Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Stout & Cheddar Soup

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This tasty looking recipe was featured on Chicago’s ABC Channel 7, created by Michael Pivoney, Executive Chef at Marion Street Cheese Market.

 

Stout & Cheddar Soup (makes 6 servings)

 

  • 2 Tbsp. canola oil
  • 1 stick unsalted butter
  • 3 stalks celery, diced
  • 2 jumbo carrots, diced
  • 1 medium white onion, diced
  • 1 stalk of leek, diced
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • ½ cup all-purpose flour
  • ½ cup rye flour
  • 2 bottles of stout beer (premium quality such as Guinness)
  • 1 quart chicken stock (vegetable stock may be substituted)
  • 1 tsp. thyme
  • dash of Worcestershire sauce
  • dash of tabasco
  • 2 cups finely-shredded cheddar cheese (premium quality)
  • Kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper

 

Method:

In a large soup pot, heat the oil and butter then saute the celery, carrots, onion, leeks and garlic over medium-high heat for approximately 10 minutes – until the onions are translucent Add the flour and saute over medium-low heat for approximately 8 minutes until flour is slightly brown and has a nutty scent. Whisk-in the stout beer and simmer for five minutes, then add chicken stock and thyme and dashes of Worcestershire sauce and tabasco. Continue to simmer and when mixture begins to thicken, slowly add the cheese, whisking constantly until well-combined. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then allow the soup to simmer over low heat an additional 30 minutes.

Puree the soup in a blender and serve hot.

 

 

A Sad Commentary

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We’ve had the Big Three — Bud, Miller and Coors — for so long now that it would probably take me a few years to stop using the term. In the UK, once upon a time it was the Big Six; and they included Allied Breweries, Bass Charrington, Courage Imperial, Scottish & Newcastle, Watneys, and Whitbread. Until yesterday, only S&N remained. With the announcement earlier today of Carlsberg and Heineken’s buyout of Scottish & Newcastle, the last vestige of a bygone era will soon disappear, as well. England’s esteemed Financial Times today has a somewhat sad commentary on this entitled Few Crying into Beers at Decline of Big Six Breweries. As they observe, the change in the beer market and the mergers that began around 1989 have now come to a final solution, and with no one left to mourn them.

Here’s a few statistics. Since the turn of the century, imported beer to the UK has increased by 50%. During that same time, the number of large breweries fell by two-thirds. Today, a mere six remain, with 34 more considered regional breweries. Since the 1980s, the number of breweries has actually tripled, but that’s because of the UK’s own microbrewery revolution, which today includes over 500 small breweries whose total production accounts for only 2% of the nation’s beer market. Before today’s buyout, Heineken enjoyed only 1% of the total British market, but after the deal is approved they will have something in the neighborhood of 30%, making them Great Britain’s biggest beer company.

Maybe none of this matters. After all, as the FT’s editorial makes clear, British pub-goers, publicans and pub operators, and even CAMRA’s real ale aficionados will all be dishearteningly unmoved by today’s news. I can’t help but think that’s a mistake. So much of our early microbreweries owe such a great debt to the heritage and history of English ales that it seems a shame to let this dismal milestone pass so cavalierly. Perhaps I’ve romanticized these old breweries too much, but I don’t feel the same loathing for their products or their business practices that I usually do for our Big Three. That may simply be the 1,000-mile expanse of ocean separating me from everyday contact, who knows? But even though the British beer industry is nowhere near deceased, this is just one more wound that will again forever alter its landscape. I, for one, in the words of the immortal Edgar Allen Poe, “am drinking ale today.”

 

Backlash Brewing?

