lakes Brewing; Up 3 from #40
  38. Lagunitas Brewing; Up 3 for 2nd year, this time from #41 last year
  39. Firestone Walker Brewing; Same as last year
  40. Sweetwater Brewing; Up 3 for second time, this time from #43 last year
  41. Flying Dog Brewery; Up 1 from #42 last year
  42. BJs Restaurant & Brewery; Up 7 from #49 last year
  43. Rock Bottom Brewery Restaurants; Up 2 from #45 last year
  44. BridgePort Brewing; Same as last year
  45. Odell Brewing; Up 3 from #48 last year
  46. Victory Brewing; Up 4 from #50 last year
  47. Straub Brewery; Same as last year, after dropping 4 the previous year
  48. Cold Spring Brewery (fka Gluek Brewing); Down 2 from #46 last year
  49. Mac and Jack’s Brewery; Redmond WA; Not in Top 50 last year
  50. Big Sky Brewing; Missoula MT; Not in Top 50 last year

Unlike last year, no breweries dropped off the list, primarily because consolidation in the market cased many to rise a couple of places, making room for two new breweries on the list.

Session #25: Love Lager

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session-the
March comes in like a lager for our 25th monthly Session, a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday, thanks to John Duffy, a.k.a. The Beer Nut, whose theme this time around is “Love Lager,” by which he means the cheap stuff, the mass-produced swill, the … well, let’s let him tell us:

It’s the world’s most popular style of beer and can be found in abundance in almost every corner of the globe. For millions of people the word “beer” denotes a cold, fizzy, yellow drink — one which is rarely spoken of among those for whom beer is a hobby or, indeed, a way of life.

So for this Session, let’s get back to basics. I’m sure I’m not the only one whose early drinking career featured pale lager in abundance, so consider this a return to our roots as beer drinkers. Don’t even think about cheating the system: leave your doppelbocks and schwarzbiers out of this one: I want pilsners, light lagers, helleses and those ones that just say “beer” because, well, what else would it be?

I want to know what’s so great about them, and what’s awful. Are we talking just lawnmowers, barbecues and sun holidays here, or is there a time for some thoughtful considered sipping of a cold fizzy lager?

session_logo_all_text_200 Well, I suppose there’s some truth to what he says. I assume like most people of my generation, at least, I did grow up on interchangeable light-bodied lagers, in my case mostly regional brands that are no longer with us from where I hail from, the southeastern area of Pennsylvania that I refer to as “Dutch Wonderland.” There’s no real area that’s been given that name, except in my mind. Dutch Wonderland is actually a C-rate amusement park in Lancaster. But to me, that seems the perfect appellation because it was a wonderful place to grow up and the Dutch refers not to the Netherlands, but to its German heritage. It’s Dutch like Pennsylvania Dutch, a corruption of Deutsch, meaning German. And I grew up near the heart of Amish Pennsylvania. In fact, my relatives emigrated there in the early 1700s from Bern, Switzerland, which is in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. They were Anabaptists and settled on a farm in what today is Bernville. My relatives were essentially Mennonites, which are like reformed Amish. Or perhaps more correctly, the Amish are conservative Mennonites who rejected certain technologies and, unlike most immigrants, managed to avoid assimilation.

By the time I came along, the family farm was sold, and the relatives of my grandparents’ generation had scattered. I grew up just outside of Reading, and that’s “red-ding,” NOT “reed-ding” for all you Monopoly players who remember it was the first railroad on the board. My hometown, from age 5 up, was Shillington, a one-square mile plot housing around 6,000 people. Its most famous son was author John Updike, who recently passed away. It’s about a one and a quarter-hour drive northwest from Philadelphia.

All over Eastern Pennsylvania in the 1960s and 70s, there were quite a number of regional brands that were either still going, or which were still being brewed under license by someone bigger who’d acquired the brand name. Just off the top of my head, there was Carling, Fyfe & Drum, Ortlieb, Schaefer, Schmidt’s, Sunshine and Yuengling. Who knows how many names are lost due to the systematic killing off of my brain cells.

But it was hometown favorite Reading Beer that I remember so clearly. Advertising for the brand was everywhere throughout town. Actually, it still is in many of the old corner bars that continue to dot the city. They had those concentric circles on the cans that really made them stand out. My memory, actually, is that the beer wasn’t very good. They went out of business in 1976, when I began my senior year of high school (though I think Schaefer continued brewing it in Fogelsville). At that age, my friends and I weren’t terribly picky about our beer. But because Reading Premium was fairly ubiquitous and pretty cheap, it was not unusual that that’s what we’d end up with. Even to my untrained palate and at an age when I’d drink whatever I could manage to get my hands on, I don’t remember the taste of Reading Premium all that fondly.

 reading-circle

I don’t recall great variation in the many different regional beers that were available at the time. We had our favorites, though I believe now they must have been all based on perceptions created by marketing and advertising. For us, it was about image. We all had relatives who had their particular brands they were more or less loyal to. My stepfather gravitated toward Carling Black Label, my Mom — when she drank at all — liked Sunshine, and I had an uncle who drank only Schmidt’s. Why? Beats me, I couldn’t really see the why they were loyal to their brands; they were virtually indistinguishable as far as I could tell.

reading I have great nostalgia for the brand, but almost entirely for their image, the cool graphics, the slogan: “Friendly Beer for Modern People,” and the fact that it was my hometown.

