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Hip Trip Trips Up on Beer Pairings

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The Sunday edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a syndicated feature news service for daily newspapers called the Rand McNally Travel News. As near as I can tell, a division of Rand McNally produces travel pieces for a number of prominent newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, the Dallas Morning News and others. With dwindling readership and severe under-staffing at many daily newspapers as most struggle to remain economically viable these days, they’re increasingly turning to syndicated content to supplement original staff-generated stories. It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, in my opinion. As less and less people get their news from newspapers, they turn increasingly to AP, Reuters and other wire services, especially for their national and regional coverage, which has the effect of making them all look more and more the same. This homogenization loses them more readers which in turn causes them to layoff more staff and generate still less original content, which again causes a drop in readership.

Yesterday’s example of this cheap excuse for original content was by Mary Lu Laffey for the Rand McNally Travel News and the name of her monthly series is called “Hip Trip.” It’s apparently travel tips for younger people and presumably younger people with money since they would be the only ones who would plan their vacations. The “Hip Trip’s” tagline advice is simple. “Time and money may be in short supply for many younger travelers. Each month, Hip Trip brings you advice on how not to waste either.”

But whether by accident or design, her article is nothing short of an infomercial where in some cases she acts as a foil to corporate propaganda and at other times displays total ignorance for the subject at hand. It’s as if she took a press release, did no research or fact-checking, added a few sentences to personalize it and then added her byline. Of course, she appears to be writing in the first person as if she actually attended a beer dinner, but what we get is her impressions of the experience, what her host tells her and little else. There’s certainly no questions from Laffey as misinformation and laughable advice flows freely from Brent Wertz, chief executive chef at Kingsmill Resort. The Williamsburg, Virginia resort is, of course, an Anheuser-Busch company, a fact Laffey fails to disclose (or perhaps she’s not even aware of it). But it certainly makes what follows more understandable, if no less absurd. She undoubtedly had her beer dinner at the Eagles Restaurant, which lists three beer dinner menus on their website, one with Budweiser, one with Michelob Ultra Light and one with World Select.

So without further ado, let’s begin the show.

Laffey’s first few paragraphs are doozies, and they set an unquestioning tone that permeates the whole article. Here they are, in their entirety.

Brent Wertz doesn’t flinch as he twists open a bottle of ultra light, low-carb beer and pours it straight down the middle of a chardonnay glass. He tilts his head only slightly as he watches it splash big at the bottom. Wertz says the big splash is necessary to break the carbonation and to open the nose of the beer.

Stemmed glass? Nose? Beer?

That’s a big “yes” from Wertz, chief executive chef at Kingsmill Resort. He plans menus around beer, marinates and cooks with it, and passionately recommends beer whether you’re dining plain or fancy.

That’s a big “whoa” from me. In the bigger picture, does drinking beer with dinner mean I have to put keggers behind me?

Just out of curiosity, do many people “flinch” when opening a twist-off cap? Or is the pouring it into a chardonnay glass that should cause the twitch in her mind? Her next reaction — her quizzical “Stemmed glass? Nose? Beer?” aside — is becoming the standard neophyte knee-jerk in virtually every one of these type of pieces. Some ignorant journalist is shown beer in a different light for the first time (where were all these people living for the last 25 years, in a box? The Moon? Prison?) and their first reaction is always one of great surprise that someone might even be capable of taking beer seriously. Worldwide, people have been drinking beer from stemmed glassware for centuries. And did it never occur to anyone that at least the people making the beer would be smelling it, checking it’s “nose,” to insure they were making a consistent product? How out-of-touch with the real world and common sense do you have to be in order to be surprised that people might smell beer to gauge it’s quality? And finally there’s the kicker reaction, that it’s beer and that someone might think of it as more than cheap swill with no discernible flavors worth talking about. The pervasiveness today of this manufactured stereotype of beer as unworthy is frankly quite astonishing, especially from presumably educated journalists who one would assume would be paying a little more attention to the news than the average person that good craft beer has been around for over 25 years? How could anyone have completely missed that phenomenon to present actual shock when confronted with better beer? But here it is on display again, proving once again that the depths of ignorance in the press know no bounds.

When she gets her “big yes” from Kingsmill’s chef she responds with a “big whoa” and wonders whether she has to give up her apparently precious keggers, I feel like I’ve fallen into “Mary Lu’s Excellent Adventure” and I’m reading the term paper of a failing high school student. How bogus is that? Why she thinks that you can’t have fine beer with a meal and also enjoy beer from a keg in a totally different context is beyond my grasping. Perhaps she thinks there’s only one way to do anything, who knows? And the sentence seems to infer that this is the very first time she’s ever had a beer with dinner! How is that even possible?

Of course, I’m using the term “fine beer” here metaphorically since the only beers mentioned in the article by name are Michelob Ultra Light, Budweiser, and Michelob Amber Bock, not exactly “big” beers by any stretch of the imagination. But to our intrepid author, in her “90-minute sojourn into silver-placed settings on table linen, with stemmed glasses, haute cuisine – and beer” she does just that. She describes “swirling the contents of [her] burgundy glass” with its full-bodied Bud coat[ing] the sides of the glass” and imagined herself “talking about how the big flavor of this big beer exhaled deeper with each twirl.” Stop, stop, my sides are aching with laughter. Okay, no matter how much you love Budweiser it can’t reasonably be called “full-bodied.” Its flavor — if you can even call it that — is so light as to be almost non-existent. But to Mary Lu, this is “big beer” with “big flavor.” I wonder what she’d think of an Old Rasputin Imperial Stout? Or even Sierra Nevada Pale Ale?

For dessert, chef Wertz suggested that they needed “a lager big enough to stand up against chocolate” and gave them Michelob Amber Bock. I hope the double-fudge brownie torte they had for dessert wasn’t too chocolately, because that’s not a beer that can stand up to very much flavor and hold its own. She claims to have “found a rich, full lager that smelled a lot like coffee and caramel.” Uh-huh, that’s not my memory of this beer’s nose. And while I’m generally cautious about using the beer rating websites as a source, I think the Beer Advocate reviews of Michelob Amber Bock are pretty amusing and show a great disparity between the inexperienced beer drinker vs. the more experienced ones. Frankly, her description sounds like it came from a sale sheet provided by A-B.

But let’s turn now to her finale:

What a finale, I thought as I turned my attention to my double-fudge brownie torte. The dessert would put my taste buds to the test. Would they dare use beer in brownies? I bit into the brownie and tasted the caramel sauce that was hiding beneath it. I should have known that even a chef like Wertz would not mess with brownies.