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There was an interesting item in yesterday’s USA Today called Frustration Over Liquor Laws Brewing. The story details just a few of the battles around the country to update their state’s antiquated alcohol laws, which in many cases haven’t been updated since Prohibition’s repeal in 1933. I’m sure the neo-prohibitionists will be fighting these tooth and nail, employing their usual bag of dirty tricks, but perhaps it’s finally time to stop playing defense and pick up the ball. In Mississippi, for example, it’s still illegal to sell beer in excess of 6% abv. The argument against raising it, predictably, is, according to William Perkins of the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board, that an “intellectual argument ignores the ill effects of alcohol.” Well, I’d sure hate for logic or intelligence to interfere with his world view, but you can buy wine and liquor in Mississippi already and, unless it’s some weird watered-down varieties, those are all well above 6% so please tell me how that makes any sense whatsoever? Not to mention there are plenty of positive health claims that can be made not only about beer, but the moderate use of alcohol in general. If Perkins’ thinking shows nothing else, it’s illustrative that logic plays no role at all in the anti-alcohol league’s canon. By any means necessary seems to be the only rule. So perhaps it’s time to mount an offensive. After all, a good defensive very well may be a strong offense.

 

If You Have More Money Than Sense

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The Cruzin Cooler, a motorized scooter with a top speed of 14 m.p.h. and using a cooler with a 27-beer can capacity as the seat, was chosen as one of three Dubious inventions we can live without from among the hundreds, possibly thousands, of new gadgets displayed at the recently held Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. And it’s not hard to see why. Even if they didn’t around $500, I don’t think I’d find many uses for something like this.

From the Cruzin Cooler website:

Cruzin Cooler combines two basic necessities of life, the ability to have cold food or a beverage handy along with the means to get somewhere, without walking. With modern technology, the Cruzin Cooler is light-weight and comes in various sizes and colors and is available in gas and electric models, with a 10 mile range on electric models and 30 miles on the gas models.

The cooler is light enough to be driven to a location and then picked up and carried. The cooler can be used for hunting, sporting events, races, camping, golf or even a trip to the grocery store to keep your food cold all the way home. Marine use will be popular for the new cooler allowing you to take your fish/drinks/food/ ice to and from your boat with powered assistance and braking. Simply ride or power your way up and down ramps.

There are virtually hundreds of uses for the new coolers with thoughts of racing coolers not far behind!

As it’s big selling point, Chuck Miller, marketing director for its manufacturer, spouts the party line that “[i]t combines two basic necessities of life — somewhere to have cold food or a beverage handy, and the ability to get somewhere without walking.” Maybe it’s my curmudgeonly personality, but I have a car. That seems to work well enough to get me and my beer from place to place.

Apparently at least 38,000 people disagree with me, because that’s how many they’ve pre-sold in the U.S., and as for them, they’ll “never have to carry [their] ice chest again,” says Miller. Because that’s really be a huge burden, having to carry the cooler, hasn’t it?

From the UK’s Daily Mail:

Displayed at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, the Cruzin Cooler, which comes with either a petrol engine or electric motor, can fit 27 drink cans into its ice-box interior. But thirsty owners can also attach trailers with the same capacity, to tow behind it. Miller claims American owners are such fans they stage Cruzin Cooler races.

Races, huh? I’ll believe it when I see it.

 

And look how versatile they are. You can wear lots of warm clothing and drive them outdoors, even in the snow, or you can wear almost no clothing and drive them indoors, at room temperature.

 

Beer vs. Wine in California Politics

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This Chronicle article comes to me via a local political blog, The Left Coaster, which curiously is also the name of the regular column I write for the Ale Street News, which in turn is located on the other coast.

Matier and Ross’ column today, The Bay Area could be the Clinton-Obama decider, contains this bit of wisdom from long-time state pollster Mark DiCamillo, dividing democratic voting patterns according to one’s preference for beer or wine.

Pollster Mark DiCamillo, who has been taking the state’s political pulse for 30 years, describes the beer vote as mostly blue-collar workers, the elderly and ethnic Democrats, especially Latinos, in the Los Angeles area and rural parts of the state.

The more liberal, more educated, wine-and-cheese crowd congregates here in the Bay Area, where more than a quarter of the ballots will be cast in the Democratic primary Feb. 5, he says.

And as DiCamillo sees it, the blue-collar group likes Clinton and the wine-and-cheesers go more for Obama.

I’m not exactly sure what to make of that. You’d have to search far and wide to find someone more liberal than myself, I’m reasonably well-educated, but I definitely would prefer to pair that cheese with beer. After all, the notion that wine and cheese work well together is really just a myth. And frankly, either candidate on those labels is pretty scary looking.

