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Alabama Maintains Image of Backwardness?

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I saw a blog post the other day that made me chuckle by a young entrepreneurial businessman who believes that the finest beers in the world come from Redhook and Pyramid, not that there’s anything wrong with them. But he begins his post with something to the effect that most people don’t think of San Diego as a place to find good beer. You’d have to have gotten stuck drinking beers from 1987 to not notice that San Diego has one of the most vibrant beer cultures anywhere in world, and a handful of breweries there have literally redefined hoppy beers. But what does that have to do with Alabama? Nothing, really, except that in my mind it would be hard to find a place I perceive as more backward, beer-wise at least, as Alabama. It’s a beautiful state and I’ve been through it twice, though I confess that I didn’t stay long. There homebrewing is still not legal, despite federal legalization in 1978! Brewpubs were only very recently made legal there, albeit still under limited circumstances.

In 1937, four years after Prohibition ended, when Alabama reluctantly passed the Alcoholic Beverages Control Act, beer finally became legal again in the Yellowhammer State. Having convinced business owners that if they allowed workers to drink beer over 5% abv (6% today) or in packages larger than one pint that productivity would suffer. And that means approximately 98 of the top-rated 100 beers on Beer Advocate are still illegal in Alabama because they’re either too strong or in a bottle too large, or in some cases both. That’s assuming you live in county that’s not “dry,” meaning no alcohol can be produced, sold or distributed. Approximately one out of every three is dry, with 26 of Alabama’s 67 counties designated dry. There are also some “wet cities” within the dry counties and draft only areas in the state, along with a maze of Sunday laws, too, according to the state’s ABC website.

An excellent grassroots non-profit organization, “Free the Hops,” has been working tirelessly to bring Alabama kicking and screaming into the 21st century. They created a bill, SB 211 (which passed in the Senate), and in the House, HB 1195, with Representative Thomas Jackson (D-Thomasville) sponsoring the bill.

Unfortunately, according to the Decatur Daily, it was defeated yesterday by failing to get the necessary two-thirds votes. The main reason cited in the article was that old canard, “the children.”

Here’s a sample of the genius thinking of Alabama’s elected officials:

“I can’t see us doing something that’s going to encourage people to drink more and get drunk faster,” said Rep. DuWayne Bridges, D-Valley. Bridges said the measure would increase the problem of teenagers drinking by making more potent brew available to them. “Our children don’t need to increase their alcohol consumption,” Bridges said.

Rep. Richard Laird, D-Roanoke, said young people would still find a way to drink the stronger beer. “The only thing this bill will do is just get our young people dead a whole lot faster,” Laird said.

I find it quite amazing that these so-called representatives of the people are so willing to completely ignore the right and wishes of every adult in the state in order to reduce the possibility that one of these extreme beers might fall into the hands of a minor. If that’s the logic, do all wines and spirits likewise have to be 5% abv or less? They don’t, of course, and it’s the usual hypocrisy where beer is demonized while the higher alcohol drinks do not face the same obstacles.

As anyone with an ounce of common sense and even a little experience with beer will tell you, the complex flavors of big beers do not appeal to younger palates. If they want to get drunker quicker they’ll gravitate toward sweeter wines or mixable liquor, both of which are already legal in the state. All this prohibition accomplishes is restricting Alabama adults from the full enjoyment of a product that’s readily available to most of the rest of the world, in effect punishing their own citizens.

This is not the best way to live. When you go too far in trying to protect children that you infringe on the rights of your adult population you’ve jumped into the deep end of fanaticism. I’m sure the feeling is mutual, but I’m certainly glad I don’t live in a place that’s more concerned about what it’s kids could get their hands on than the rights of its adult population.

But there is a silver lining. According to “Free the Hops” and a comment posted by a friend at the BA, news of the bill’s demise may be premature. Here’s how Free the Hops explains it:

HB195 did not make the floor for a vote today. An odd little corner of our constitution known as the Budget Isolation Resolution (BIR) kept our bill off the floor. More on that later, but in a nutshell, our state constitution mandates that at any point before the legislature has passed a state budget, every bill must first pass a BIR vote before it goes for a “real” vote. And while a bill can pass a “real” vote with a simple majority, it must pass a BIR vote with a 3/5 majority. In other words, you need MORE votes to pass a BIR than you need to pass the floor. Therefore, even though we had a solid majority of votes today, it was not sufficient to pass the BIR, and thus we never made the House floor.

Especially surprising and troubling was that certain Representatives who told their constituents they would support HB195 voted “No” on the BIR today. They voted against us. They lied to their constituents. This is a deep matter I will explore in depth, and tirelessly so. I will not rest until the truth is exposed. The fact that AL Representatives lied to their constituents about how they would vote on a particular bill is a matter far bigger than the Gourmet Beer Bill.

Realize that our House bill was not killed. It can still be put back on the calendar and we can get another shot. If we can convince a handful of today’s “NO” votes to abstain or vote yes, this is worthwhile. We are FAR from finished this year.

There are a LOT of questions floating around. A lot of emotions. A lot of comments. A lot of fact-based thoughts. A lot of everything for those of us who started this day thinking we’d see HB195 pass the House. I simply don’t have time to answer every question and address every comment. There is too much to be done.

But know this: I am more energetic and more committed than I have ever been to seeing the 6% limit raised.

Our House bill was not killed today; it simply did not make the floor for a vote. Our Senate bill is still very alive. Our local bills are still very alive. We just have a lot of work to do, me especially. And the result will be over 6% beer hitting the shelves somewhere in Alabama in 2007. We are FAR from finished this year.

So why did the Decatur Daily report that the bill had been defeated? Good question, perhaps Associated Press Writer “Billy” Bob Johnson or the newspaper is against the bill, who knows? I hate to sound the conspiracy gong so early, but it’s more than a little odd. It’s either that or an example of some pretty shoddy reporting.
 

UPDATE NOTE 4.6: This post has been substantially updated thanks to the comment from Bradley. Thanks for that.

Snobs, Geeks and a Pinch of Hypocrisy

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A Bulletin reader (thanks Garrett) sent me this article by Ben McFarland from the British trade magazine, the Publican. McFarland is a two-time recipient of the title, “Beer Writer of the Year,” an honor bestowed on him by the British Guild of Beer Writers. If you’re in America you probably haven’t heard of him, because he writes primarily in England and in trade magazines, rather than consumer publications.