That you’d have to “dare” to use beer in making brownies, implying more broadly that dessert really shouldn’t have beer it, once again demonstrates that we’re back to a high school mentality. Wow, what a revelation. I guess I’ll have to take back all the wonderful desserts I’ve enjoyed over the years made with beer in them. Because beer chef Bruce Paton, among many others, have made some amazing dishes using chocolate and beer. This spring he did an entire chocolate and beer dinner with Chimay and Scharffen Berger chocolate. And chef Eddie Blyden, when he was at 21st Amendment (he’s now at Magnolia), did a terrific multi-course meal in which every dish used both beer and chocolate, including the soup, salad and dessert with Cocoa Pete’s chocolate. And that’s just a small sampling in one city. All across the nation — and the world — people are and have for many years been cooking with beer, including desserts. Beer cook Lucy Saunders, for example, has two recipes for chocolate and beer dishes on her website. This is only news to the monumentally myopic and uninformed.

To be fair, her piece is aimed at young travelers, who apparently in the author’s mind would be as ignorant as she is, and there may be some element of truth to that. I’m no expert on youth culture. But with craft beer’s sales on the rise and a generation of young people turning 21 never having known a time when there wasn’t craft beer, such a position seems harder and harder to maintain. Come on, Rand McNally, why not get some writers who know about beer to write about beer. I double dare you.

Craft Beer Defined as “Unusually Flavored”

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In ABC News’ online Money section, business writer Eric Noe has a piece entitled For Dessert, How About a Beer?. In the middle of the article, Noe makes the following revelation:

Sales of craft beers, the industry term given to unusually flavored or seasonal beers, grew at 11 percent during the first half of the year.

Let that sink in. ABC defines craft beer as either “unusually flavored” or “seasonal beers.” Perhaps if you listen very carefully you can hear a faint thumping sound. That’s me banging my head repeatedly against my keyboard. The only thing keeping my head from spinning completely around are the laws of physics.

Remind me not to go drinking with Eric Noe. “Here, Eric, try this Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. How about those unusual flavors? We call them hops.” I can only assume by “unusually flavored” he means that they actually have flavor, which is the reason sales of industrial light lagers are down — they don’t have much in the way of flavor at all.

The rest of the article is banal stuff — and old hat — about Miller’s new chocolate beer (Frederick Miller Classic Chocolate Lager), Anhesuer-Busch’s chocolate beer, etc., something the craft beer segment has been doing for years. But, of course, to ABC it’s only news once the big players (you know, the ones who advertise on ABC) begin to make beer with chocolate or chocolate-like flavors. The article also touches on the recent spate of infused beers, beers with added vitamins, caffeine, etc. and manages to confuse those beers with ones having different flavors, too. Last time I checked vitamins don’t have a particular flavor, do they?

As far as I can tell, the author isn’t really sure what flavor is, I mean he seems confused about its very definition. For example, he reports that “Anheuser-Busch has gotten in on the act, too, introducing flavored beers like Michelob Honey Lager and Michelob Amber Bock.” The honey lager may have “a touch of honey,” as A-B claims, but does that really make it a “flavored beer?” More to the point, what flavors have been added to the Amber Bock? Malt?

Eric Shepard, executive editor of the industry trade publication Beer Marketer’s Insights remarks in the article that “[p]eople are saying they want something more flavorful than just malt, yeast, hops and water.” No offense, Eric, but I don’t think that is what people are saying. Malt, yeast, hops and water are more than sufficient to make a bewildering array of rich, flavorful beers. This year’s Great American Beer Festival judged 69 distinct and different beer styles, only a handful of which used anything more than the classic four ingedients. This is exactly what craft brewers have been doing for twenty-five years. People do want those ingredients used to produce something that tastes like … well, something. They want it to taste like beer, for example. That would be a good start.

Noe concludes:

For the major breweries, creating specialty brands isn’t the problem.

But while microbreweries, which have lower operating expenses, can turn a profit by selling relatively small amounts of specialty beers, the bigger operations like Miller and Anheuser-Busch probably won’t see immediate profits from these newer products.

For now, the goal of offering craft beers may be to lure customers back to the major brands.

“So far, the big breweries haven’t proved particularly adept at selling craft beers,” Shepard said. “But it makes a whole lot of sense — this is where the market is going.”

I love the honesty of his remark, “the goal of offering craft beers may be to lure [my emphasis] customers back to the major brands.” People must be “lured” to drink the major brands. That says it all, don’t you think?

Stephen Beaumont vs. New York Magazine

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Earlier today I got an e-mail from my friend and colleague, Stephen Beaumont:

I like it when consumer magazines publish stories about beer, I really do, even when I don’t write them. But it pisses me off when they accord such a noble and respected beverage about one-twentieth of the respect and consideration they would wine or cognac or gourmet chocolate bars.

Case in point is the new issue of New York Magazine and its panel review of 21 beers. On the surface, it looks like an okay story, but the more you get into it, the more its flaws are exposed. Which is why I’ve written a rebuttal to the piece.

At the most basic, I’m sending you this simply to bring these stories to your attention and get your reaction. At the most, I’d love to spread the message around a bit so that hopefully these kind of review pieces might eventually become the exception rather than the rule.

Amen. This is the same kind of hatchet job I’ve been complaining about a lot lately. Read the original story in New York Magazine first and then Stephen’s rebuttal. Go ahead, I’ll wait. When you come back, I’ve got a few things to add to Beaumont’s wonderful critique.

Finished? Good, here’s a few random observations I can add. First off, the article is titled Ales in Comparison. But of the 21 beers reviewed — the ones “in Comparison” — nine are lagers and four are hybrid wheat styles, meaning more than half are not ales. That would be like having a tasting of eight red wines, nine white wines and four champagnes and calling the whole thing “Red Wines in Comparison.” That would be ridiculous, of course, but it’s exactly what New York Magazine did here in their zeal to be clever.

In his introduction, author Ben Mathis-Lilley claims Budweiser and Stella Artois taste the same. While I’m not a great fan of Stella Artois, on any given day it does taste decidedly different from Budweiser. And though both are adjunct beers, I’ll drink Stella Artois whereas I’d pass on a Bud, the point being they’re different enough that they can’t reasonably be called “taste-alikes” as Mathis-Lilley does.

The tasters are described as a “panel of untrained but enthusiastic drinking aficionados.” Well how scientific. Forget for a moment that calling an “enthusiastic” drinker an “aficionado” is probably oxymoronic, but what value is there in the opinion of people not trained to judge and/or evaluate the quality of a beer? Why is is you never see wine evaluated by enthusiastic amateurs, but it’s fairly common for newspaper articles to assemble an unnamed group of people to taste beer with no training and then report their findings as if they were all Robert Parker? Why do they assume one needs no training to evaluate beer? It’s preposterous, of course, and one more reminder of how ignorant the wine and food media is about beer. Wine takes years of training to learn, its nuanced flavors reveal themselves only to the sophisticated, discerning palate. But beer? That swill can be tasted by anybody — no training necessary — just throw a bunch of random bottles in a styrofoam cooler and voilà, you’ve got a story.