Not surprisingly, most of my friends are like-minded, so either DiCamillo is way off the mark or more probably, I’m so far removed from the pulse of the people that I don’t even register. I’m most likely the guy in their 2% plus or minus margin for error, so rarely do I agree with any of the choices polls usually offer. For example I’m not particularly wild about either Clinton or Obama, and think our media is doing its usual disservice to society by so nakedly picking sides so early in the campaign process. All the candidates are supposed to get equal time, but because they cover only who they want to and who they decide are the front-runners, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that subverts the very idea of a democracy.

But enough proof that I’m on the fringe, is DiCamillo suggesting that the more liberal and/or educated one is, the more likely that person is to prefer wine over beer? With Sonoma and Napa Counties, along with several others, so close to the Bay Area, it’s no surprise that we’re awash in wine lovers. But perhaps DiCamillo is unaware that this same area, the San Francisco Bay Area, might also be the second most important region in the country for craft beer. And the demographic that most frequently goes for craft beer? You guessed it; liberal and educated. Of course, craft beer drinkers are only a fraction of the total beer picture (though in the Bay Area we’re well above the national average) but doesn’t cheap table and box wine sell pretty well, too? And lets not ignore the many people who enjoy both beer and wine.

My only point in all of this is to ponder whether or not the traditional stereotype of beer as blue-collar and wine as white-collar might not be as true as it once was (if indeed it really ever was true), and especially when applied to craft beer? Better beer seems to cut across class lines to a great extent, at least it seems to me that you see all stratas of people at beer festivals, beer dinners and the like.

According to Ross and Matier, “[t]he big showdown between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could come down to California’s ‘beer-drinking Democrats’ versus its ‘wine and cheese’ liberals — with the Bay Area playing a pivotal role in the outcome.” I’m not sure about those labels, they just seem a bit outdated and too simple-minded for my tastes.

 

Baptists Live in Parallel Universe

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The only explanation I can come up with for this is that Baptists must live in some kind of parallel universe. According to today’s Baptist Press, Baptists in Texas, and presumably everywhere else, are mobilizing their forces to protest a grave new threat to their youth. What horror could possibly be the cause of this dire situation that threatens not only their very way of life, but the very lives of their children? Apparently the theme park in Arlington, near Dallas/Fort Worth, Six Flags Over Texas, has applied for — gasp — a liquor license in order to sell beer at certain locations in the park.

Now I don’t want to make light of someone else’s cherished beliefs, but listen to what the Baptist Press is reporting:

“Do we really want to send our youth groups — our church youth groups — to places where alcohol is served?” local Christian leader Linda Rosebury asked in an interview with KCBI-FM, the radio station of Criswell College in Dallas.

Do you mean the world? Because the last time I checked alcohol could pretty much be found anywhere you look. Have they heretofore been living in some Utopian fantasyland where there is no alcohol, like Iran? Can they really be saying anywhere that alcohol might be found is a dangerous place? Yes, apparently.

The sale of beer, Rosebury said, threatens the park’s image as a safe place for families.

So the real world, where beer is sold each and every day, is unsafe? If so, why are those families still there? Do people really walk around, see some heathen drinking a beer, and decide that it’s no longer a safe place? I’m pretty sure that you could live right next door to someone who drinks and still feel perfectly safe. In fact, my own next-door neighbor no longer drinks, and I believe he doesn’t feel that I’m a threat by virtue of my proximity to him in any way, shape or form.

You can even get a beer at Disneyland, and if they can pull it off and maintain their annoyingly hypocritical squeaky clean image, why not Six Flags? Perhaps Disneyland is not part of the Baptist parallel world?

I realize I’m probably being insensitive, but I can’t help myself. I find this sort of nonsense so patently ridiculous that I can’t really take it seriously. If you don’t want your child to even “see” a beer, don’t let him go to Six Flags, make him a shut-in. Shield him from every imagined horror you perceive out there in the world. I’m sure he’ll turn into a terrific young man or woman, with no problems whatsoever. I would personally never abuse my own kids in that way, but I’m not about to tell you how to raise your children.