Given Anheuser-Busch’s rise to prominence, it’s curious to recall that when I was a youth, it was a brand that had almost no presence in my area. In fact, it was generally perceived, especially as I entered the teens as a new beer, as a brand with rebellious overtones because it was new to us and was definitely not our father’s beer. In fact, the marketing of that perception was so successful that I once wore a Budweiser t-shirt to church one Sunday, for which my Mother later went apoplectic when she learned of my immature act of rebellion.

But in the end I suppose it was that sameness that made me so receptive to new beers when I left home and lived in New York City in the late 1970s. The only beer that tasted any different than almost every beer available when I was a teenager was Genesee Cream Ale, and even then it was a favorite simply because it was different; a little less bitter, a little more sweet, a least in fond memory. So when I encountered newly imported beers like Bass, Guinness and Pilsner Urquell in jazz clubs throughout New York City, they were a revelation. And that’s what led me down the beer-soaked path I’m on now.

The commodification of beer, like so many other foods and beverages, is ultimately a doomed idea. It may be, and in this case has been, successful for a long time. But eventually people will rebel against that kind of conformity. It happens in music, in fashion, in everything. No matter how popular, diversity will eventually win out over bland sameness. That’s in part what fueled the microbrewery revolution; a desire to drink beers that didn’t all taste the same. The same thing happened in bread when people tired of Wonder bread; in cheese when Kraft individual slices ceased to be the height of sophistication; and when fast food hamburgers were no longer the highest purpose put to cows.

But in an apparent contradiction, nostalgia is also a potent draw for beer these days. It speaks volumes about just how effective and successful marketing and adverting has been in creating positive associations and connections to brands. Witness the recent success of Pabst, and the re-introductions of Rheingold, Narragansatt, Primo and Schllitz, to name just a few. Happily, Reading Premium also made a comeback in 2007, brewed once again in Reading by a small brewer, Legacy Brewing. (And by coincidence, the Berks County Historical Society is currently having an exhibition called Beer and Pretzels, about Reading’s rich history of brewing and pretzel-making.)

I had a chance to try the beer last year while I was in Philadelphia for the first Philly Beer Week, which as it happens begins again today for the second years’ festivities. And it tasted pretty good, I must say. Certainly, it’s better than when I was a teenager. Like virtually all of the re-introductions, it’s formula has been updated to modern sensibilities, thank goodness. It no longer had the harsh aftertaste I associated with it as a kid. Now it’s just a simple, well-made but inoffensive beer. It’s not complex or rich with big flavors. But it has as much “drinkability” as any other light-flavored lager macro brand, probably a little bit more, since it’s all-malt, at least.

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So what’s the takeaway in all this meandering? It was light lagers that I first loved, like almost everybody, when I had an immature, undeveloped palate. Their inoffensive character wasn’t necessarily what initially drew them to me, since that’s all that was available at the time, unlike today. (Which I guess is my curmudgeonly way of saying young people are better off today, beer-wise, then when I was first 21. We had to walk to the bar, uphill, both ways.) But eventually, that sameness made me want more, and once I found that beer could be so much more, I never looked back, except through the eyes of nostalgia. Not everyone makes that leap, sadly, as evidenced by 95% of Americans still drinking mostly swill, well-made swill perhaps, but still largely unchanged in the fifty years I’ve walked the planet. That’s the power of the big company’s access to market, their juggernaut of marketing and advertising, and most people’s apathy in choosing what to eat and drink.

There are certainly more flavorful lagers than the macro-ones masquerading as pilsners, but they’re as rare as ales, at least in terms of market share. Bland lagers are the worldwide favorite it would seem, and more’s the pity. It’s hard to love that fact, no matter how much nostalgia I can muster.

My Beer Predictions for 2009

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I keep seeing ads on television for Nostradamus and others’ predictions that the world will end in 2012, so I guess it’s time to get cracking on my own vague, hare-brained predictions. First of all, I do not believe the world will end on December 21, 2012 so you can stop planning your end of the world blow-out parties and put away that R.E.M. CD. It’s time once again to look into the crystal malt ball and try to divine the future. Let’s see if anything that happened last year can be used to predict what might happen in the beer industry in 2009. Here are five things I think will happen this year. Let’s see how I do a year from now. What are your predictions?

 
Collaboration Beers: 2009 will be the year of the collaboration beer, a trend that’s been building for the past few years. But this year I think you’ll see a steep rise in the number of breweries pairing up with one another to do a special beer together.

 
Food & Beer Goes Mainstream: Last year I predicted 2008 would be the year of the beer dinner, and I think that was largely correct. I was invited to more beer dinners in the first quarter of last year than the entire year before that, and not because my popularity as a dinner guest grew. More restaurants discovered just how well beer and food work with one another and, perhaps more importantly, some culinary schools finally started including beer in their curricula (it’s a sad fact that most only teach students about cooking with wine and pairing it, a decidedly narrow-minded, elitist philosophy). With so many successful experimenters last year, it seems almost inevitable that we’ll see beer pairings on menus, special dinners and an increased use of beer as an ingredient from not only more fine stand-alone restaurants, but also some chains, too.

 
Merger Shakeouts: Many people have been putting their heads in the sand, saying that the recent mergers will have no effect whatsoever for consumers or small brewers. This year they will finally be proven wrong. For some time now, distributor consolidations have been on the rise and have been making it tough for some smaller breweries to gain access to market or to have their brands adequately represented in the marketplace. With the Coors/Miller merger and the InBev acquisition of Anheuser-Busch, this will be the year what that means will come dramatically into focus as the distributor adjustments, mergers, closings, etc. settle out. I believe this will continue to make things difficult for small brewers trying to bring their beer to market or increase their distribution to new areas, but time will tell. It may, of course, create opportunities for self-distribution or new boutique distributors to be created with small portfolios of craft beers.