I recently invited him and some colleagues to join me in judging Imperial IPAs at the Bistro’s annual Double IPA Festival. He seemed an affable enough chap, though I didn’t get a chance to talk with him at length. He was in America working on a CAMRA book for British tourists wanting to visit our west coast beer scene. So I confess I was more than a little surprised by the tone of this recent article, “Look out for the beer snobs.” I think my first reaction was something along the lines of worry. As in, oh dear, did he recently suffer a blow to the head?

This is a subject somewhat near and dear to me, as I only recently wrote an article on beer geeks for the new Beer Advocate magazine. Since I use words on a daily basis, like any writer, I probably pay more attention to them, their meanings and how they’re used than the more normal person does. As a result, I became fascinated by the uses of the terms “beer geek” and “beer snob.”

The origin of snob, for example:

Originally, a snob was someone who made shoes, a cobbler, before migrating to a person of the lower classes who wants to move up and then on to its present meaning of a person who places too much emphasis on status or “a person who believes that their tastes in a particular area are superior to others.”

Occasionally, you hear beer fanatic, beer enthusiast, beer aficionado or hophead, but for me they never seem to quite strike the right chord. Despite my personal feeling that a new term needs coining, geek still appears to be the preferred term. Quoting myself, again:

Most of us prefer to be known simply as beer geeks though, oddly enough, the word geek meant originally a fool and later referred to the lowest rung of circus performer, one who may even have bitten the heads off of live chickens, as popularized in a 1946 novel, “Nightmare Alley,” by William Gresham, about the seedy world of traveling carnivals. In that book, to be a “geek” was to be so down and out that you’d do virtually anything to get by, no matter how distasteful or vile.

Like many old words that were primarily derogatory, its meaning has now been turned on its head. Beginning probably with the original new nerd, the computer geek, it was taken back as a source of pride. So today there are band geeks, computer geeks, science geeks, film geeks, comics geeks, history geeks and Star Wars geeks, to name only a few, all of them proud to call themselves geek, because of the shared passion that is so central to its modern meaning. Today a geek is an obsessive enthusiast, often single-mindedly accomplished, yet with a lingering social awkwardness, at least outside the cocoon of their chosen form of geekdom.

But while there may be some general disagreement about the preferred term to call ourselves, most would agree, I think, that geek is the more gentle term and snob more derisive. At least all my anecdotal research seems to suggest that. I find that I’m most often a beer geek but consider that when I veer into obnoxiousness — oh, yes, it happens more often than I’d like — that I’m acting like a snob. For me, that seems the general distinction though there are certainly times I feel just as proudly snobbish as geeky.

Given that McFarland is by all accounts a good writer, he begins his little screed by admitting that although “beer is undoubtedly a truly wonderful drink there’s really no need to wax quite so lyrical.” “Quite so lyrical?” Quite so lyrical as whom? Who gets to decide how far is too far? Ben McFarland? Are we all to use his gauge of what is gong too far, because he offers no other or more general rules of thumb by which to police ourselves. Is Stephen Beaumont, Fred Eckhardt or Michael Jackson’s writing too flowery, too imbued with nuance or introspection? Do we who take money for our words get a pass for being lyrical or is everyone so cautioned? Or is he simply taking a cue from the Mike Seate playbook of inflammatory journalism where it’s enough to simply be outrageous without really being able to back it up? Where it’s enough to simply wind people up and watch the hit counts soar.

McFarland continues:

Beer, thankfully, has always lacked wine’s academic airs. Beer is the solace of the everyday chap and, quite frankly, can’t be doing with such excessive introspection. OK, so beer education is important, but there’s never been and still isn’t such a thing as a ‘Master of Beer’. Quite right too — anything that requires holding a pen or scratching a chin is using a hand that could be clutching a pint.

There’s a difference between academic airs and being able to describe how something tastes — no easy feat — by just grunting. He seems to be suggesting that beer writers must stick to unlyrical terms or else he’s saying we should say nothing at all. And that helps who exactly? And as for this “solace of the everyday chap” bullshit, I am sick to death of this insulting argument. Mass-produced beer-like industrial products may indeed be the drink of a large portion of the masses, but that’s not the only thing beer is. Beer is not just one thing. It’s not the same to every person, nor should it be.

He goes on:

That’s not to say that beer is entirely without its pomp and pretentiousness. As beer has climbed the social drinking ladder, so too has the number of self-important beer snobs whose lexicon is becoming increasingly ludicrous.

You know the type: grandiose swirling of the glass; ostentatious inhalations; unnecessarily opaque and absurd verbal acrobatics; haughty guffawing at the word ‘lager’; and patronising dismissal of any beer that isn’t brewed by a 16th century monk with a limp.

We all apparently know the type he’s referring to:

  1. grandiose swirling of the glass: By all means, let’s not swirl the glass to release aromas. That wouldn’t be cricket apparently, especially not for the everyday chap. Let’s keep those aromas locked inside. Good plan. Or perhaps it’s just the “grandiosity” he objects to. If so, I’ll have to watch my swirling arm very carefully for fear of descending into the realm of a circus freak. I wonder where the point is where swirling becomes “grandiose?”
  2. ostentatious inhalations: Uh, oh. We’ve got the same problem here. When does smelling the beer become too ostentatious for Ben? I won’t be able to sleep tonight if I risk upsetting his delicate sensibilities of smelling propriety
  3. unnecessarily opaque and absurd verbal acrobatics: Again, who gets to decide when a description is too dull or unintelligent or when the words turn absurd.
  4. haughty guffawing at the word ‘lager’: This must be a British thing, because I’ve never heard anyone guffaw haughtily or otherwise.
  5. patronising dismissal of any beer that isn’t brewed by a 16th century monk with a limp: Sure the limp is important, but I think anyone who’s been dead for five centuries would probably have a limp of some kind. I know McFarland’s merely waxing poetic to make a point, albeit a labored, somewhat unnecessarily opaque one, and therein lies the rub, and the pinch of hypocrisy.

And on:

The fact of the matter is, these condescending clowns are, so far as I can tell, incapable of describing what’s in their mouth or on their nose with any degree of accuracy.

Hmm, now that sounds like “a person who believes that their tastes in a particular area are superior to others.” Because in order to so definitively know that such people are “incapable of describing what’s in their mouth or on their nose with any degree of accuracy” one would have to be a snob, wouldn’t one?

And that’s why this whole things seems laced with hypocrisy on several fronts. First, most beer writers, McFarland included, simply by virtue of doing so much tasting over time probably do have better palates than the “everyday chap” who sticks to one brand his whole life. So that alone makes him something of a snob already, even without the disdain.