Even if I knew nothing about beer, why should I care if another person, equally ignorant, didn’t like a particular beer. In the New York Magazine article, negative descriptors such as “sissy,” “too girlie” or “eh” are used to describe some of the beers. What does that tell me about how they taste? Absolutely nothing, of course, which makes this entire exercise all but meaningless. In the first group of random beers, some of the panelists even correctly described one of the beers which was revealed in an aside as “accurately, according to our moderator.” So if they comment that on one of the beers some of the tasters actually got it right, showing by mentioning it they were surprised, what does that say about how wrong they got all the others? And if they got it wrong most of the time, as I suspect they must have, why report on it at all? What value does having the opinions of people with no training and no proficiency for what they’re tasting being used to educate others about what they taste like? Isn’t that like asking a blind person to describe a color?

And as Beaumont points out, the tasting flights have almost no logic to them and the beers tasted against one another bear no relation to each other, which would make it difficult for the seasoned taster, and all but impossible for the neophyte. It’s a process doomed to fail from the start, and another reason why this tasting is so comical. I’d be laughing except for the fact that some people will probably take this seriously and base their buying decisions on the article in what is otherwise considered an influential publication.

Also, in the article, the author gives the following advice. “Beer-pairing rule of thumb: Match up similar flavors.” Which is the same as saying white wines with fish. While such a rule of thumb may sometimes work, it’s extremely limiting and rigid, and ignores what choosing a contrasting beer might add to the experience.

For one of the beers, the only thing said about it was it “had a funny name.” How condescending. Thanks. That’s very helpful for me if I might want to drink it. But it’s indicative of the tone of the entire piece. There’s very little here that’s actually useful and they seem to have a great deal of trouble taking the subject seriously so I’m left with one final question. Exactly what is the point of this article?

 

 
UPDATE: New York Magazine invited Stephen to write a letter to the editor for their next issue. In the hopes of having it carry more weight, he graciously invited other beer writers to also sign the letter. Six of us agreed to sign it. In addition to me and Beaumont, the letter was also signed by Julie Bradford (All About Beer), Lew Bryson, Tom Dalldorf (Celebrator Beer News) and John Hansell (Malt Advocate).

 
UPDATE (10.27): New York Magazine has now printed Stephen Beaumont’s letter to the editor.

James Bond’s Beer

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I’ve been a huge fan of James Bond since I was a kid. I read all of Ian Fleming’s novels and even the later ones when John Gardner took over the series, among others. And, of course, I’ve seen all of the films many times. Not only am I aware that Sean Connery was not the first James Bond — it was an American, Barry Nelson — I’ve had a videotape of the show for decades. It was originally aired as a teleplay on live television in 1954 (eight years before Sean Connery debuted as James Bond in 1962’s Dr. No) on the show “Climax!.” It was based on Fleming’s novel Casino Royale and Peter Lorre played the villain, Le Chiffre. Suffice it to say I’m a big fan.

So when I read that in the new adaptation of Casino Royale (due in theaters November 17) Bond will drink a Heineken in a six-figure cross-promotion, I must say my first reaction was suspicion. Suspicion because every single time this story was reported it contained a justification for this move, saying that in Fleming’s novel his character James Bond does drink beer for the first and only time. If they want to have Heineken be a sponsor for the film and have the character drink one, that’s their decision even though I really hate these type of deals where products are featured prominently in films for big bucks. To me the insertion of the products into the action is way too obvious so that it distracts you from what makes movies so enjoyable, which is allowing you to escape into the story. It’s hard to feel swept away into a story when a giant bus drives by behind the action with a billboard reading “Drink Coke” every time the characters are walking outdoors. And in Pierce Brosnan’s second film as James Bond, Tomorrow Never Dies, during a “rooftop motorcycle chase in Saigon, Bond returns the bike to street level by using a parked truck which carries cases of Heineken beer as a ramp. Cans fly in every direction. Several kegs of Heineken are seen when the motorcycle briefly skids.” The Amsterdam brewer’s relationship with the Bond films has thus been going on for some time now, so it’s really no surprise that they’d want to crank it up a notch for the new movie.

But trying to justify such a greedy, commercial intrusion by saying it will make the film more accurate since the news stories all claim Bond did drink a beer in the novel seems to me avarice run amuck. A common element all of these news stories shared was that while they all claimed that Bond drank beer in Fleming’s Casino Royale novel, not one of them gave any specifics. For example, in Dowd on Drinks, by William M. Dowd, he writes the following:

In the first Bond novel, “Casino Royale,” the character who became known for his knowledge and enjoyment of wines and spirits actually drank beer. (Pause here for startled gasps by those reading this sacrilege for the first time.)

How opprobrious. “Startled gasps? Sacrilege?” Now why someone who knows and enjoys wine and spirits also drinking beer would be a sacrilege is never explained, perhaps Dowd thinks it self-evident. But it’s highly insulting and it displays that media prejudice I’m always going on about. Here’s another drinks writer who apparently thinks all beer is bad and all wine (and spirits) are good. Must be nice to live in such a black and white world in which reality has no place in your version of things.

Another account, this one from the Hearst Group, said “[i]n the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, the super spy who became known for his knowledge and enjoyment of wines and spirits actually (my emphasis) drank beer.” Oh, he actually drank beer, he didn’t pretend to drink it, or he didn’t just order but actually choked it down, too. What on earth is wrong with these people? Can they not see how ignorant they appear?

The reason, of course, they’re falling all over themselves to justify this move is obvious. The vodka martini, shaken not stirred, is part of the Bond ethos, a big part of his coolness, his personality and his popularity. So tampering with that is obviously risky but since there’s a lot of money at stake, they will do anything to keep the money without losing the fans. So by saying Bond actually did have a beer in the book makes it much easier to sell, as many of the reports have offered. For example, here’s how one wire service put it.

James Bond purists will be grateful to know that the beer plot is not just a money grab by the movie’s makers. Casino Royale was the first Bond book written by Ian Fleming and the only one in which Bond drinks beer.

So then the real question is, is it true? Did Bond drink a beer in the novel Casino Royale? I grabbed my dog-eared copy of Casino Royale from the attic in search of the answer and read it again, because it had been years since I’d cracked it open although I certainly couldn’t remember any reference to beer. I still have my old “complete and unabridged” Signet paperback that was in my parents house growing up. It’s a sixth printing from October 1962. Here’s what I found.