 
Beer Prices Will Continue To Rise: Access to most hop varieties and all malts seem secure, though prices will continue to remain high, causing additional price adjustments throughout the year. It will be two more years before acreage newly planted last year will be at full yield. Between that and rising energy costs and price going up for virtually everything, it’s inevitable that the price of beer will go up again. I think the major companies will try their best to keep prices down as best they can, but it’s going to be difficult for them to continue with rzor-thin margins, especially with the rising costs plus at least one having to pay of the largest cash-buyout in history.

 
New Drys’ Attacks Will Be More Aggressive: As we saw in 2008, Neo-Prohibitionists will use almost any tactic to further their agenda. They really ramped up their attacks on drinking society and showed just how far they were willing to go to remove alcohol from society. I think we’ll see that played out more and more and no doubt we’ll see many states tax structures targeted as the economy tanks, with alcohol used as a convenient scapegoat to pick up the tab for years of fiscal irresponsibility not of their making. Beer will again, as usual, take the major brunt as the New Drys perceive it the greater threat because of its popularity. As the backlash of their failed policies continue with new common sense suggestions of returning the drinking age to 18 to be in line with the rest of the civilized world will expose them to more and more criticism, and hopefully more and more politicians will be emboldened to ignore their bullying tactics, but sadly that may still a few years in the future.

 

An Open Letter To “The Session”

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Dear Session,

We’ve been going steady now nearly two years, and it’s probably time to start seriously considering taking our relationship to the next level. Unfortunately, I think you’ve changed and I think perhaps it’s time to “talk.”

When Stan at Appellation Beer first proposed The Session back in January of 2007, he started out with “Stouts,” writing:

There aren’t many rules. Simply pour yourself a stout (or stouts) and post on the topic March 2, looking ahead to St. Patrick’s Day or not and writing about any stout that isn’t Guinness, Murphy’s or Beamish (the Irish old guard – good beers but we’re writing about others). Should you worry about style? About getting the opinion of friends, about writing an official tasting note, about food? About the history of the beer or how its made? All optional.

In fact, the first three Session were particular beer styles. Five of the first ten were likewise beer styles as were four of the second ten we’ve done but none since we passed our teens and entered our twenties. So that means of 22 completed Sessions, only 9 (or about 40%) have been about beer but only 2 of the last ten (20%) have been about a particular kind of beer. And Session 23 will likewise be more of the same, though I want to be clear I don’t want to single anyone out for criticism. Most of the topics have been interesting on their own, I’m just starting to feel like we’re all trying to be too clever and veering away from our original purpose or vision.

As for me personally, it was my hope that with The Sessions, “a record will be created with much useful information about various topics on the subject of beer.” But lately it seems as if we’ve been spending more time talking about ourselves than the beer. Not that we’re not all incredibly interesting, but I’d like to suggest that we return to the subject that brought us together in the first place, our common interest: beer.

One of the strengths of doing something without a clear leader or overarching plan is that it allows for much creativity and individual writers’ personalities to shine through. That can also be a weakness, too, if we don’t keep our eyes on the prize. I don’t really know if there was an actual “goal” when we started or how many people will agree with me, but I’m going to throw this out there and see where the prevailing winds blow us.

So I’d like to suggest that beginning with February’s Session (our two year anniversary) and going forward, we all follow a few simple rules when choosing a topic for a Session. I’m also going to be so bold as to suggest that we do come up with a goal for The Sessions. While not strictly necessary, having a stated purpose I believe will make it easier to not stray in the future and keep us all focused on what we’re trying to accomplish with The Sessions. Here’s my first draft then. Feel free to join the discussion and offer your thoughts, criticisms (civilly, please) and suggestions.

Goals For “The Sessions”

  1. Encourage a lively discussion about beer.
  2. Educate people about some aspect of beer.
  3. Have fun.

Though not necessarily a goal, I think it’s important to remember that our audience isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be) just one another, but people we’re hoping to draw into appreciating beer more fully and each topic more specifically. If each post is written in such a way that it causes the reader to seek out more information on the same topic and that extended story is there for the taking throughout the other Session posts, then that I would consider a successful Session. That is to say, anything that ignites the passions of a reader to read more on a particular subject should be the measure of success for this project, at least in my opinion.

But that’s it, simple and concise; encourage, educate and have fun.

Rules For Choosing A “Session” Topic or Theme

  1. Review past topics to avoid duplication.
  2. Closely review the last three Sessions to avoid choosing a topic too close to those recent ones.
  3. Restrict topic types, to the following per calendar year:
    (if limit is reached, choose something different)
    1. Philosophical Topics (2 per annum)
    2. Memories & Nostalgic Topics (1 per annum)
    3. Beer & … (e.g., food, music; 1 per annum)
    4. Beer styles, type of beer, or beer-related (no limit)
  4. For Topic Types a, b & c above, they should never follow one another, that is they should always be bookended by a more beery theme.
  5. Consider the audience.

It is not my intention to stifle creativity in any way with trying to propose a few simple rules to follow. I’d like them to make each Session more meaningful. Hopefully, these rules should encourage all of us to simply think carefully about our topics when we try to come up with a theme. And my goal with trying to limit certain types of topics is merely to keep them diverse throughout the year and also maintain an interesting mix for anyone who happens by to see what the beer blogging community is up to. But the upshot is, I’d really like to see us talk about beer more often than not. If nothing else, that should be a goal in and of itself.