Then there’s the desire to keep beer descriptions simple and without lyrical prose. Clearly, any description of anything can go so far in trying to be clever that its meaning is obfuscated … sorry, becomes unclear. Does that mean we should only use short, simple one-syllable words in our descriptions, only describe a beer by comparing it to another beer, or dumb it down for the “everyday chap” he assumes the reader to be? To me, that seems a huge mistake that takes us back several steps. There should be beginner’s books that use simple terms for the inexperienced but a developed palate demands better, more thorough descriptions that also include the beer’s more subtle complexities. Not all sports writing assumes the reader knows nothing, but is written for different levels of understanding in different contexts. The same is true for business writing in the evening paper versus a business magazine, or even in USA Today versus the Financial Times. The writing is tuned to the presumed sophistication of the average reader. Since McFarland admits that “beer has climbed the social drinking ladder” (a condescending remark if ever there was one) why would anyone think the way beer is talked about or written about would not change, too? That he finds the beer snob’s “lexicon is becoming increasingly ludicrous” is entirely his own problem.

Then let’s not forget the irony of the initial complaint that “[w]hile beer is undoubtedly a truly wonderful drink there’s really no need to wax quite so lyrical” as he proceeds to wax this way and that way throughout the article. Using phrases like “ostentatious inhalations” for sniffing or “unnecessarily opaque” for dull or unintelligent is not waxing lyrical? McFarland may indeed be a terrific writer who uses, ironically, very lyrical prose. I just wish he’d come up with something more constructive to write. I feel like I’m attacking a colleague and it causes me no small amount of pain to do so. So Ben, if you ever do read this, I’m truly sorry but I felt it necessary to write this strong rebuttal. Perhaps I went to far, but as reasonable men may differ, I sincerely believe your words are damaging to the idea that beer is worthy of respect in how it’s enjoyed, perceived and talked about. That it’s discussed at all in print and in the pub is why you and I have a job. I don’t always agree with the way people talk or write about beer, either, but I’m content that they are.

McFarland ends his piece with this final thought.

Sure, beer is just as complex as wine in its aromas and flavours but let’s just shut up and drink it, shall we?

Good idea. You first.

Beer Sampling Coming to Wisconsin

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Surprisingly, in the great state of Wisconsin — okay, you caught me, I’m a Packers fan — retail stores can sample customers on wine, but not beer. But now Assembly Bill 122 is winding its way through the state legislature. So far it has “passed unanimously out of the Senate Affairs Committee and will be scheduled soon for a full floor vote.” If passed, beer retailers will be able to sample customers on two 3-oz. samples.

Retailers and small breweries will benefit most if the bill becomes law, because it will greatly increase opportunities for consumers to try new products, possibly for the first time. Regular Bulletin readers will not be shocked to learn that not everyone is so thrilled about the proposed law. To wit, from an article in the Green Bay Press Gazette.

But some in law enforcement and alcohol abuse prevention fear it’s bad public policy.

Wisconsin has the highest rate of binge drinkers in the country.

“There are a lot of places in our community for people to get a drink,” said Portage County District Attorney Tom Eagon. “People with alcohol issues can’t stop at one or two. One of the ways they deal with their problem is to avoid situations where they will be tempted. A grocery store should be a safe place.”

“A grocery store should be a safe place?!?” What the hell does that even mean? Safe for whom? People who can responsibly enjoy a 3-oz. sample of beer should be punished because others can’t? Does that make any sense? This is the mentality that passes for law enforcement? Let’s restrict all citizens because some people abuse themselves. What great policy thinking. It would appear Mr. Eagon has never been to a bar, because he suggests that having a sample is the same as any of the other “places in our community for people to get a drink.” I’m not entirely sure he understands what sampling is, but I’m certainly glad he’s not looking out for my best interests.

Then, of course, there’s the inevitable “it’s for the kids” gambit.

Some argue, however, that having beer available at the grocery store sends the wrong message to kids shopping with their parents.

“The environment we create for our young people is critical to their long-term health,” said Lauri Rockman, the coordinator of Portage County’s Coalition for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention. “We need positive adult modeling. Making alcohol part of a trip to the grocery store is just another way to make it so pervasive and casual in our culture.”

Yes, by all means we wouldn’t want our kids seeing “positive adult modeling” that involves alcohol. She’s fallen into her own neo-prohibitionist trap that sees all behavior involving alcohol as inherently negative. It’s impossible for her to recognize that an experience with alcohol could be positive. But it’s just as reasonable to argue that Wisconsin may have the highest “rate of binge drinkers” (though I can’t imagine how you could accurately measure such a claim) precisely because kids never see adults engaged in responsible, moderate drinking.

And the most egregious part of these nay-sayer’s arguments is that they all fail to account for the fact that in Wisconsin it’s already legal to sample wine and yet none of these predicted problems have come to pass. Groceries are already not safe from wine and kids already see wine pervasively and casually as part of a trip to the grocery store. Has the sky fallen as a result? Let’s take a look outside the window. Nope, it’s still there.

What this does illustrate quite starkly, however, is the very different perceptions people hold about wine vs. beer. Wine, on average, has almost three times the percentage of alcohol as beer, yet there are no (or at least) less perceived societal problems associated with it. Beer, on the other hand, is continually demonized as the root of all evil. The way to change that perception should be simple, and allowing sampling should be a good step toward such change. But that also assumes that beer is not under constant attack which, with so many neo-prohibitionists at work today, it so often seems to be.

Whenever there’s a potentially positive story about alcohol, such as this one, it is undermined. Allowing sampling increases awareness, education and possibly the availability of non-binge beers (because no one’s going to be sampling Corona). That would increase the market share of craft beer and better imports, beers which generally speaking are less prone to quaffing at huge frat parties. This in turn, could lead to more responsible drinking and a lowering of Wisconsin’s binge-drinking statistical infamy. So that should make this a story to be celebrated, shouldn’t it? Yet of the article’s 472-word count, 281 of them — or just under 60% — are given over to people and groups voicing objections instead of examining the positive aspects. I’m sure the newspaper is just trying to be fair and balanced in their reporting. But if that’s true, why doesn’t every negative beer article give the other side of that story? Because there are plenty of responsible, upstanding citizen beer drinkers. We just never hear about them.