  1. In Chapter 5, on page 30, Bond orders his first drink in the book, an Americano. An Americano is a cocktail made with bitters, sweet vermouth, and soda water.
  2. In Chapter 7, on page 40, Bond orders C.I.A. man Felix Leiter a “Haig-and-Haig” (which is scotch whisky) and himself a “A dry martini” … “One. In a deep champagne goblet.” Then he gives the bartender more detailed instructions on how to make it. “Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel.” Have I stumbled upon the origin of Bond’s famous “shaken not stirred” predilection? Bond tells Leiter that the drink is his “own invention” and that he plans “to patent it when [he] can think of a good name” demonstrating there are some subjects on which Bond is quite ignorant, patent law for example.
  3. In Chapter 8, on page 46, Bond shared a “cold carafe of vodka, very cold” with fellow agent and Bond girl “Vesper Lynd.”
  4. Later in the same chapter, on pages 47-48, Bond orders a bottle of champagne, a “Taittinger 45” but the waiter persuades him that the “Brut Blanc de Blanc 1943” would be better and Bond agrees.
  5. After long expositions about playing baccarat, Bond returns to drinking finally in Chapter 13, on page 75, when he ordered a bottle of champagne for himself and Felix Leiter to celebrate his victory at cards.
  6. Then in Chapter 14, at page 78, Bond orders another bottle of champagne, this time Veuve Cliquot, to have with his scrambled eggs and bacon, which he shared with Vesper.
  7. Shortly after that, Vesper is abducted and Bond gives chase, getting captured and tortured in the process. For many pages nothing is drunk, as Bond can’t even get a drink of water from his torturers. Eventually he gets away and after recovering in the hospital, goes on a holiday on the French coast with Vesper. In Chapter 24, on page 129, she and Bond share yet another bottle of champagne which he chased a page later with some brandy.
  8. Finally, in the second last chapter, number 26 on page 138, they share a final bottle of champagne before the story concludes unexpectedly (and I won’t give away the ending).

So unless I missed it somehow, there’s not one mention of beer in the novel I can find, much less a scene in which Bond actually drinks one. I skimmed through the book many times before resorting to re-reading the whole thing cover to cover trying to be thorough and not miss finding a bottle in a haystack. It was an awful lot of trouble just to prove a point. (The wonderful website Make mine a 007 also details the drinks Bond has in Casino Royale and reaches the same conclusion). So the propaganda spin machine is in high gear and not one news organization bothered to check the facts or even ask where in the novel Bond drinks this seminal beer that apparently makes crass commercialism justifiable. They all just reported what the press release said and didn’t question a thing, even though a moment’s pause should have been enough to suggest it might be too convenient. What are the odds that the story they were re-making just happened to be the only James Bond novel in which the main character drinks a beer as Heineken was paying them an undisclosed six-figure amount to depict him doing just that. Not one reporter considered exploring that angle? It’s good to know our nation’s media is the hands of such a capable, inquisitive bunch.

But let’s look at the story’s other claim, that Casino Royale is the one and only novel in which Bond chooses beer.

  • In Diamonds Are Forever, Fleming’s fourth Bond novel, 007 takes Bill Tanner to lunch at Scotts where he orders a Black Velvet, which is a mixed pint of champagne and Guinness.
  • Later in the same novel, while driving to Saratoga with C.I.A. compatriot Felix Leiter, they stop at roadside greasy spoon called “Chicken in a Basket” where Leiter and Bond have Miller High Life with their lunch.
  • In Goldfinger, the seventh novel, while chasing the villian through Europe, Bond washed down his lunch at Geneva’s Bavaria brasserie with Löwenbräu beer.
  • In The Hildebrand Rarity, one of the short stories in the collection published under the title For Your Eyes Only, after circling an island in a boat Bond stops for a chicken salad sandwich and a “cold beer” from a cooler. This story first appeared in Playboy magazine in 1960.
  • In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the 11th novel (excluding the short stories), Bond has four steins of Franziskaner at the Franziskaner Keller with his taxi driver to celebrate his engagement to Tracy. It is in effect his bachelor party and when he’s reunited with his fiancee, she accuses him of smelling “like a pig of beer and sausages.”
  • In The Man With the Golden Gun, Fleming’s 13th novel, while searching for Scaramanga, Bond orders a Red Stripe in the Dreamland Cafe and has two more before he leaves.
  • In The Living Daylights, part of a second short story collection, this one published under the title Octopussy and the Living Daylights, Bond has a lunch of salted herring and two draft Löwenbräus.

That’s a total of seven instances where James Bond has a beer in six different Fleming stories (four novels and two short stories). So not only does Bond not have a beer in Casino Royale, it was also not the only instance of his doing so as virtually all of the recent news stories have claimed. And lest you think they can weasel their way out of this lie by claiming they meant the Bond films, Bond has also had beer on screen before, too. In the film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, after escaping from Piz Gloria, Bond orders and drinks a beer from an outdoor stand while trying to blend into the crowd. So at every level, the moneyed interests of the film production company and the beer sponsor, with the media’s complicity, is simply rewriting history to fit their short term goals of having Bond drink a Heineken for money in the latest film.

Propaganda aside, I’m certainly in favor of James Bond drinking beer. If they’re trying to re-invent (or reboot) James Bond — which is my understanding of what the new film represents — it makes sense that a modern Bond would have embraced good beer along with the other pleasures of life today. That would be in keeping with the character’s philosophy. Undoubtedly one of the reasons that Bond was not a beer drinker in 1953 and beyond, when Fleming began writing the Bond novels, was that there were not many good beers widely available worldwide and what was available was not often written about. Remember Michael Jackson’s first beer book wasn’t published until 1977. And American wines were held in no better regard during that time period, either. So keeping Bond’s tastes and preferences rooted in a time fifty years ago, when the diversity and quality of alcohol beverages was vastly different than it is today, doesn’t make sense anymore, if indeed it ever did.

But Heineken? Not Heineken. Bond’s character would never drink such swill. He wouldn’t be a snob about wine, food, clothes, cars and practically everything else and then drink such a pedestrian beer. In fact, in the novel Casino Royale, in Chapter 8, just after ordering champagne, Bond makes the following pronouncement:

“You must forgive me,” he said. “I take a ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and drink. It comes partly from being a bachelor, but mostly from a habit of taking a lot of trouble over details. It’s very pernickety and old-maidish really, but then when I’m working I generally have to eat my meals alone and it makes them more interesting when one takes trouble.”