As of January 8, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) has gotten 600 phonecalls and twelve letters of protest regarding Six Flags ability to sell beer to adults. On February 17, state officials will decide whether or not to hold a public hearing on their application and the Baptist Church is trying to get enough of its members to complain so that they’ll have the hearing.

Some of the current complainers are urging the TABC to “conduct an alcohol impact study to determine the threat to public safety.” Isn’t beer sold enough other places in the universe, including many other theme parks, that we can figure out with reasonable certainty what the impact would be? It would be zero, of course.

The people from Six Flags, naturally, have “pledged that such sales would be handled responsibly and would safeguard guest safety,” just like every other public place that serves such legal beverages as beer. In their own defense, Six Flags also offered the following.

Noting the park’s pledge to offer quality guest services, John Bement, Six Flags in-park services senior vice president, told the Southern Baptist TEXAN, “For quite some time, many of our guests have requested beer as an option while dining or visiting the park. In fact, several of the parks in the Six Flags system already provide such amenities and have done so successfully and responsibly for many years.”

How utterly reasonable. I’m sure that will mollify the faithful. Hardly, an attorney from the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention spells out exactly how to lodge a protest, and even offers some helpful legal arguments that one can use in their complaint.

Heaven forbid anyone with a different view of the world might want to go to Six Flags. Apparently this is their world, the rest of us just drink in it.

 

Punishing Drinkers With Taxes

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The Marin Institute, one of the more blunt and churlish of the anti-alcohol organizations, is mounting an offensive to raise alcohol taxes an incredible “25 cents per drink” in California. Their vision — my nightmare — is to bring about “communities free of the alcohol industry’s negative influence and an alcohol industry that does not harm the public’s health.” But as they naturally see any influence as negative and everything that the alcohol industry does as harmful, what they really want is nothing short of an another Prohibition.

Throughout their rhetoric (and even the sources they’re relying upon) is a call for “fairness” and for alcohol to pay its “fair share,” whatever that really means. But the carrot they’re holding out is that by doing so it would help to alleviate California’s budget deficit that’s been plaguing us for several years now. But I fail to see how raising the taxes of people who drink is in any way fair. Effectively what they’re suggesting is that because our state managed to get itself in a fix, budget-wise, people who drink should be called upon to foot the bill. They just want to punish those of us who choose to drink, and yet they call it fair? The first definition (of 26) for the word “fair” is “free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice.” There’s clearly bias, it’s dishonest in my opinion to claim it’s because of our state’s tax problems, and it hardly seems just to have drinkers pay a disproportionate share to get us out of our budget hole. So it’s really the very opposite of fair.

This is the same nonsense that’s going on with Indian gaming right now, with several state proposals on November’s ballot. We committed genocide against Native Americans and broke every single treaty we ever made. So when Indian gaming successfully exploited one of the few advantages left to them, we still can’t seem to let them be. This is the second time California politicians have tried to get (or more accurately extort) a bigger piece of their gambling revenues, and the exponents of these propositions try to sell them in the same way as the Marin Institute is doing with beer taxes, by twisting the idea of “fairness.”

Of course, the real reason they can say with a straight face that it’s fair to ask drinkers to pay more taxes than teetotalers is this odd notion that, in the words of David Leonhardt, “taxes serve a purpose beyond merely raising general government revenue. Taxes on a given activity are also supposed to pay the costs that activity imposes on society.” I’m not necessarily against this idea entirely, but I don’t understand when it became an unquestionable fait accompli and why people are so quick to believe it. Why is this only ever said of things that some people don’t like? The costs on society for our general obesity and unhealthiness has not brought about taxes on fast food, sugar or high fructose corn syrup. Hummers, SUVs and other similar gas-guzzling vehicles not only are not taxed at a higher rate but actually receive federal and state tax breaks and incentives and have lower standards of fuel efficiency than regular cars. With their poor MPG they do great harm to our society yet are actively subsidized and encouraged by our government over cars that get more miles per gallon and are kinder to the planet. Check out this Slate article for more on this. I’m not saying that’s as it should be, simply that this idea that all products must contain within their profit structure some tax scheme that balances the price with their damage to society caused by them is wholly fallacious.