Vending Beer

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Two years ago, two business entrepreneurs had an idea to get beer into the hands of more people, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They talked to Pilsner Urquell, who agreed to bankroll the pair. The idea was simple enough. Vending machines currently dispense almost every thing under the sun already, from a pack of gun to expensive iPods. Why not beer? And actually beer is already dispensed in vending machines in some places, Japan for example, as shown below. Notice they even dispense beer bottles, too.

And in other places in Europe, such as the train station in Brussels, where I snapped this picture in January. Along with a wide array of food and other beverages, for a few Euros you could get a can of Hoegaarden, Heineken or Grimbergen beer.

And when I was in the Army in the late 70s, stationed in New York City, we had a vending machine in our day room that dispensed cans of beer for a few coins, something like 50 or 75 cents. But that’s a relative rarity here in the U.S., where we’re completely out of step with the rest of the civilized world in our approach to alcohol. For example, we have no problem showing bloody scene after scene of violent murder and death on television, yet it’s illegal to show someone drinking a beer. The idea is, as I understand it, showing people drinking might lead kids to take up drinking. So using that logic, does that mean it’s okay if our youth turn into murdering psychopaths? It does say something profound, I think, about our priorities as a society though, and especially how screwed up they are. Death, murder, and crime: perfectly acceptable as entertainment. Alcohol: gasp, oh no, not that. Don’t show that. People might get the idea that having a good time is okay.

In the Czech Republic, where per capita beer consumption is the highest in the world, the only problem with a beer vending machine is how to keep people under the age of eighteen from buying it, so Karel Stibor and David Polnar came up with a solution, a card reader that solves this basic problem. From the Prague Post report:

“We’ve developed a special reading device that can scan buyers’ IDs and passports, in order to determine their age,” Stibor explains. “If a buyer is under 18, coins inserted in the machine’s slot are returned and the machine does not dispense the beer can.”

The scanner recognizes not only Czech IDs and passports, but also all EU cards.

The developers have applied for Czech and international patents and would like to offer the technology to other businesses where the age of customers is a factor.

“This technology can also be applied to door systems, turnstiles, gaming machines, Internet terminals or cigarette vending machines,” Polnar says.

Curiously, the most obvious American objection isn’t even mentioned. If someone tried this here, the hue and cry would undoubtedly be about how easy it would be for kids to borrow or steal their parents or another adult’s I.D. In the Czech Republic (and most of the rest of Europe) that’s not even an issue because alcohol is not the stigmatized taboo it is in the U.S. So this might actually work in Europe, but it would requite a paradigm shift in thinking before it would be viable here.

Lewes Arms Boycott Reaches 100 Days, Greene King Still Clueless

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I wrote about this before, the residents of Lewes, in East Sussex, England, have been boycotting their historic local pub, the Lewes Arms, because the new owner, Greene King, stopped serving Harveys beer, which is brewed just a few blocks away. The locals have set up a protest website, the Friends of the Lewes Arms. According to the British newspaper, Argus, the boycott today has been going on for 100 days and shows no signs of slowing down. In a prepared statement, Greene King shows how clueless they really are. And mind you, that means it’s not just a spokesman responding to an Argus reporter’s inquiry extemporaneously, off the top of his head. Somebody actually thought long and hard about what to say, probably going through several drafts before being satisfied with the final language to represent the company’s position. So let’s examine what the spin doctors came up with:

“All over the country, brewers sell their own beer in their own pubs — it’s a practice as old as the pub itself.

We recognise that some of our customers at the Lewes Arms don’t accept this practice but we are proud of our wonderful beers and proud to sell them.

Greene King is one of the biggest supporters of community pubs in this country. Last year we invested nearly £40 million on improvements to our pubs.

The direct feedback we receive on a daily basis is central to the way that we shape our service and our pubs.

We have been serving communities by running great pubs for more than 200 years and intend to carry on doing so for another 200 whatever challenges are thrown our way.”

So let’s look at this so-called statement:

  1. Brewers selling their own beer in their own pubs — “it’s a practice as old as the pub itself.” So what? I’m all for tradition when it’s a good tradition but the tied house rule is a terrible tradition and what’s more is why the English pub scene is so dire today. Because large companies are buying up pub chains and turning them into the fern bars of England: they all look the same and have the same beers in them. Yawn. I talked to Roger Protz about this in January when I was in London and he was adamant that these big chains were killing the good pubs.
  2. “We are proud of our wonderful beers and proud to sell them.” Go ahead, be proud, but don’t be stupid. Can Greene King really be so thick as to think this argument carries any weight whatsoever in Lewes? Is it really possible so shrewd a business could actually be this monumentally stupid? Doubtful, but this arrogant and clueless, well there you have me. When not biblically excessive, pride can be a wonderful thing that shows one’s own dignity, importance, and civic loyalty. So what should the people of Lewes be proud of? Hmm, let’s see. How about the local brewery that has been there for over 200 years, employing local residents and bringing all manner of economic benefits to the town. Should a small town support their local businesses that in turn make where they live a good place to be? I guess to Greene King, pride is only useful if it’s their kind of pride, the first person kind. Third person pride, as in what others might be proud of, well that just gets in their way.
  3. They’re the “biggest supporters of community pubs in this country” and spent almost “£40 million on improvements to our pubs.” Talk about a disconnect. They spent 80 million dollars to fix up their own places that they own. Well, whoop de f-in’ do! I bought flowers and planted them in my front yard. Does that make me a community supporter? I can’t really see how spending money maintaining their vast property holdings of pubs can equate to supporting communities. They’re spending the money on themselves, to improve their business. They’re not spending that money on the communities where those pubs are located. As this episode so nicely illustrates, they don’t give a rat’s arse about the local communities where Greene King pubs happen to be.
  4. Daily “Direct feedback” shapes their “service and [their] pubs.” And not just peripherally, but it’s “central” to how they run their pub business. There are kinder, gentler words for what this kind of language is; propaganda, PR, spin. But I think we can dispense with such euphemisms given how insulting this rhetoric is and call it by it’s true name, a lie. And not a little white one, but a great big whopper of a lie. I’d say they’ve been getting some pretty direct feedback about their service and their pub in Lewes for the past 100 days. Their response has not exactly been to listen carefully to their customer and shape their service there accordingly. Even with an estimated 90% drop in business at the Lewes Arms, Greene King refuses to give in to consumer demand. Now that’s customer service.
  5. For 200 years, Greene King has been “serving communities by running great pubs” and they will continue to do so “for another 200 whatever challenges are thrown our way.” Which is another way of saying F-you, Lewes, we’ll do whatever the hell we want. It’s pretty hard to accept that the community is best served by doing exactly what the community (including the mayor, the local MP and many prominent townspeople) does not want them to do and has quite explicitly asked them not to do. And as for this 200 years proclamation, I suspect that’s utter nonsense. I’m sure Greene King the brewery has been around that long, but for most of those years they owned local pubs around the Suffolk area. It probably wasn’t until around the 1980s that they started expanding rapidly to the point where today they “employ nearly 11,000 people, have a pub estate of around 1,700 houses, and operate distribution depots in Abingdon near Oxford, Crayford in Kent, and Northampton.” So “serving communities” outside their home area is most likely a relatively new phenomenon. According to their website, their “objective is to become the leading pub retailer-brewer, in terms of profitability and market share, in the south of England.” Notice there’s no mention of communities in that mission statement. Greene King pubs were all but ubiquitous during my last trip to London this January, and the city was much the poorer for it. We had to actively look for pubs with a decent and varied selection, and it was not an easy task. In recent years, they have bought out brewery/pub chains Belhaven, Morland, Ruddles, Ridley’s and Hardys and Hansons. Of these, only the Belhaven Brewery is still operating, meaning they shut down at least four historic breweries in their drive for domination. CAMRA has frequently lambasted them for their business practices.