So that’s it, have at me. What do you all think? Goals? Topic Rules?

Session #22: 75 Years Demonizing Alcohol

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This is our 22nd Session a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday and today’s topic is quite relevant for the day, as this is the 75th anniversary of the repeal of the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ending thirteen years of our national prohibition. Our host today, naturally, is the 21st Amendment Blog, written by Shaun O’Sullivan and Nico Freccia, co-founders of the 21st Amendment Brewery & Restaurant in San Francisco, California. Here’s how they put their approach to this month’s topic:

In 1920, there were thousands of breweries across America making unique, hand-crafted beer. The passage of Prohibition wiped out this great culture. On December 5, 1933, the states ratified the 21st Amendment, repealing the 18th Amendment, thus ending 13 years of Prohibition in America. At the 21st Amendment Brewery, the repeal of Prohibition means we can celebrate the right to brew beer, the freedom to be innovative, and the obligation to have fun.

What does the repeal of Prohibition mean to you? How will you celebrate your right to drink beer?

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I confess I’ve been struggling mightily for something to write about Prohibition, as I feel like I’ve written about it so much lately that there’s really not much left to say. But then my friend and colleague, historian and author Maureen Ogle sent me a link to an Op-Ed piece she did for U.S. News & World Report. Her unique and fresh take on the ramifications of Prohibition’s end was a revelation for me. It was like getting in the bathtub of cheap hooch with Archimedes himself. It was a real “Eureka,” “a-ha moment” and “epiphany” all rolled into one. The wheels started turning. Maybe there’s another way to look at this.

Most of us have taken it as a given that the repeal of Prohibition was a victory for the pro-alcohol majority and a denunciation of the anti-alcohol sentiments that had brought it about. But maybe not. Despite its obvious failures on many fronts, it was the depression that really hastened its end. The economy needed a shot in the arm, and legalizing alcohol created jobs, tax revenue and good will. In the end, it was money, not morals that brought down Prohibition.

For just one example of how bad Prohibition was, check out Prohibition and the Rise of Crime, a blog post by J. Michael Jones, a retired police chief.

That’s not to say I won’t be celebrating today. I will. I’ll be in downtown San Francisco later marching in a Repeal Day parade. I’ll be enjoying some legal beer and toasting how good the American beer scene is today. And I won’t be alone, of course. There are numerous celebrations throughout the country today. But I wonder if we’re celebrating the right things? Or celebrating the right way?

The NBWA (National Beer Wholesalers Association) released a press release today extolling the virtues of the three-tier distribution, a system created out of whole cloth as a way to return alcohol to the public arena after passage of the 21st Amendment.

“This anniversary is a great time to recognize the success of the past 75 years of effective, state-based alcohol regulation since the ratification of the 21st Amendment,” said NBWA President Craig Purser. “A ‘one size fits all’ approach to alcohol regulation during Prohibition was a failure. The 21st Amendment allows individual states to regulate alcohol as their citizens see fit.”

Their celebration is understandable, of course, since after Prohibition an entirely new segment of the beer industry was created — The Distributor. But while understandable, it’s hard not to view their celebration as little too self-serving. They’re not really celebrating alcohol being legally available again so much as their own success in creating a new business model. This new system created a lot of wealth for a number of people and organizations. I’m not saying they haven’t worked hard for it or that they don’t deserve to celebrate their success, but it just feels a little too much like self-congratulatory patting themselves on back. To be fair the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States had a similar press release.

Many other mainstream writing about today’s anniversary is likewise self-congratulatory. Many gave very standard accounts, such as the Illinois Telegraph, the San Francisco Chronicle (which also has some interesting local info and photos), USA Today and even the UK’s Independent. There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with any of these or the countless other similar articles that will be published around the world today.

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In the Independent, author Rupert Cornwell reflects on the fact that in America “the mindset that produced Prohibition lives on. The cocktail, it is said, is enjoying a new golden age. But a third of American adults don’t drink at all, and the country ranks only 40th in the international league table of alcohol consumption. Indeed, since the late 1970s, consumption per head in the US has been falling steadily.”

The great “war on alcohol” between 1920 and 1933 may have ended in resounding defeat. But an American belief that human vices can be eradicated, and human nature perfected, persists, visible in the continuing, scarcely less futile “war on drugs” declared by Richard Nixon in 1971 and, who knows, maybe in George Bush’s “war on terror” as well. But don’t let such somber thoughts spoil the party tonight.

He’s not the only one to notice the comparison between Prohibition and our current drug policy, such as Stop the Drug War. Even the Wall Street Journal has an article today entitled Let’s End Drug Prohibition. Are we finally starting to realize as a culture that regulating is better than outlawing? Sadly, probably not. The neo-prohibitionists are still running amuck.

But as Maureen Ogle points out in yet another Repeal Day article, this one in the Philadelphia Inquirer, it’s really our Constitution that was saved by ending Prohibition. As she details, Prohibition led to corruption, conspiracy and contempt for the law by not just citizens, but which also — and I just can’t put it better than Ogle — “oozed into and out of every level of government, from Washington to the smallest municipality.” And that’s not just hindsight, a report in 1931 by federal commission that had studied Prohibition for two years, concluded that it was an abject failure and as “the more flagrantly authorities disregarded citizens’ rights, the more cynical Americans became. Young adults in particular — the very people who would become “leaders in the next generation” — demonstrated overt ‘hostility to or contempt for the law.'”