But even if it wasn’t such a weak argument, we don’t charge a higher percentage of a person’s tax burden for the fire department if they live in a tinderbox house vs. an inflammable brick home. Instead we average the cost to society out and charge everyone the same amount since everyone gets the same potential benefit. That’s a fair arrangement in every sense of the word. It’s good for the whole town, not just for you, if your house does not burn down. So there’s really no reason why we can’t apply that same logic to the whole of society. I realize that will be unpopular with folks who don’t think it’s fair that while they choose to abstain, they may have to pay for problems supposedly caused my decision to drink. But if it’s legal for everyone who pays taxes (except, those 18-20 years old — hey, another reason they should be allowed) to drink then I don’t see why it’s so troubling that we all share the costs of society equally. You may think it’s unfair because you feel you’re not causing the (hypothetical) problem. Well I think you’re being selfish by only wanting to pay for services that that either benefit you or were caused by you. In a sense, it’s like after building your inflammable brick house you refuse to pay to support the fire department any longer under the theory that your house is in order.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t want to live in a world where everyone is so selfish that they don’t want to help other people. Look at this another way. The vast majority of drinkers do so in moderation and never are any burden to society whatsoever. But a tiny percentage of drinkers do cause problems for themselves and others. There are at least two ways we can shape policy to deal with problem drinkers. We can treat the causes of the problems and make tougher laws to deal with them, and only them. Or we can make it harder on everybody’s ability to drink, thus punishing everybody for the sins of the few. It’s not too difficult to figure out which approach the neo-prohibitionists have chosen. Even if only one in every ten-thousand persons who drink may exact a cost on society they would prefer to punish the other 9,999, too.

Another one of the contentions is that the last time California raised taxes on alcohol was 1992. That increase was apparently one cent on a glass of wine and two pennies for a bottle or can of beer and one shot of hard liquor. So clearly a 25-cent increase seems reasonable?!? Maybe sixteen years is too long without an increase, I’m not going to argue that point. But even if the tax had been raised another penny every year, the tax would still only be 16 cents higher today, so please tell me how 25 cents is a fair suggestion? Or are they just shooting for the moon in the hopes of a negotiation that ends up compromising higher as a result?

And if it’s tax fairness they’re after, taxes of corporations have fallen much more dramatically over the past several decades. They haven’t just stagnated and gone down merely by adjusting for inflation, but have actively been lowered. At the same time, personal taxes on the poor and middle-class have gone up while tax cuts for the rich keep increasing. So if the Marin Institute really cares about California’s budget crisis, I think a more prudent approach might be trying to raise corporate taxes across the board and removing unfair tax cuts and loopholes for the wealthiest among us. It wasn’t alcohol that got us into this mess, so why make it foot the bill.

One of the main sources that the Marin Institute cites for their proposal is Let’s Raise a Glass to Fairness, a polemic about why the author, David Leonhardt, believes federal alcohol taxes should be raised. Some of the supposed alcohol-related costs to society he cites are the following:

  1. child abuse
  2. drunken-driving checkpoints
  3. economic loss caused by death and injury
  4. hospital bills for alcohol-related accidents

So let’s look at those claims.

1. Child Abuse: This one’s a head-scratcher for me. Sure it sounds bad, but what does it really mean? I was terrorized as a child by an alcoholic, psychotic step-father but even as a kid I knew it wasn’t the alcohol that caused him to be that way. There were myriad things in his life that made my step-father such a mess, and alcohol was the least of them. At its worst it was merely a convenient catalyst. If alcohol had been removed from the situation, something else would have filled the void. I can’t see how alcohol causes child abuse any more than cake is directly responsible for obesity.

2. Drunken-Driving Checkpoints: If these are such a burden to our nation’s purse strings, then by all means stop them. They’re already an invasion of civil liberties because they randomly presume guilt of everyone behind the wheel of a vehicle. But saying these are a cost of alcohol seems weird to me. The fact is that police forces choose to do them, they aren’t mandatory, and they’re more often done because of politics or pressure from local neo-prohibitionist groups. So they aren’t caused by alcohol, they’re caused by people against alcohol. There are plenty of legitimate ways for the police to do their job in keeping potentially dangerous drivers off the road that don’t involve these checkpoints.