So at every line of Greene King’s response to the Lewes Arms boycott they have not been truthful or even shown any understanding. This is the way of modern corporations, and it’s more than a little sad to see it so nakedly on display. I have nothing personal against Greene King or their beers, but this whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And I don’t think it can be washed down with a Greene King beer anytime soon.

The Blogging Debate

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Tomme Arthur from Port Brewing sent me, and a few other brewers, a link to a San Francisco Chronicle article entitled “Food bloggers dish up plates of spicy criticism, Formerly formal discipline of reviewing becomes a free-for-all for online amateurs” by staff writers Stacy Finz and Justin Berton. Now given the internet’s erosion of traditional media like newspapers, it’s not terribly surprising that the Chronicle article, while somewhat balanced, does lean a little on the side of traditional critics like those employed by the San Francisco newspaper. Obviously, this particular story is about food but it’s just as applicable to beer blogs and ratings websites, too. A lively e-mail debate ensued, with many expressing their positive and negative feelings about beer writing on the internet. And that got me thinking once more about this question, which comes up from time to time, about whether blogging is a good or bad thing for the beer industry.

Brewers, quite understandably, view beer bloggers and ratings websites like Beer Advocate and Rate Beer as a double-edged sword. On the positive side, there are thousands (millions?) of passionate fans in the cybersphere talking about, discussing and tasting their products, helping to spread the word about good beer generally and certain breweries specifically. You literally can’t buy that kind of publicity. Of course, you can’t control it either. It’s very organic nature also has hidden dangers, some of which are not always fair. Not every passionate fan is an expert or has a consistent, developed palate for tasting. As a result, no single review can carry much weight without knowing more about the reviewer. Add them all together, and there’s no guarantee that the results are accurate, fair or consistent. The bigger sites with more reviews and more experienced reviewers do often at least seem present a consistent pattern of what’s good and not so good, but there are and always will be problems with how the overall score is effected by the inevitable bad reviewer who may still be learning or has a personal axe to grind. With individual bloggers, unless you know the reviewer’s experience level, knowledge, etc. it’s hard to know how seriously to take what they say about the beer they’re reviewing. It takes a long time to get to know another person’s tastes to the point where you can predict how they’ll rate a beer accurately. That’s true of any critic, be it a movie reviewer, music critic or what have you. And while a good review can be good for a business, a bad one can be devastating and I imagine quite frustrating if it appears mean-spirited, uninformed or inconsistent with other more positive reviews.

I have run across quite a few intelligent, seemingly normal, people who dismiss all blogging and in some cases everything on the internet as completely worthless. I’m not sure why they take this position, but no amount of persuasion or debate will move them from this position. There are few things I can name which have no redeeming value whatsoever, but they seem to take a position that if it isn’t perfect or there is a lot that’s bad they’ve seen personally then everything else is bad, too. Many of these people are media traditionalists who believe newspapers and the print media are the standard to which every other form of media must be held to, which to me seems quite laughable given the state of much newspaper writing I’ve read about beer over the last few years alone. The fact is there is good and bad in every sector of the media, and indeed the world, too. Nothing is all good or all bad. To me such extreme positions are ludicrous and indefensible. I have argued with such people, but have found them intractable and immune to reason, logic or common sense. Which is a shame, because the internet continues to hold much potential and promise. Despite very rapid growth, it’s a very new medium and, as such, is still growing through all the same pains that every media has gone through. There has been much crap on every new media. Not all early television shows were worth saving, nor was everything on early radio a jewel. Were there people who loved newspapers that refused to give radio a chance because some of the shows they listened to were terrible? I suspect there probably were, as many people do not like change no matter what it’s benefit.

If you haven’t read Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, I highly recommend you rush right out and buy a copy. Seriously. Although it predates the internet, Postman discusses at length how each new media has changed our society, both for good and bad. How every innovation changes us, as well. It’s quite interesting to learn that before the telegraph, for example, almost all ordinary people read entire newspapers and were generally very up to date on all issues of the day. It was not uncommon for politicians and other famous people of the day to come to town and speak literally for hours on end about complex issues facing people. Ordinary townspeople would know exactly what was being discussed and were not spoken down to or had the subject matter dumbed down for them. Postman relates one typical example where Lincoln was speaking somewhere for something like six hours, excused everyone to go home and eat supper, and then resumed speaking again an hour later. Then the telegraph made the spread of information much, much quicker. But because of all the dots and dashes, information became sound bites overnight. As a result, people’s tolerance for lengthier, meatier writing began to wane. And newspapers at the time who began getting their news from far away over the telegraph began writing shorter and shorter stories.

His point — and mine — is that no one can say that the internet or blogging is all bad. We can say it will change how we view the world, even if we can’t say how. But to ignore it and pretend it is completely unworthy of our time is sticking one’s head in the sand, or nose in the air. Are there problems with how beer is reviewed by bloggers and other internet sites? Of course, nothing is perfect. Should we therefore dismiss everything in the blogosphere? Only at our peril, because like it or not the ease of creating a blog pretty much insures anyone with access to the ether can voice his or her opinion. That may not always be a good thing all the time, but like every media before it, those with something to say will find readers and the shrill cacophony of others will eventually fall by the wayside.