As the Patriot Act (not to mention our current lame duck administration) similarly disregards the Constitution and the rights of American citizens, and we appear to be heading into another protracted recession (if not an actual depression), the conditions seem eerily similar to those of seventy-five plus years ago. As they worried then, what might a continuing disrespect for the Constitution lead to? I’m worried. Aren’t you? Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that “change” may be on the horizon, but I can’t help but continue to be apprehensive that our swing to the right and the threats to democracy that that entailed will so easily be undone by good intentions. Movement Conservatism may be in a weakened state right now, but it’s hardly on life support.

And speaking of beer and elections, did you know that in seven states, it’s still illegal to sell or serve alcohol on Election Day? Weird, huh? In Alaska, Kentucky, Indiana, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia alcohol and voting apparently still don’t mix. According to TriState, these [s]o-called “Blue Laws” date back to the 1930s and make it illegal to sell alcohol on certain important religious or political days. Blue laws were meant to protect the integrity of the voting process in a time when many saloons also served as polling places. In the past 70 years, most states have either relaxed their Election Day bans or repealed them altogether.”

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But finally, back to Maureen Ogle’s devastating insight into what the end of Prohibition has wrought. Though she finds the term clumsy, I like it. She asserts that repeal “institutionalized the demonization of alcohol.” For some, that may be hard to swallow (yes, intended) but for me it made perfect sense and made me look at the issue from a different perspective.

To summarize what Ogle means by that, here’s her introductory paragraph:

Prohibition ended on Dec. 5, 1933, not with a bang but with the thud of thousands of pages of new city, state, and federal laws that dictated when, where, and how Americans could make, buy, sell, and drink alcohol. Ratification of the 21st Amendment, repealing Prohibition, was neither a green light to drink nor a victory over the “dry” crusade that had produced Prohibition. Seventy-five years later, we’re still captives of that crusade.

Indeed, the 21st Amendment heralded the age of regulating alcohol like never before. It created new rules and regulations, label approval procedures, licensing requirement, all manner of new taxes and previously unheard of restrictions on all aspects of how alcoholic beverages could be made, sold, marketed, packaged and even consumed. At every step from grain to glass, there was the watchful eye of the government to tell everybody what role they were to play and within what parameters the game would take place.

I can only imagine that people were so happy to have alcohol back that it was scarcely even noticed by the ordinary public. I’m sure the breweries were keenly aware, but they were undoubtedly thrilled to be back in business under any conditions and more likely figured being regulated in business was far better than not being in business at all.

Before Prohibition, there were around 1,500 breweries, but less than half reopened afterward. And for a variety of reasons, the number of breweries continued to decline sharply. By the year I was born, 1959, there were only about 200 left. At least one of the reasons that the re-opened breweries struggled was the maze of new federal and state regulations imposed on how alcohol companies operated their businesses.

After Prohibition, the original message of the temperance movement was not only alive and well, but became internalized and institutionalized — essentially set in stone — by the very laws created to regulate it. That message is still with us today. Simply put, it is this:

Alcohol is evil. No one can be trusted with it.

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That message permeates all discussions of alcohol policy and any “issues” about alcohol. That message has been communicated by the laws passed seventy-five years ago and generations of new adults have soaked up that message almost completely. That’s it’s thoroughly untrue goes not only unchallenged but the notion isn’t even considered as a topic for discussion, so embedded is it in our collective psyche. Every aspect of how we treat alcohol has this false message looking over our shoulder, refusing to go away.

Alcohol is not inherently evil, we just treat it as if it were. People can be trusted with it, and in fact most people who drink alcohol are responsible adults, we just treat them like children in our over-paternalistic society. And we do this because we’ve assumed the temperance propaganda message to be true and we’ve created alcohol laws under that same mistaken assumption.

Ogle sums up:

It’s a vicious, and lethal, cycle: As long as we remain addicted to demonization, we avoid serious discussion about those values. The longer we avoid that conversation, the longer we pass on the booze-is-bad message to our kids, who grow up to pass the message on to their kids. And as long as we teach children to fear rather than respect alcohol, we’ll interrupt the silence with periodic spasms of hand-wringing and finger-pointing about campus drinking, binge drinking, underage drinking, and the like. But here’s the truth: The “alcohol problem” is of our own creation. We’ve got the drinking culture we deserve.

I agree with everything Maureen says with the possible exception of that last sentence. I’m not entirely persuaded that we “deserve” the drinking culture we have today. If our present “drinking culture” had been arrived at by an ongoing open, fair and honest public debate about alcohol, then I’d wholeheartedly agree that we got what we deserve. But I believe that what we’re stuck with today is the result of subterfuge, conspiracy, propaganda and out and out lies by people and organizations with a Carrie Nation-style axe to grind.

I prefer an image of prohibitionists having slunk away to lick their wounds in defeat but the truth is they’ve never really gone away. They’ve never stopped trying to keep their message alive. That they’ve been so successful while at the same time convincing us they’d lost is deviously clever. They’re like the tortured, evil protagonist in every horror movie who refuses to die, no matter how many times he’s shot, sliced or garroted. They always come back, don’t they? To me, that’s the unfortunate message of this 75th anniversary. It’s certainly worth celebrating 75 years of beer in America. But it’s perhaps more important to recognize that the battle didn’t end December 5, 1933. It merely changed the terms of engagement from above ground prohibition to underground demonization. Happy Repeal Day everybody. Drink up.

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The Demon Alcohol, by Robert Steven Connett.

This is a nicely imagined vision of how we view alcohol today, in a Hieronymus Bosch sort of way.