3. Economic Loss Caused by Death and Injury: Now I certainly don’t want to downplay or make light of anyone’s loss or injury, but the alcohol didn’t cause either. The idiot person who drank too much or otherwise couldn’t control himself is responsible for a death or injury that resulted from his actions. And he should be punished to the full extent of the law. But don’t punish me or my right to drink moderately because some yahoo couldn’t act responsibly.

4. Hospital Bills for Alcohol-related Accidents: This is the same as the last one, it’s economic harm inflicted by a person and we should be blaming the individual person. People scoff at the Twinkie defense, saying it’s ridiculous that too much sugar might cause a person to commit a crime, but here Leonhardt is saying effectively the same thing.

He also throws around a lot of statistics about how many people die each year in “alcohol-related car accidents” along with “other accidents, assaults or illnesses in which alcohol plays a major role.” But as we learn time and time again, the way “alcohol-related” is defined is usually pretty deceptive. Many such studies have considered an accident “alcohol-related” if one of the passengers had earlier been drinking so it’s pretty hard to take such stats very seriously. Do people die from causes related to alcohol? I’m sure they do. But the number one cause of death: living. What I mean by that is every single thing we do every single moment has some risk associated with it. It’s a fool’s errand to dissect every thing we humans do and determine which ones to tax more heavily.

Leonhardt likens his strategy to the same argument for higher tobacco taxes, saying for alcohol the impetus “is even stronger” with this gem. “Tobacco kills many more people than alcohol, but it mainly kills those who use the product.” Did I miss a meeting? Isn’t one of the strongest reasons for all the recent tobacco bans that second-hand smoke is far more dangerous to people around smokers than previously believed?

He then goes on to say. “Many alcohol victims are simply driving on the wrong road at the wrong time.” And that may be true, and it is certainly tragic, but why then is it fair that I should pay more for my beer because of other drunk drivers, especially if I and millions of other responsible drinkers don’t place anyone else at risk. If the argument for fairness is that all alcohol drinkers should pay more for their beer because of the costs that alcohol exacts on society, how then does that same logic explain why this burden is so unfairly placed on all drinkers and not just the problem drinkers? Isn’t that just a teensy-weensy bit hypocritical?

Leonhardt later admits, or at least accepts, that there are plenty of responsible drinkers around and even quotes Jeff Becker, President of the Beer Institute. “Most people — the vast majority of consumers — don’t impose any additional costs on anyone.” But in the end he concludes that since he can’t figure out a way to “tax only those people who were going to drive drunk in the future” then it’s somehow fairer to just tax everybody who drinks. Yeah, that makes sense. No wonder the Marin Institute loves this guy.

But another flaw in this theory is that raising taxes on alcohol will raise an additional $3 billion in tax revenue to help with California’s $14 billion current deficit. One of the major prongs of the Marin Institutes’s plan is that by raising the price of beer, drinking will be curtailed once again. If people are drinking less, then how will that result in more tax revenues? If this proposal was really about solving California’s budget crisis, wouldn’t it make more sense to raise alcohol taxes and then actively encourage drinking to help raise more money to apply to the deficit? But this never really was about taxes or California’s budget crisis. It was always about keeping people from drinking or at least making it harder for them to do so. But not enough people were apparently getting their message and were — gasp — still enjoying a drink now and again. So instead they dressed this proposal up as a panacea for our state’s budget crisis hoping that people might respond more favorably to that gambit. Don’t you believe it.

Look, we have the highest federal budget deficit in history and many states, including my own, have similarly terrible fiscal situations that they’re facing. But no matter how much junk science you throw at this problem, alcohol did not cause our current situation. As a result, trying to raise more taxes by arguing that it would be fairer for the nation’s alcohol drinkers to help pick up the tab is just ludicrous. Perhaps taxes should be higher across the board to get us out of this deficit and that might include alcohol taxes, too. But politicians don’t like to raise taxes generally because people tend to vote out of office any politician who tries to do so, no matter how vital they might be in paying for our infrastructure and making our society work for everyone. So we keep electing fiscal conservatives who slash and burn social programs. And then we wonder why there’s no unemployment available when we get laid off so that the factory we used to work for can relocate overseas and chain ten-year old girls to a sewing machine to slave away for twelve-hour days, seven days-a-week for peanuts just so we can be spared the injustice of paying a few cents more for some crap we don’t really need at Wal-Mart. Let’s not change that situation, let’s blame alcohol instead. Raise a glass to fairness, indeed. I’ll buy the first round.