There are some who feel traditional journalists are better suited to report the news because they supposedly have standards and ethics whereas “a blog can lie outright, and there are no consequences” making it little better than “mob rule.” But many of my colleagues, all of whom make at least a partial living writing about beer, have blogs in addition to participating in traditional journalism, as well. If any of us out and out lied about something or someone, I can guarantee there’d be consequences. We may not be as famous as an H.L. Mencken or even Michael Jackson, but in such an insular and incestuous little industry like craft beer people know who we are and would hold us accountable if we libeled one of our own. We’re obviously not all “just some guy” and if that’s true then this argument that all blogging is bad simply doesn’t work. I know that doesn’t change the fact that some of the blogs that write about beer do not do the industry any favors. But I am growing weary of having to defend myself every time someone makes a blanket statement that all blogging or internet writing is inherently bad.

Perhaps I shouldn’t take it so personally or feel that it’s me who’s being attacked. Certainly many people have said good things about what I’ve written and there is much that my colleagues write that I find admirable. It’s not my job to defend this medium, but I do find it hard to keep my mouth shut when someone says something that even inadvertently insults me and my confederates in this rarified trade we call beer writing. Last year, I was discussing the state of beer blogging with a friend who suggested that wine and food blogs were generally better than beer blogs in many respects, due in part to their having been around considerably longer (in internet time, at least). And I think he was onto something, because I’ve watched the quality of beer blogging rise over the last year and there are many more worthy beer blogs today than even one year ago. So it seems to me at least that already the state of beer writing on the internet is improving. Not to mention I’ve seen many more colleagues add their voices to the chorus, making the song all the sweeter.

I think absent some new paradigm shift on the internet, beer bloggers, ratings websites and other beer sites online are here to stay. Like the macrocosm outside, there is both good and bad to be found in a wide range of efforts. Find what and who you like, and support those writers, blogs and websites. Ignore or avoid the ones you don’t, and they will undoubtedly not be here in the near future. Nobody likes talking only to themselves for very long. But please don’t read one bad review, post or article and assume that everything else out there is not worthy of your time. Many of us work very hard at what we do and though you may not always agree with what we have to say, that doesn’t make what we’re saying meaningless or unimportant. Welcome to microjournalism and the 21st century. Word. Or make that words.

License Plates as Free Speech

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When you read this is happening in Utah, perhaps you’ll be less surprised about it, but it’s my feeling that these sorts of attempts at censorship should be fought wherever they happen. Because however innocuous they appear, they always seem to lead to more serious attempts at curbing peoples’ rights of self-expression. Nip ’em in the bud, I say. It seems the State of Utah will not allow a man to keep his vanity license plate that reads “MERLOT” because, according to a UPI story, it violates the state’s ban on vanity plates linked with intoxicants. A similar AP story on CBS News makes a similar claim.

But if you visit the Utah DMV website, this is all that they say on the subject:

Guidelines and Standards

What are the rules or guidelines regarding the combination and numbers of characters on a plate, or the content of the message on the plate?

In general, the statute forbids any combination of letters or numbers that “may carry connotations offensive to good taste and decency or that would be misleading.” In general, this law prohibits combinations that:

  • Are vulgar, derogatory, profane or obscene;
  • Make reference to drugs or drug paraphernalia;
  • Make reference to sexual acts, genitalia or bodily functions, or
  • Express contempt, ridicule or superiority of a race, religion, deity, ethnic heritage,
    gender or political affiliation.
  • Express or suggest endangerment to the public welfare.

Now, raise your hand. Who thinks the word merlot is “vulgar, derogatory, profane or obscene?” And it clearly doesn’t fit the third and fourth guidelines, either. So okay, let’s look at the second, that it makes “reference to drugs or drug paraphernalia.” Now I realize that alcohol is technically a drug, but I think it has one unique feature that makes it very different from what I assume the intent of that language was, which is that it’s legal.

Now I know there are some fine beers brewed in Utah, but by and large a healthy percentage of the state’s citizens have chosen to voluntarily abstain for religious reasons. That’s a lifestyle decision. I don’t happen to agree with it personally, but I respect it as a personal decision … except when you try to force that opinion on the rest of us. In this particular instance, the “MERLOT” plate has been on a 1996 merlot-red Mercedes for ten years. The owner was told he must remove it simply because one pinhead “anonymous caller told the state that merlot was also an alcoholic beverage.” It’s hard not to find it a little funny that they had to be told that. But it’s not at all funny that there is at least one person out there who had such a problem with a single word he saw on the back of a car. And not only that, but he felt compelled to do something about it. I can’t even imagine the thought process that led him to rat out a fellow human being for the word merlot. How on earth was this person damaged by the sight of it? How could seeing this one word be offensive? I just don’t get it. Did seeing the word tempt him so much that he was in danger of abandoning his commitment to abstinence? If so, it doesn’t seem too strong a commitment. Was he afraid of his children seeing it? If so, he’s not a very good parent if all it might take to corrupt his kids might be seeing the word “merlot.” Did his religious beliefs blind him to the fact that there are other equally legitimate ways in order to live one’s life? Maybe it’s the progressive in me, but I can’t for the life of me come up with a scenario in which this is in any way reasonable.

Believe it or not, there’s a website where a Salt Lake City man has collected vanity plates he’s seen driving around the Beehive state. Apparently the Utah DMV is also unaware that “CHIVAS” and “WHISKEY” are alcoholic, though they have thoughtfully put up a web page of links to other vanity plate websites.

Perhaps the real joke is that the man who owns the car chose the word “merlot” because that was the color of his automobile, not even because it’s also a varietal wine grape. Apparently, he’s go to fight the state on this one, and I, for one, am glad.

Savoring Beer

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I generally eschew going out on the major holidays, primarily because America — and especially the business sector — has turned them into reasons to get drunk and sell crap that none of us need. Much is written about the commercialization of Christmas but, really, is there a single holiday that Hallmark isn’t trying to sell you on the idea that you should buy your loved ones a card to celebrate it? And perhaps most sad of all is how many holidays that used to be a chance to spend time with family, to commemorate something worthwhile or to celebrate a shared history with your community have been turned into another drunkfest. The most egregious of these are New Year’s Eve, Cinco de Mayo, the 4th of July, Halloween (the #1 keg sales weekend for most beer retailers) and, of course, St. Patrick’s Day. Since I essentially drink most days and as a paid professional, I refer to these holidays simply as “amateur drinking days” because it seems like people just go nuts and drink as much as humanly possible. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the holiday’s original purpose, but is used simply as an excuse to drink to excess. And it’s hard, for me at least, to be around such people. They give drinking a bad name, not to mention providing neo-prohibitionist’s fuel for their bonfires of intolerance.