For a lot more great information about Prohibition, check out Prohibition Repeal.
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Beer in the Time of Recession

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Conventional wisdom is that during an economic downturn, recession or — let’s just say it out loud — depression, that certain businesses are not as challenged, usually ones that provide things that are either absolute necessities (food comes to mind) or make products people have decided for one reason or another that they’re reluctant to give up. Beer is traditionally one of these businesses that is generally thought to be recession-proof because people turn to it as a salve or an inexpensive way to relax, spend time with friends and loved ones and have a good time.

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Craft beer, though more expensive than the mass-produced beer churned out by the big two, can still be characterized as an “affordable luxury.” Even the more expensive single bottles are cheaper than high-end wine or spirits yet I’d argue that they’re just as much of a special treat. Even when strapped for cash, everyone — me included — wants to splurge on themselves, even if only once in a while. It’s sad, but those are the moments we live for. Our economic system is so rigged to favor those at the top of the pyramid that almost everybody else is struggling most of the time. As the rich have gotten richer over the past few decades, real wages of a majority of Americans have fallen precipitously — thank you, Neocons — and the young in their twenties, thirties and even forties are among the first generations to be worse off then their parents.

Just consider that when I was a kid, most people I knew were in families where only one of their parents worked, usually their fathers. That my own mother worked — she was a nurse — was somewhat unusual in my neighborhood, which was by no means affluent. It was just a normal middle-class suburb, and a lower middle-class one at that. I can’t think of a single other person on my block where both parents worked full-time. There were one or two wives who worked part-time a few hours a week at local charities, but that was about it.

In 1960, when I was one, only 25% of married couples with children had both parents employed. By 1976, when I was junior in high school, only 33% of married couples with children had both parents employed, and only 31% of all women with babies younger than a year old worked. Today, how many families can boast that only one parent works outside the home? As of 2007 (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) the number of families in which both parents work is 62.2%, nearly double the number from the mid-1970s and far more than the 1960s. While I realize that some economists think that’s a choice that women make and that it’s not indicative of anything sinister, I also think they’re full of it. If it currently takes two salaries — each one of which takes 69 hours per week to earn what 40 hours got you just a few decades ago — to keep up with the Joneses, then something is seriously wrong with our society and the way we look at things. It’s not that I think that we should return to the 1950s — I really don’t, trust me on this one — but two salaries should mean twice as much prosperity as it did when only one spouse worked, but it clearly doesn’t.

Ever since the housing bubble exploded — surprising no one who was paying attention — things have been snowballing down prosperity mountain and all our proposed fixes merely trickle. From the housing market, the credit market and Wall Street took a nose dive, with several high-profile financial institutions finally revealing they’ve been out in the business world without any clothes on for quite some time. It’s only now that anyone appeared to notice. Our government, of course, threw money at the problem (as they always do) but only at the banks and financial institutions. Small businesses were allowed to fail, homeowners continue to lose their homes and personal bankruptcies continue to climb. Next, the big three American automakers jetted down to DC to beg for billions while corporation after corporation announced massive layoffs. The unemployment figures for October were just released, and at 6.5% it was the highest since 1990. Even the normally sunny Time Magazine has to admit that things look worse than in previous downturns and many economists think we’re in for hard times.

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So if they’re right, are we in for another depression? And what exactly is the difference between a recession and a depression? There’s a not terribly funny joke among economists that a recession is when your neighbor loses their job and a depression is when you lose yours. But the truth is there is no hard and fast rule about the difference between the two. The media tends to define a recession as two or more consecutive quarters where there’s a decline in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). By and large, economists don’t like that definition because it ignores many other variables, such as the unemployment rate or consumer confidence. Also, by pinning it to a quarterly figure, it makes it more difficult to determine the exact beginning or end and a short recession may go undetected altogether.

What I find frustrating about this lack of precision in defining our economic condition — no small thing considering how much it effects all of us — is that because of that imprecision it’s almost impossible to say anything with certainty except in hindsight. How that manifests itself is that every talking head claiming some sort of divine financial insight always errs on the side of caution, saying things look great, don’t worry, everything will be fine and other mostly bullshit sunny predictions. They do this for at least two reasons, one benign, the other not so much. First, they try to be reassuring because they’re afraid that people might panic and things that might look only a little bad would turn really bad simply as a result of their telling the truth. So they lie, though in this case it’s somewhat understandable why. Secondly, most of the people who we rely on for financial expertise have a stake in the game and stand to lose personally if things go south, so their advice tends to be very self-serving, like telling everyone not to sell while they’re privately unloading everything they own. This is also why in my opinion the system is rigged and it’s only the people on the outside that lose, the wealthy insiders almost always get to keep their money no matter how much they screw up. Senator Christopher Dodd, chair of the Banking Committee, recently fumed in a PBS interview about how many banks have taken the $300 billion you and I ponied up to “bail out” the credit markets and are hoarding it, buying up healthy companies and paying egregiously high bonuses to themselves — essentially everything but trying to jumpstart the economy by loosening up the availability of credit.

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What’s this got to do with beer, apart from driving us all to drink more of it? Well, that’s really the question. Will this economic downturn, if it keeps spiraling downward like the cynic in me believes it will, also effect beer, even though it’s been largely recession-proof in the recent past? If the situation continues to worsen and we enter a full-fledged depression, will that change the game? During the great depression, beer was essentially out of the equation — at least legally — though it did help bring us out of it when FDR urged the repeal of Prohibition to boost morale and stimulate the economy. As the 75th anniversary of its repeal is less than three weeks away, it’s worth noting that it was economics that got us into prohibition and economics that got us out again. See, for example, page 438 if the Encyclopedia of Public Choice in Google Books. There’s also a nice overview of this in Reason magazine, from July 2007, entitled the Politics of Prohibition.