 

Stratemagizing A-B Advertising for ’08

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“Offensive in a good way” is how Tony Ponturo, vice-president of global media, sports and entertainment marketing for Anheuser-Busch, sees their strategy for advertising and marketing in 2008. By that he means they “can’t just be defensive in buying assets.” Although I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what every big beer company did once sponsorship of events, leagues, teams, etc. proved a lucrative way to get one’s brand name out there. So welcome to the new model? Doubtful, reading the Brandweek article on A-B’s marketing and advertising plans for 2008, I’m not exactly bowled over by novelty and a fresh approach.

At least we’ll see less new products this year. Of course, it would be hard to match the “80 new products and line extensions” of 2007. Executive V-P Bob Lachky, claiming A-B has “become smarter marketers,” listed only a few of the new product rollouts for this year.

  • Chelada (Bud-plus-Clamato)
  • LandShark Lager
  • Michelob fruit-flavored extensions
  • Shock Top (a Belgian white ale)
  • Wild Blue (a blueberry-flavored beer)

Hmm, none of those sound particularly promising, and I think I’ve already tried at least a couple of them (meaning only that they can’t be altogether new). And I love this bit of ad-speak.

But beer still has plenty of untapped white space, said Marlene Coulis, vp-consumer insights and innovations. Brews coming this year will likely be flavor extensions of existing brands.

“Untapped white space,” now there’s a phrase for you. I’ll be sure to work that into my lexicon this year somehow. It’s just too deliciously jargon-esque not to.

More from the Brandweek piece:

Call it a spin, but A-B is shedding its reliance on growth through distribution and pure image marketing that targets 21-27-year-old males. It has to. Bud and Bud Light have more than 90% distribution in big markets. To grow, A-B has to keep its core drinkers and attract “explorers”—people who seek variety in beverages. A-B also needs new products to win drinkers who reject the existing lineup.

To woo the uninitiated, A-B launched “the great American lager,” from DDB, New York [an ad agency —J], during January bowl games rather than wait for the Super Bowl. The Bud campaign cites product attributes like beechwood aging and seven-step brewing. [Those must be the embarrassing Rob Riggle (from the Daily Show) spots that I’ve been seeing. —J]

“The explorer group has never been talked to like this,” said Keith Levy, vp-brand management. “If we can reach them about what Bud stands for, we can grow.”

Still, the category’s penchant for advertising image in a bottle is not dead. “Image with a reason for being is powerful,” said Lachky. “We’re talking about the product more, and we understand better what the consumer needs are today. Image-only ads and attack ads are only sufficient within the category because our category is competing with wine and liquor.”

That’s why the advertising spend for Bud and Bud Light will increase by $70 million in 2008; cable and digital buys will at least double. Media spend for both brands was $219 million January-October 2007, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus. A-B will also seek more “cross platform” opportunities, as with the “Dude” campaign, which began online around Thanksgiving before jumping to TV a few weeks later.

Does any of that sound very different from what they’ve been doing for years and years? Not to me, and also not to Jim Morris who writes a consumer advertising blog, Advertising for Peanuts, who said in a recent post titled Beating Dead Clydesdales:

The recent history of Budweiser is strewn with carnage left in the wake of their fatal inability to leave a one-shot alone—frogs, whassupers, and now the eternal parade of the dude-utterers. Even when this brand does come across an idea with legs, they spot an ant and imagine a millipede, as has been the case with their long ago worn out “Real men of genius” radio campaign.

I realize that a good beer advertising idea is a rare and precious thing, seldom seen in these parts, but isn’t that all the more reason to nurture and protect it and respect its boundaries, rather than exploiting, devaluing and demeaning it until any memory of its original brilliance is eclipsed by the slagheap of its strained successors?