So I was glad to see I’m not entirely alone on this one. An editorial in Pittsburgh’s The Times Leader by Michael O’Hare today discusses what’s happened to our holidays using the recent St. Patrick’s Day as a catalyst. In his editorial, he gives voice to the frustrations of his older Irish-American friend, Seamus, who tells him he didn’t go out on the holiday because he’s no “pop culture Irishman.” Asked to explain, Seamus relates the following.

“Well, you know, the Irish have a reputation for drink. But the Irish were like the Brits, the Welsh, the Scots and any number of nationals and races who at one time shared their time with neighbors in pubs. And, but for the local drunks, they didn’t pound down their beer and whiskey; they savored it, along with the conversation. It was the celebration, not the drink, that was the center of the gathering,” he said.

Exactly. Beer should be savored with good friends and good conversation. I couldn’t agree more.

Beer Drinkers More Irreligious

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The neo-prohibitionist organization Join Together is reporting on a doozy of a research study today from the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs entitled “Measures of Spirituality Increase with Sobriety.”

The gist of it is that people who drink are less religious or spiritual than teetotalers. According to Join Together, the study looked at a whopping grand total of 154 (actually it was only 123) people from an “outpatient treatment program for alcohol dependence and abuse” and then extrapolated that data to the general population. The study examined “10 measures of spirituality,” whatever that means. These included “views of God, religious practices such as prayer or church attendance, forgiveness, spiritual experiences, using religion or spirituality to cope, and existential meaning.”

More speculation from the Join Together summary:

The study found that half of the measures of spirituality changed over the six-month study period, including daily spiritual experiences, the use of religious practices, forgiveness, positive use of religion for coping, and feeling of purpose in life.

“While people’s actual beliefs don’t seem to change during recovery, the extent they have spiritual experiences, and are open to spirituality in their lives, does change,” said lead researcher Elizabeth A.R. Robinson, Ph.D. “This effect was also independent of their participation in Alcoholics Anonymous which has a strong spiritual aspect.”

Use of alcohol also declined, with 72 percent of participants successfully avoiding heavy drinking for the six-month study period. Participants whose spirituality increased were less likely to drink heavily, researchers found.

Where to begin? Join Together titles the study summary “Measures of Spirituality Increase with Sobriety,” clearly implying that the less you drink, the more religious you are. But the study itself is titled “Six-Month Changes in Spirituality, Religiousness, and Heavy Drinking in a Treatment-Seeking Sample,” indicating something quite different. The study itself states that the people studied were already in a treatment facility and/or attending AA meetings (where a spiritual aspect is emphasized). That means more accurately that people pre-disposed to abuse alcohol are the ones more likely to trade one addiction (alcohol or drugs, for example) for a more socially acceptable one, like religion. In my experience, such people use this personality trait to replace their substance abuse for obsessive spirituality. I won’t argue whether or not that’s a good thing, though clearly for many it’s preferable to alcoholism and often better for the families effected by alcoholism (for the record, I grew up with an alcoholic and abusive stepfather).

Then there’s the size of the study, a mere 123 people (despite Join Together mis-quoting the size slightly higher) extrapolated to speak for the entire population. For statistics to be meaningful, of course, the sample size must be sufficiently representative of the demographics of whatever population you’re studying. It must be random and there must be demographic diversity of at least several types, be it ethnic, geographic or what have you. The study’s abstract gives no information about the range of who was studied, where they were located, etc., apart from the following: “66% male; mean age 39; 83% white.” But if they were all from the same place, had the same core beliefs, and on and on then it’s meaningless to try extrapolating it out to say something about the entire country. The study was conducted by the Addiction Research Center, itself a part of the Substance Abuse Section of the University of Michigan’s Department of Psychiatry. So it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to think the study may have been conducted at a few or even one rehab facility near the university, further reducing the truthiness of the study’s conclusions. Even if we accept the findings, as a preliminary study with a small sample, no universal truths or really useful conclusions can be drawn until confirmed by additional similar studies using a different sample in terms of size, make-up, etc. But neo-prohibitionist groups like Join Together have no time to wait for details like reality or truth and thus report any study that appears to support their agenda, and even spin them to their own purposes, presumably hoping no one will notice.

Join Together also suggests that the study proves that the more religious you are, the less likely to drink you are. But that conclusion is utter nonsense based on the fact that the study’s subjects were all already in an “outpatient treatment program for alcohol dependence and abuse,” meaning they were already trying to stop drinking. It wasn’t increasing religiosity that made them stop, it was their own efforts at reducing destructive behavior in their lives. There will likely always be certain people who cannot restrain themselves or partake of something responsibly. Some are benign, such as an obsessive hobbyist, a sports fanatic or a collector. Others may be harmful to ones’ self, such as obsessive over-eating. Still others may also be harmful to the persons around them directly, such as smoking; or indirectly, such as an addiction to drinking or using drugs. You probably know people who fit each category. I used to be a wildly obsessive collector, for example, but my wife has largely kept that personality trait in check so that I now collect far less than I used to. And I feel much better for it, but I don’t personally have any difficulties whatsoever knowing when to stop drinking. I am a very responsible drinker, and not just because it’s part of my profession. It’s simply part of the way I am. You may be different. The guy or gal next to you, different too, in their own unique way.

My point is that each of us have a different response to these things, and to make a blanket statement such as you’ll drink less if you pray more is propaganda at its worst. It may feed an agenda, but it’s in no way truthful or honest. And frankly, if you want to advance a position by using faulty statistics then I believe you lose your credibility and whatever sincerity you brought to your position. I know people use statistics however it best serves them, that’s nothing new. But the way Join Together has taken this already questionable preliminary study (at least in my opinion) and selectively used it to support their neo-prohibitionist agenda is irresponsible.

Setting the study portion aside for a moment, I don’t really understand why the neo-prohibitionists — who are usually closely aligned with fundamentalist christian groups — are so against drinking when the Bible is replete with instances of drinking alcohol. There’s the famous story where Jesus turned the water into wine (though it was probably beer, not wine) at a wedding he was attending. And the most important event in many Christian’s minds is the last supper, which is commemorated by one of the most sacred rituals, communion. Jesus poured wine for all of the guests at the supper, telling them it was symbolic of his blood so they would remember him and his teachings. People all over the world repeat that act today, making alcohol an integral part of what it means to be religious in that faith. So why then is alcohol so demonized?