So there is absolutely no way someone who would say that would turn around and order a skunked green-bottle of Heineken. Maybe a Thomas Hardy 1968, a Samuel Adams Utopias, a Deus, or a Cantillon Rose de Gambrinus. He’d more likely order something showy, expensive and impressive; something that showed he had good taste. And that would never be a Heineken. Often Bond orders local specialties in the novels and films, and Casino Royale takes place in northern France. The fictional resort town where most of the novel takes place is supposedly near the mouth of the Somme River in the Picardie region, which is only about two hours from Belgium. So while France is not known for its beers, a good selection of Belgian beers would likely be available at the casino and area restaurants. That’s what a beer savvy Bond would order.

The way I see it, this is simply a money grab despite — or perhaps because of — all of the protestations that it’s not. As entertainment news goes, this seems to be important to a lot of fans, which is no doubt why the spin was necessary in the first place. The story was certainly picked up by a lot of news outlets, both in print and online. That not one I could find got the story right but did the spin doctor’s bidding so completely says quite a lot about the state of our media, I think. Sure, in the end, who cares if a film and the media hoodwinked people into thinking one thing while another was true? It doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of life. It is, after all, just a movie. And while that all may be true, I can’t help but think that in a media culture where the truth seems to have no bearing in editorial decisions that lying to the public about something that really does matter is getting easier and easier to do. Because if the media can lie to the public so unabashedly here, what else are we being lied to about? What else are we not being told? What else is the media not bothering to check or follow up on? And most importantly, when will they start taking beer seriously?

For trivia’s sake, there was also a Bond beer once upon a time. In 1968, there was “James Bond’s 007 Special Blend,” brewed by National Brewing Co. of Baltimore, Maryland. They’re highly collectible because they were produced for only a short time, which was due to having never been officially licensed.

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“A subtle blend of premium beer and malt liquor.” Umm, what will they think of next?

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S.F. Chronicle Insults Beer … Again

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Yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle carried a minuscule little item on the Great American Beer Festival and the Bay Area winners. It was the last blurb in “The Sipping News,” a section for news that apparently doesn’t warrant its own story. Despite the fact that a GABF award is essentially the biggest, most prestigious beer award in the Nation and one of the biggest in the world, apparently it’s still not big enough to rate more attention than seven measly sentences in the Chronicle, the last one insulting. Of course, every Podunk wine competition rates practically full page coverage. It doesn’t matter that there are so many little wine competitions that they’re all but meaningless.

In the first six sentences, W. Blake Gray is all business, reporting the simple facts of who won what. It all sounds fine, except that to someone familiar with the awards, it’s painfully obvious he has no idea what he’s talking about and that he’s left out more than he’s included. Gray’s credentials include wine and sake, perhaps that’s why he was handed the no-prestige assignment. A native of Baltimore, Maryland, he’s certainly not going to be mistaken for H.L. Mencken anytime soon.

His first sentence contains his first error — hey, why wait? — where he claims Bear Republic “won two top awards.” Actually they won a single award. The award has two components because one of the trophies stays with the brewery and the other travels with the brewer who won it so he or she retains the honor even if they stop working for that particular brewery.

In the bulk of his last (or second) paragraph, he reports on who won Gold Medals, and not even all of those in Northern California, ignoring silver and bronze entirely. I guess silver and bronze aren’t worthy of being reported, even if it shows multiple wins by the same breweries he’s already mentioned. Bear Republic, for example, won four medals, Russian River Brewing won three, Schooner’s won two, and Eel River Brewing even won two medals for the same beer! Here are sentences three through six:

Several local breweries won medals in the 69 categories for types of beer. Santa Rosa’s Russian River Brewing Co. took a gold medal in the Imperial or Double India Pale Ale category for its Pliny the Elder. Bison Brewing Co. of Berkeley won a gold medal for its Organic Farmhouse Ale in the French-Belgian Style Saison group. And the Oatmeal Stout beer from Antioch’s Schooner’s Grille & Brewery took a gold in the Oatmeal Stout.

So in reporting these three medals Gray completely ignores a total of 17 awards, including four more gold medals, won by breweries in the Bay Area or Northern California. He fails to mention any of the awards listed below.

Gold: Triple Exultation – 2004, Eel River Brewing Co., Fortuna, CA – Aged Beer (Ale or Lager)
Gold: Organic Pilsner, Butte Creek Brewing Co., Chico, CA – German-Style Pilsener
Gold: Otis Alt, Elk Grove Brewery, Elk Grove, CA – German-Style Brown Ale / Düsseldorf-Style Alt Bier
Gold: Winter Wheatwine, Rubicon Brewing Co., Sacramento, CA – Other Strong Ale or Lager

Silver: William Jones Wheat Beer, El Toro Brewing Co., Morgan Hill, CA – American-Style Wheat Beer
Silver: Eagle Pride Pilsener, Elk Grove Brewery and Restaurant, Elk Grove, CA – German-Style Pilsener
Bronze: Aud Blonde, Russian River Brewing Co., Santa Rosa, CA – Golden or Blonde Ale
Bronze: XP Pale Ale, Bear Republic Brewing Co., Healdsburg, CA – American-Style Pale Ale
Silver: Racer 5, Bear Republic Brewing Co., Healdsburg, CA – American-Style Strong Pale Ale
Silver: Apex Ale, Bear Republic Brewing Co., Healdsburg, CA – American-Style India Pale Ale
Silver: Beatification, Russian River Brewing Co., Santa Rosa, CA – Belgian-Style Sour Ale
Bronze: Total Eclipse Black Ale, Hoppy Brewing Co., Sacramento, CA – Robust Porter
Bronze: Peter Brown Tribute Ale, Bear Republic Brewing Co., Healdsburg, CA – Brown Porter
Bronze: Irish Stout, Schooner’s Grille & Brewery, Antioch, CA – Classic Irish-Style Dry Stout
Bronze: San Quentin’s Breakout Stout, Marin Brewing Co., Larkspur, CA – Foreign (Export)-Style Stout
Silver: Seabright Oatmeal Stout, Seabright Brewery, Santa Cruz, CA – Oatmeal Stout
Silver: Tripel Exultation, Eel River Brewing Co., Fortuna, CA – Old Ale / Strong Ale

So is this story shoddy, ignorant or malicious? It’s hard to imagine doing a worse job in such a small space. It’s so bad I think he should have his professional credentials revoked. If I got that many facts wrong or omitted so much I’d be out of a job. But I guess it’s just beer, so it doesn’t really matter. This is beyond frustration. I’ve come to expect a certain amount of this from the mainstream media. Even here in San Francisco, where we enjoy one of the best places in the country for good beer, our media is so nakedly ignorant that it’s a crime. But this example is such a perversion of good reporting that it makes the Weekly World News look positively Pulitzer-worthy by comparison. What makes this all the worse is that Linda Murphy, who’s the Wine Editor for the Chronicle, is supposedly a friend of good beer. Yet a part of her job is being “responsible for all editorial aspects” meaning she green-lighted and/or approved this travesty. [ NOTE: I’ve since learned that Linda Murphy is no longer at the S.F. Chronicle, which means there are no friends of beer there anymore. ]

Of course, it may be that she and/or the Chronicle gave Gray such an infinitesimal amount of words in which to tell the story that he did the best he could under the circumstances. I might be tempted to conclude that were it not for his last sentence, which displays probably his true feelings for the assignment and the depth of his ignorance about beer. After listing some of the medalists of this year’s GABF, he ends his piece with the following. “To them we say, ‘Ziggy socky, ziggy socky, oy oy oy!'”