Prior to the creation in 1913 of the national income tax, about a third of Uncle Sam’s annual revenue came from liquor taxes. (The bulk of Uncle Sam’s revenues came from customs duties.) Not so after 1913. Especially after the income tax surprised politicians during World War I with its incredible ability to rake in tax revenue, the importance of liquor taxation fell precipitously.

By 1920, the income tax supplied two-thirds of Uncle Sam’s revenues and nine times more revenue than was then supplied by liquor taxes and customs duties combined. In research that I did with University of Michigan law professor Adam Pritchard, we found that bulging income-tax revenues made it possible for Congress finally to give in to the decades-old movement for alcohol prohibition.

Before the income tax, Congress effectively ignored such calls because to prohibit alcohol sales then would have hit Congress hard in the place it guards most zealously: its purse. But once a new and much more intoxicating source of revenue was discovered, the cost to politicians of pandering to the puritans and other anti-liquor lobbies dramatically fell.

Prohibition was launched.

But then a little thing called the Great Depression came along and lots and lots of people lost their jobs, meaning that the amount of income tax the federal government could collect also fell, initially about 15%. Three years into the Great Depression, income tax revenue dropped another 37% to 46% below pre-depression revenues and by 1933 they were 60% lower.

And so Congress (with the urging of anti-prohibitionists) was able to float the 21st Amendment successfully because they needed the money that alcohol taxes provided to their bottom line. One leading member of of the House of Representatives said at the time that he believed that without the economic necessity brought about the Great Depression that it would likely have taken at least another 10 years to repeal Prohibition, despite its obvious failure and unintended negative consequences.

Two things that bear watching in the present, as the weeks and months unfold, is what the economy does and what happens to the taxes on beer. Keeping in mind what’s happened in the past and especially with excise taxes, it seems to me these will be the most important factors that will affect how beer does through this recession. It may be that people do indeed keeping buying and drinking beer at the same rate, which would mean essentially that beer is indeed not affected at all by the economy (and it’s possibly even enhanced by a dip, such as if consumers forgo more expensive pleasures and instead choose beer when they “treat” themselves).

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Or it could come to pass that the macro beers’ sales remain flat and craft beer sales begin to slow because people have less money and the price has gone up, due to a rise in energy costs and raw ingredients. It’s not happened yet, but there are signs that such a scenario may be on the horizon.

If the tax assault on the alcohol industry is successful in California, it will almost certainly spread to at least 38 other states. That will raise the price of beer across the board, further depressing the beer economy, if the not the whole shebang. It seems a little bit odd to me that politicians are entertaining budget fixes that essentially target specific industries that are already experiencing difficulties. What good does it do to extract another pound of flesh if the body then dies and you can’t get anything from it anymore? Not only are other segments of the economy not having higher taxes levied on them, but they’re actually being given money to insure that they don’t go out of business and more jobs aren’t lost. Not so with the alcohol industry. At a time when any sustainable industry should be seen as a positive in our very fragile economy, politicians (with neo-prohibitionists whispering in their ear) are doing just that; trying to make it more difficult for the alcohol industry to function. To say that seems short-sighted is an understatement.

The beer industry alone (again not including wine and spirits) supports over 1.7 million jobs and pumps around $189 billion into our economy, generating $25 billion in business and personal taxes and another $11.5 billion in consumption taxes. If history is any guide, that should mean politicians should respect our contribution.

And while less tangible and quantifiable, the contributions small breweries make is not just economic, but they are also good citizens of their communities, giving charitably back into them, spending much of their money locally (where possible) and running their businesses in a green, sustainable fashion. Harm them, and you harm the communities that support them, too.

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Our economy today is arguably more complicated than before and during the Great Depression, so it’s obviously very hard to predict what might happen in the future. After the last depression, many social nets were put in place in an effort to prevent such a widespread economic situation from ever occurring again and to protect citizens from feeling its effects as acutely. FDR’s New Deal included programs to both help people out of their condition and also to keep it from happening again. There was opposition from conservative fronts while it was going on, but the problems were too great to ignore. In fact, the backlash of the New Deal is probably the neo-conservative movement of today, which has done so much to harm to our society lately.

For an excellent account of the politics of it, read Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman’s The Conscious of a Liberal. In it he discusses conservative opposition to the New Deal programs and how many of them have been effectively chipped away at or removed completely by neo-cons — what he calls “movement conservatism” — beginning in the late 1970s, though the seeds were being sewn as far back as the 1950s.

I vividly recall growing up that all of my grandparents — and people of their same generation — were still very much effected by their experiences during the Great Depression. The notions of frugality, saving and near miserliness that meant survival back then continued to be factors they considered in making decisions some fifty years later. I had two dotty great aunts (sisters of my maternal grandmother) that always embarrassed me whenever we’d go out for a meal. One would steal as many sugar packets and other condiments as she could fit in her purse unseen and the other would carefully take as many as had been unused by our group. In other words, if there were five for lunch and one used a sugar packet in their coffee, she would take four sugar packets believing she was entitled to them since they went unused by the lunch party. That these otherwise normal, and by all accounts pretty well-off, people were so frugal to the point of being cheap was not anomalous to my family. I saw this behavior all the time. Ask me the next time you see me about the orange juice in my wife’s grandmother’s refrigerator when we visited her during our honeymoon. The difficulties of the Great Depression left a deep impression on an entire generation.