But back to the study. Another problem I have with it is trying to quantify spiritual experience and assuming it’s always positive. The researchers titles of the ten supposed “measures of spirituality” are revealing. They include a “Daily Spiritual Experiences scale, the Purpose in Life scale, S/R practices scale, Forgiveness scale, and the Positive Religious Coping scale.” I’m sure you could get people to assign an arbitrary number to these vague ideas on a daily basis and track the numbers, but how on earth can you ever be sure one person’s “purpose in life” is the same as another persons? The meaning of life has at best a deeply personal definition, that would probably not be the same for any two people. And religious practices? I can only assume that means going to church or praying, etc. But it could also mean lighting incense or taking peyote, depending on the religion. To assume taking any of those actions by themselves will keep you from engaging in addictive behavior ignores that those rituals are also addictive. Have you ever watched people in church going through the motions of worship? When to kneel, when to chant and when to respond with an “amen” are done without thought, out of habit. Apart from social acceptability, how is that different from reaching for a bottle or a cigarette in a habitual response to some stimuli.

The last sentence of the abstract reads. “The results of this descriptive study support the perspective of many clinicians and recovering individuals that changes in alcoholics’ S/R occur in recovery and that such changes are important to sobriety.” That means that it’s something of a self-fulfilling prophecy since the study is said to confirm what anecdotally was already assumed or believed to be true, that religiosity is linked to sobriety. But at least one other study done by the Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse and Addictions at the University of New Mexico concluded that the opposite was true. That study, “Atheists, agnostics and Alcoholics Anonymous,” looked at 1,526 alcoholics (or more than 12 times the Michigan study) attending AA meetings and found that “God belief appears to be relatively unimportant in deriving AA-related benefit, but atheist and agnostic clients are less likely to initiate and sustain AA attendance relative to spiritual and religious clients.” That means people don’t like to have beliefs forced on them and thus stay away from such organizations. It also seems to indicate that religiousness does not equate to levels of drinking among alcoholics.

I’m not against these studies per se, but their capacity for misuse is increasingly rife in these divisive times. As a result, I think they must be examined very carefully, especially when they so often are said to say one thing but on closer examination either do not or are flawed in some other way so as make the argument made based on their findings meaningless. To accept everything we read without questioning it is to invite manipulation, blind acceptance and coercion.

I’m in the middle of reading a fascinating book right now entitled “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?” It’s edited by John Brockman, who created the Edge, an online think tank of sorts, whose mission is the following. “The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.” Each year, a question is posed to the loose membership and last year’s was the book’s eponymous title. There are over a hundred short (about two pages on average) essays by some of the world’s best minds relating their dangerous idea, which is defined as ones which threaten or challenge the collective wisdom of the age. A historical example might be the Copernican revolution that replaced the earth with the sun as the center of the solar system. I think my own dangerous idea might be that there is no one right way to live or view the world. This is dangerous because so many people seem committed to the idea that everyone must believe as they do, and failing that should be pushed aside at best or, at worst, killed simply for disagreeing. To not notice how polarized the world has become of late it to not have been paying attention. This is true even of so seemingly inconsequential an issue as drinking alcohol, where there are entire societies and religions that forbid it. And it appears that they won’t rest until we either capitulate or die. I think this idea transcends religion, nation identity, race or ethnicity. Choosing how to live should be a matter of personal choice, from the big things like what to believe down to the smaller ones, like whether or not to enjoy a beer.

But Neo-Prohibitionist groups have chosen to dedicate themselves to taking away that choice from people like me and you. Such groups are growing in power and influence and will not rest until they achieve their goal of another Prohibition. They appear willing to say or do almost anything to achieve that goal, as their twisting and use of this flimsy study illustrates. They care only about their agenda, and not one wit about how you want to live your life if it’s in any way different from their own views. And that, in the end, is as scary a future as I can imagine, where all my decisions on morality, what to think, what to believe and how to live are made for me. Let’s not let that happen. I need a drink.

Clinking Voyeurism

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Another “Here’s to Beer” effort to try bringing people back into the beer fold is “Clink,” within the social networking website MingleNow. There, members are encouraged to post photos to the site of friends clinking their glasses together. So far, a few hundred have been uploaded, many similar to this one.
 

 

Anheuser-Busch is the exclusive advertiser at the Clink portion of MingleNow, but that of course won’t stop the clinking glasses or bottles being filled with all manner of different beer. In one of my favorites currently at the site, a trio of Oktoberfest attendees enjoy mugs of Spaten.
 

 

Unfortunately, in their drive to entice younger people, most of the photos have a voyeuristic feel to them that I’m not entirely sure brings out the best in beer. Some of the photos do appear to be genuine expressions of friendship and good times shared over a pint, but a majority are exactly what you’d expect, mere titillation, especially as evidenced by the most popular photos which are voted on by MingleNow’s 300,000+ members. There are also contests for submitting pictures, such as one running now where you can win a VIP Trip to the Bud Light Aspen Spring Jam, a four day live concert festival.
 

 

As a recent BusinessWeek article put it, A-B is in “pursuit of the elusive 25-year-old Everyman. There’s the struggle to recalibrate how the brewer sells big brands in stupendous volumes amid the vicissitudes of an uncooperative and fractionalized market.” MingleNow focuses on the 21-35 nightclub demographic, which is ideal for A-B’s purposes though really it’s the 21-25 age bracket that gets most of the attention. ClickZ News and BizReport also have their own take on this story.

So my initial reaction is that this part of Here’s to Beer phase 2 push is much more helpful to Anheuser-Busch in recapturing the youth drinker than to beer as a category. It does little that I can see to realize the supposed goal of increasing beer’s share among all alcoholic beverages. Unless I’m missing something, can’t you clink a wine glass or tumbler of whiskey just as easily? As Silicon Valley business blogger Tom Foremski notes, “beer has helped build social relationships for centuries—maybe online social networks can now help build sales of beer.” Maybe, but I get the distinct impression that nobody thought through how this is really going to help persuade people to order a pint of beer instead of something else. Again, like the new Here’s to Beer website, Clink is not without it’s charms but hardly seems capable of changing anybody’s mind about the respect that good beer deserves.