To those of you who don’t know what that phrase means, consider yourself lucky. It was made popular by the wildly sophomoric television show, The Man Show, which aired on Comedy Central from 1999-2004 and was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla until 2003. During the first season, Bill “The Fox” Foster was the show’s emcee and part of his schtick was downing a mug of insipid beer in one quick gulp after shouting “Ziggy sokky, ziggy sokky, Hoy! Hoy! Hoy!.” He was also known as “The World’s Fastest Beer Drinker,” a dubious distinction if ever there was one. Foster owned a bar in Santa Monica, California, the Fox Inn, where he performed from 1961-1989. His catch phrase — spellings vary — is actually “Zicke Zacke, Zicke Zacke, Oi, Oi, Oi!” and in it’s original form is a German toast. The Man Show continued to use Foster’s toast as their own even after he died from prostate cancer in 2000. The show itself extolled the basest impulses of the frat-boy mentality, and indeed that was their audience in a nutshell; young, white college-age males who felt discriminated by political correctness, equality, and women generally. Some of the high brow segments included the “Juggie Girls” (jiggling bikini-clad girls dancing in the audience), a recurring skit in which the hosts visit college campuses, “successfully asking girls to sign a petition to “end women’s suffrage,” demanding the repeal of the 19th Amendment (which guarantees women’s voting rights),” and ending every show with scantily clad girls jumping on trampolines.

So Gray spends his last sentence making reference to a German toast for decidedly “American” awards. On top of that, he’s alluding to one of the worst examples of celebrating bad beer to congratulate some of the local winners of medals who make great beer. I assume he thought he was being clever but whatever you think of the Man Show, it is not an apt reference to use in a story about award-winning beer. By using the catch phrase, perhaps he thought it made him sound “in the know” when in fact it did just the opposite. It proves that yet another drinks writer, one who specializes in wine and sake, remains blissfully ignorant of the most popular alcoholic beverage in the world. And that is the mainstream media in a nutshell.

The San Francisco Chronicle lists an impressive nineteen staff writers for its wine and food section, not one of whom lists in his or her biography even a passing familiarity with beer. Now I like wine, indeed, virtually every beer person I know loves wine. I may not be as expert as any of these nineteen “professionals” but I’m pretty confident I know more about wine, food, sake and spirits than all of them combined know about beer. Given that San Francisco is probably the second-strongest market for craft beer in the country (after Portland, Oregon) the Chronicle is doing a great disservice to their readers. It just doesn’t make any sense that they wouldn’t have at least one beer writer on staff given its popularity, craft beer’s recent ascendancy and the sheer number of worthy stories that come up in the Bay Area alone on a regular basis. Except that unlike craft beer drinkers, the wine writers’ disdain for beer is palpable, on display by its unending omission, error and ignorance.

I consider myself to be a beer snob of the most obnoxious type. I will refuse beer from a bottle if no glass is available. If nothing worthy is listed on a restaurant’s menu, I will drink something other than beer. I will not stoop to drink bad beer just because it’s the only kind available. I will soundly chastise a waiter who brings me a wheat beer with a lemon wedge in it — ruining the beer — without first asking me if I want one. But I will also never miss an opportunity to sample and/or learn more about rival beverages. I have attended countless wine tastings, whiskey and other spirits dinners and events, sake samplings, etc. Not only do I consider it my duty as a beer writer to have at least a passing knowledge of other alcoholic beverages (if for no other reason than simple comparison and contrast), I also greatly enjoy trying new things. And paradoxically, many, if not most, wine makers I know also love a good beer, too. It appears to be only the wine media and the readers they mis-inform that remain so completely ignorant of craft beer and refuse to embrace good beer with the panoply of alcoholic beverages produced by mankind.

One has to wonder why this is so? I wish I had some simple answers to this bewildering enigma. Is it simply that wine writers are afraid their wine snob credentials will be revoked if they deign to admit liking beer, a drink of the “common people?” A few years ago, one of the editors of Saveur magazine wrote an editorial on beer displaying such monumental ignorance that several prominent brewers and beer industry leaders canceled their subscriptions and wrote scathing replies to the magazine.

Could it be because retailers and winery’s profit margins allow for more advertising in newspapers and magazines? Perhaps that is too simplistic but following the money is usually a good way to figure out what’s going on. It’s a technique Wal-Mart has mastered in deflecting criticism when entering a new market. They spend a lot on initial advertising locally then ask for favorable coverage, which most small town newspapers are only to happy to give them with the promise of more ad revenue on the line. Of course, as soon as Wal-Mart has estabished themselves in that market, they stop the local advertising entirely, but that’s another story. My point here is merely that it’s not implausable to suggest that beer’s bad coverage could be to protect revenue streams.

Or is is possible that the nation’s wine writers really think that the highly-engineered food products churned out by the big breweries as industrial light lagers is all there is to beer? That might have been acceptable, or at least understandable, twenty — or even ten — years ago. But today? Today it’s completely untenable. How can any food or wine writer ignore the diversity of beer and its superior ability to pair with such a wide range of food dishes? If our food and wine media continue on this path, the consumer will simply have passed them by and perhaps will regard them with the disdain that I do now.

They remind me of the generation of geologists in the 1960s that refused to believe in plate tectonics despite the mounting evidence, because it undermined their careers even when it made them look more foolish the longer they resisted. Today, hardly anyone but adherents of the Flat Earth Society would discount plate tectonics. Will today’s wine and food writers who continue to steadfastly refuse to embrace craft beer be viewed by future readers as ignorant dinosaurs? I think that’s a distinct possibility given the fervor with which they display how much they don’t know. I can’t tell you how many times many of us writing about beer have offered assistance — even free of charge — just so that when newspapers actually do cover beer that they get the story right. And how many times have our offers of assistance been welcomed? To my knowledge, exactly zero times. Apparently ignorance really is bliss, but it’s driving me to drink.