With the Super Bowl around the corner (Go Packers!), and the writer’s strike still going, advertisers are ponying up record amounts for 30-second spots during the big game. Prices this year are 15% more expensive than last year, as compared to being only 4% higher last year over the previous Super Bowl. A-B has reportedly bought 10 spots for its various brands. Let’s see how many of those are different from the usual fare.

 

Alphabet Soup: A-B Enters the Fray Between S&N and CG for BBH

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This is a story that’s really been going on for some time now, at least a year, probably more. In a nutshell, the BBH (or Baltic Beverages Holding) was created in 1991 by a 50/50 joint venture between Oy Hartwall (a Finnish brewing group) and Procordia Beverages, best known for Pripps (then a Swedish company). The plan was to acquire breweries in the lucrative areas of Russia and the Baltic. And little by little, they did just that. But in 1995, another Swedish company, Orkla, bought Pripps an created a new company, Pripp-Ringnes, only to then merge with Carlsberg in 2000. As a result, the Carlsberg Group became a 50% owner of BBH. Two years later, Scottish & Newcastle bought Hartwell and that’s how we got to today, with BBH being a 50/50 joint venture between Carlsberg and S&N. In the meantime, BBH became the owner of 19 breweries in Russia, Kazakhstan, the Ukraine, Uzbekistan and the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) which gives them a commanding share of the market, nearly 40% of the fifth largest — and possibly fastest growing — beer economy in the world. Not surprisingly, the predatory nature of corporations generally means that other companies have developed in interest in BBH.

Lately things have heated up with potential take-over bids. The main players have been primarily the Carlsberg Group and Heineken, both of whom have attempted hostile takeover bids to wrest control of BBH from S&N. The negotiations have been very public and quite contentious with accusations of bad faith and underhanded dealings flying around so fast and furious it’s like a blizzard. I’ve been following it somewhat casually but haven’t written about it before now. What’s changed? Today the London Telegraph is reporting that Anheuser-Busch is considering “a potential £4.6bn bid for full control of BBH.”

From the Telegraph article:

S&N already owns 50 per cent of BBH alongside Carlsberg. But the Edinburgh-based brewer is preparing a bid for full control of BBH as part of its defence against Carlsberg, which is plotting its own £10bn takeover bid for S&N as part of a consortium with Heineken.

S&N’s plan would be to finance a bid for BBH by offering a 25 per cent stake to a minority partner.

Anheuser-Busch has long coveted a place in the rapidly expanding Russian beer market and replacing Carlsberg in a new joint venture with S&N would offer it part ownership of the country’s leading brewer.

I was pretty sure A-B had a long-standing relationship with Carlsberg. They definitely used to distribute Carlsberg and their Elephant Malt here in the U.S. It’s interesting to see how quickly any loyalty they might otherwise have felt to Carlsberg over their years of business together goes out the window when the dollar signs twinkle in their eyes. This whole scenario reminds me of your average Godzilla movie where the giant lumbering monsters of business do battle with each other while at the same time stomping on and smashing to bits the very world in which they, too, live. Whatever happens to those flattened buildings (and people) destroyed in their wake are somebody else’s problem, they’re simply externalities. We’re merely the frightened tiny ants of people who can do nothing except watch as they destroy our city.

Rhetoric aside, it will certainly be interesting now to see how this plays out. I know Heineken desperately wants a bigger piece of the Russia beer pie. That’s specifically the reason they bought Krusovice from the Radeburger Group last year. As for A-B’s interest, with slowing sales of domestic beer, I can only imagine they’d love a quick fix like this.

 

Malt Disneyland

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My friend and colleague, Lew Bryson, must have been thrilled when he came up with the title Malt Disneyland for his most recent First Draft column for Portfolio magazine, because in my humble opinion it’s one of the best new names for Belgium anybody has ever come up with. Of course, I love wordplay and the Walt/malt thing cracks me up. I confess I never remember to check out his Portfolio column — sorry about that Lew — but luckily MSNBC reprinted it yesterday and so it showed up in the old, handy dandy RSS Feed Reader. Naturally, it’s a great read, too, but oh that title — now that’s a grabber. Well done.