Is the beer industry’s glass half full or half empty? I admit that the prospect of another protracted depression is something that keeps me up at night. That so many of the protections that were intended to protect the economy and its citizens have been weakened or are gone altogether is a further source of concern. So is the fact that we may already be in one but not know it because we can’t define it and talking heads don’t want us to panic doesn’t help, either. Even if I don’t accept Morris Berman’s assertion (though I do — sigh) that we’ve entered a new Dark Ages (in his mesmerizingly depressing Twilight of American Culture) it’s hard to ignore that as a bully and the lone remaining Superpower that most nations view us less charitably than they did eight years ago. I’d like to believe our new President will be able to reverse our course, but I’m not sure the ship of state can be turned in time to miss the iceberg (that’s what happens to your metaphors when you have a 7-year old obsessed by the Titanic). While I’m cautiously “hopeful,” I’m also enough of a realist to know that he won’t be ale to walk into the oval office January 20 and make everything all better.

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The Republicans will undoubtedly fight tooth and nail every step of the way and the Democrats in Congress continue to show what pussies they really are (as evidenced by their abject failure to remove Touché Turtle … er, Joe Lieberman, from his committee chair or the Democratic Caucus). So in my mind that’s a lot to overcome and very little in the way of seeing how to do it. That’s for the economy at large. What about the micro-economy that is beer? On the one hand, the industry’s been recession-proof for quite some time. But the game appears to be changing, possibly worsening, so that may not hold true if the economy continues to fall like a snowball rolling down a hill. Politicians should respect beers’ contribution to the economy in terms of jobs, tax revenue and just generating cash, but there are also neo-prohibitionist agendas that are seizing this moment in history as an opportunity to kick us while we’re down. These interests are pressing hard to raise the state excise tax and state by state promote other damaging legislation. Now is not the time to be apathetic or ignorant of how their efforts might effect all of us. Now more than ever, we have to be as vigilant as they are unceasing in their attacks. I don’t know what Beer in the Time of Recession will be like, but it’s probably going to be a bumpy ride. Strap in. Grab a beer. Pay attention. And perhaps most importantly, continue to support your local brewery as long as you can.

Traditional Anchor Christmas Ale Day

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Every year since 1975 the brewers at Anchor Brewery have brewed a distinctive and unique Christmas Ale, which is now available from early November to mid-January.

From Anchor’s website:

The Ale’s recipe is different every year—as is the tree on the label—but the intent with which we offer it remains the same: joy and celebration of the newness of life. Since ancient times, trees have symbolized the winter solstice when the earth, with its seasons, appears born anew.

Until recently, Anchor’s Christmas Ale was not released until the Monday before Thanksgiving each year. A few years ago they bowed to pressure from their distributors, who wanted to have it earlier to compete against all of the other holiday beers that are released much earlier. So while I can’t argue it’s a bad thing to have this wonderful beer both earlier and for a longer period of time each year, I do actually miss it coming later on a very specific date. There was something I really liked about having to wait for it — admittedly vague and unspecific, but the feeling was there all the same. And there was something I admired about their stubbornly refusing to release it until they were damn well ready. I think it added something intangible to the beer’s mystique, making it more special somehow.

I realize I sound like a sentimental fool, but beer (and many other things) used to be ruled by the seasons and their availability was something that created anticipation and deep satisfactions, too. To me fruit is a great example. Wait, hear me out. There was a time when you couldn’t get almost every fruit year round, but now thanks to agreements with growers in the Southern Hemisphere, we can get most of them all year long. But the very fact that they’re around all the time makes them less desirable. How much better did a strawberry taste when you couldn’t eat one all winter and they suddenly appeared each spring?

Of course, I don’t really think Anchor’s Christmas Ale will lose much — or any — of its specialness by being released a couple weeks sooner each year. I know I still wait eagerly to try the new one each year. But I really think there is something to building up demand and the perceived value that artificial scarcity brings. And there are beers that have suffered for going from a seasonal to a year-round beer. Mendocino’s Eye of the Hawk comes to mind. Back in the early 1980s they only brewed it three times a year (for the 4th of July, their annual anniversary and Oktoberfest). They released the strong ale in 22 oz. bottles in limited quantities and it sold out quickly like clockwork every time it was released. That went on for years until around 1999, when they made it available all the time and in unlimited quantities. Sales fell and although it sold steadily, we sold more in three bursts than when it was always there. Let’s also not forget that seasonals are now the number one craft category at mainstream outlets like grocery and liquor stores. It’s clear people like picking up something different. I don’t think we’ll see popular everyday beers going away, but it should be remembered that limited and seasonal releases can have their own cache and sell better in direct proportion to the difficulty in obtaining them.

Today I’m celebrating “Anchor Christmas Ale Day” and picking up some more today, I’ll drink some tonight, and also save some for my Thanksgiving Day meal on Thursday. This holiday will continue to be the Monday before Thanksgiving, to honor the idea that some things are worth waiting for.

But back to Anchor’s “Our Special Ale.”

Each year our Christmas Ale gets a unique label and a unique recipe for the Ale itself. Although our recipes must remain a secret, many enthusiasts save a few bottles from year to year—stored in a cool dark place—to taste later and compare with other vintages. Properly refrigerated, the beer remains intriguing and drinkable for years, with different nuances slowly emerging as the flavor mellows slightly.

Over the years, there have been 34 different labels and each year Anchor prints a beautiful poster with all of the past labels plus the current years’ label.

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