UPDATE (10.13): The Chronicle printed the following letter today in response to this article:

Beer Deserves Respect

Editor — Re: The Sipping News (Oct. 6). Ziggy socky, ziggy socky, oy oy oy? Thanks for mentioning a few of the Bay Area’s many awards at this year’s Great American Beer Festival in Denver. It’s one thing for the award-winning Wine section to remain ignorant of the burgeoning beer scene but quite another to be sophomorically disrespectful.

TOM DALLDORF

Publisher
Celebrator Beer News
Hayward

Pairing Beer and … Jerky?

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I’m always looking for examples and ideas that promote food with better beer, so when I saw the headline to a press release entitled “Say Goodbye to Wine and Cheese Parties” I was understandably intrigued. Then there was the first paragraph, which included the sentence: “it’s time to say goodbye to the ubiquitous, tired, wine and cheese party.” Amen. I couldn’t agree more. Wine doesn’t work well with cheese, as most honest sommeliers will admit, but the pairing has certainly helped wine’s image along nicely. Too bad it simply isn’t true that they go together. Beer, on the other hand, has been shown to pair up extremely well with cheese. The Trappist monks of Scourmont Abbey, who brew Chimay, also make cheeses that are perfect with their beers.

But this press release isn’t about anything quite so high-minded. It’s about beef jerky, of all things. Now I’m not opposed to jerky per se, but it’s not exactly the gourmet food to lift beer out of the tailgating food doldrums. Plus, the ad campaign surrounding this press release involves Sasquatch (a.k.a. Bigfoot) and his love of all things jerky. Not surprisingly, it has all the subtlety of a beer commercial on television. The company is Jack Links and they’ve even set up a MySpace page for their Sasquatch.

From the press release:

Move over wine and cheese, now there’s beer and jerky. A fun feast can be on the table in just five minutes using delicious, high-protein snacks from Jack Link’s® Beef Jerky. Made from the finest cuts of meat, in a variety of flavors and textures to satisfy even the most discerning palate, today’s jerky is packaged in shelf-stable, stay-fresh, re-sealable packages so they are always at the ready should unexpected guests arrive. Keep several types of chilled beers, lagers, micro-brews and ales on hand and you’re prepared for any spur-of-the-moment party.

“Along with America’s growing appreciation for the flavor and body of today’s micro-brews, ales and lagers, is the quest for the best foods to go with them,” says Damian McConn, certified brewing chemist. “We’ve paired varieties of beer with the savory flavors of Jack Link’s Beef Jerky. The orchestration of balance between the hop bitterness and malt sweetness is carefully matched with the unique flavor profiles of jerky for the perfect party taste combinations.”

Hmm. Maybe, but surely there are better meat and beer combinations. I must confess I did have some salmon jerky the last night of GABF that Geoff Larsen, who owns Alaskan Brewing, brought down with him. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any of his terrific Smoked Porter to wash it down. So while I can’t really disagree that jerky probably does work with beer, it’s hard to swallow the way the press release is talking about jerky as if it were filet mignon. But okay, I’ll play along. Here are their recommendations. What do you think?
 

Beer and Jack Link’s Jerky: Six Quick Party Pairings

Barbecue Bliss: Barbeque beef jerky and full-flavored, dry stout. For a big, full-bodied blast of flavor, nothing beats the combination of beer n’ barbecue — forget the grill — just tear open a few bags of ready-to-eat, authentic jerky. Whether it’s the naturally smoked, slow-cooked goodness of Jack Link’s KC Masterpiece® Beef Jerky, KC Masterpiece Pork Tender Cuts or Hickory Smoked Beef Jerky, the grill has met its match. “This is a strongly flavored jerky with multiple dimensions, so I recommend a fairly complex, rich beer with some of the characteristics of the barbecue,” says McConn. “A full- flavored dry stout with a good body works best. The burnt, roasted notes of the stout provide the flavor to accompany the barbecue taste.”

Taste of the South: Spicy beef jerky and U.S. India Pale Ale. When you’ve got a hankerin’ for hot, sultry flavors, bring out the taste of the South with spicy meat snacks and thirst-quenching lagers and ales. Set your friends’ taste buds aflame with bowls of Jack Link’s Louisiana Hot Sauce Beef Jerky or Jalapeno Carne Seca Beef Jerky, both seasoned with flavor-filled spices, gently mesquite smoked and slow-cooked for the savory goodness you expect from authentic jerky. Spice up the party with a sample of flavorful Chicken Fajita Tender Cuts or Jack Link’s Sweet & Hot Beef Jerky. “Spicy jerky pairs well with a very hoppy U.S. India Pale Ale,” says McConn. “The hops, along with the higher alcohol, tame the heat, while the big malt profile of the beer matches the flavor of the beef. Hot, spicy flavors require big, hoppy beers.”

Taste of the Orient: Teriyaki jerky and German Kolsch or U.S. Golden Ale. If the tempting taste of teriyaki beckons you to the table, enhance the experience with a traditional German Kolsch-style beer or American Golden Ale. “The low hopping of these style beers allows the aroma of the teriyaki to remain present, while the fuller body complements the flavor of the beer,” says McConn. “Avoid overly hoppy or malty beers with this flavor of jerky.”

Steak House Supreme: Steak jerky and ESB (Extra Special Bitter) beer. Steak and beer: it’s the supreme combination. Now, you can create an authentic steakhouse experience on a moment’s notice with Jack Link’s A.1.® Steak Sauce Beef Jerky, A.1. Steak Sauce Beef Steak Nuggets or Jack Link’s® Prime Rib Tender Cuts paired with bold-flavored beers and ales. “I recommend an ESB style of beer. With the bitterness of the beer, you will encounter fruity, hoppy notes that complement the savory nature of the jerky,” says McConn. “A German-style ale works well with this flavor pairing also.”

Taste of Home: Ham or turkey jerky & doppel bock or medium-bodied lager. Who can resist the down-home flavor of tender roasted turkey or perhaps baked ham glazed with maple and brown sugar? You can evoke memories of these popular home-cooked meals in five minutes using Jack Link’s Turkey Jerky, Jack Link’s Maple & Brown Sugar Ham Jerky or Maple & Brown Sugar Pork Tender Cuts. “These pair wonderfully with the rich, full-bodied traits of a doppel bock,” says McConn. “The slight caramel notes of the bock pair well with the sweetness of the jerky, while the maltier, sweeter notes of the beer contrast the savory nature of the ham. I recommend a medium-bodied lager such as an Oktoberfest or marzen-style beer; these beers are brewed with spicier German hops that work well with pork and ham dishes.”

Pick a Pepper Party: Peppered jerky & English ale or English India pale ale. Pick a package of peppered jerky to perk up your next party. Let your guests pick their favorite from meat snack varieties such as Jack Link’s Peppered Beef Jerky or Peppered Steak Nuggets, both naturally smoked with mesquite and seasoned with a unique blend of peppercorns and robust spices. Or, think outside the pepper shaker and try Jack Link’s Pepperoni Jerky, a zesty treat loaded with all the flavor of authentic Italian sausage and the genuine goodness of beef jerky. “This jerky pairs well with English-style ale or English India pale ale,” says McConn. “The assertive presence of the hops helps balance the spiciness of the pepper, especially at the finish. These are both full-bodied beers that hold up well to the flavor of the beef while the fruity, spicy hops complement the peppery overtones.”

Here’s to American Brew

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I knew Florentine Films, which is the Ken Burns’ documentary film production company, was working on a film on the history of craft beer but I didn’t know exactly who was doing it or what it was precisely. There are four directors at Florentine Film. In addition to Burns, there’s also Larry Hott, Roger Sherman and Buddy Squires. A PA had contacted me looking for old pictures of Bert Grant and some other very early craft brewers. My photos didn’t go back as far as they needed so I put them on to the Celebrator’s photo archive, which does. The depth and breadth of who they were looking for was very impressive and certainly inferred they had done their homework. I was eagerly anticipating a high-profile film about the history of our peculiar industry. Between that and Beer Wars, which was shot last year and is apparently being edited now, it seems like we may be on the brink of some wonderful opportunities for people to find out what craft beer is — perhaps for the first time — and maybe seek it out and drink it in, literally.

Surprisingly, I discovered when a press release via e-mail appeared in my inbox that in fact the film American Brew is being sponsored by “Here’s to Beer,” the A-B sponsored effort to educate people about beer. I have, of course, not been won over by that effort and have said some very harsh words about it. Just look at the post before this one for a flavor of my discontent. But every thing about this film that they’re sponsoring looks great. The people involved seem beyond reproach. Roger Sherman, who is directing the film, is no stranger to film-making and has several awards under his belt to prove it. And many of the people listed on the film’s teaser poster I count as my friends. So unlike, say Beerfest, everything I know about this movie is positive and I’m looking very forward to actually seeing this one.

The one niggling thing about it is that essentially Anheuser-Busch paid for what at least appears to be a film that at first blush doesn’t seem like it will do them any favors. Maybe I’m missing something here, but a film that finally shows the history of innovative, small authentic craft beer would by contast not show the big breweries in a particularly flattering light. I certainly want to believe that A-B’s influence on the project will not extend to the substance and content of the movie, but it’s hard not to speculate. The trailer will be debuting at GABF and it will be interesting to see it. Let’s hope we’ll all be able to say, without reservation, “Here’s to American Brew.”

 

NBWA Gives Bob Lachky Beer’s “Medal of Freedom”

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The National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) gave its Industry Service Award to Anheuser-Busch executive VP Bob Lachky. In their press release, the NBWA stated that the reason they gave the award to Lachky was for “his efforts to promote beer and the important role distributors play in the marketplace”

From the press release:

“August Busch IV created the Global Industry Development group because we firmly believe that everyone in the industry must work to sell and grow the entire category,” Lachky said. “It has been a privilege to work with NBWA and its members and I am thrilled to accept this award on behalf of Here’s To Beer and Anheuser-Busch. Seeing the signs of beer industry improvement this year, we think we are making progress.”

Since late last year, Lachky has spearheaded the “Here’s To Beer” industry initiative. The grassroots campaign to elevate the image of beer focuses on three key areas:

  1. Reminding consumers of the social value of beer — it brings people together in an unpretentious way.
  2. Romancing the product and the art of brewing — reinforcing beer’s refreshment, all natural ingredients and the beauty of its liquid.
  3. Encouraging consumers to view beer differently — giving them new ways to enjoy beer including ideas and recipes for pairing with food.

Well, good for Bob. I’m sure he’s a terrific guy. And as I’ve said before the “idea” of an industry-wide promotion of the positive aspects of beer à la “Got Milk?” is something the industry sorely needs. I hate beating a dead horse, but the wine industry’s efficacy in educating their consumers and raising the standards for wine put us as an industry to shame. Sure they’ve had more money and more built-in appeal (or high-end prejudice), but that’s not all they’ve been fortunate about. Perhaps most importantly, Gallo (and the other large-scale wine producers) haven’t been undermining those efforts for decades the way the big brewery’s advertising has damaged the image of beer. Craft beer’s challenge has been far more Sisyphean in nature. For every positive step craft beer has moved forward, talking frogs, man law, flatulent horses, twins and all manner of other juvenilia has dragged us back down again. As a result, many people remain deliriously ignorant of what good beer even is, never mind how best to enjoy it.

So for the segment of the industry most responsible for the negative associations that beer has today to take up the fight to improve beer’s image seems downright Orwellian to me. Kafka would have a hard time understanding this one. Yet many of my colleagues remain optimistic about this program or have remained silent about it. We all think the industry needs what the stated goals of “Here’s to Beer” are, but given A-B’s transparent agenda, how can anyone take it seriously. Obviously the other brewers saw through A-B’s motives, which is why they all chose not to participate.

And that was my initial — and continuing — problem with Anheuser-Busch’s “Here’s to Beer” campaign. Despite the fact that they continue to spin it as an industry-wide campaign, not a single brewer apart from A-B is involved with the project. Even the trade organization, the Beer Institute, who had initially co-sponsored the effort, withdrew their support right after the first commercial aired during the Super Bowl in Early February of this year. Bob apparently flew all over the country for months trying to convince other brewers to join their bandwagon, but not a single one took the bait. So I have a hard time seeing how this has been a success. Yet the media, even the trade media for the most part, has gone along with it in lockstep calling it a “grassroots campaign,” to take an example from the NBWA’s own press release. Here’s the definition of “grassroots:”

“of, pertaining to, or involving the common people, esp. as contrasted with or separable from an elite.”

So how is this campaign, run solely by the biggest brewer in the country by a wide margin, in any way “grassroots?” Simple. It’s not. You can’t get more elite in terms of resources and influence than A-B. Only a few come close, and not very close at that.

Also in the press release, Lachky makes the following claim. “Seeing the signs of beer industry improvement this year, we think we are making progress.” Wow, he’s taking credit for industry growth this year, how magnanimous of him. But I really can’t see how that’s even remotely true. First of all, the big breweries have made only very modest gains this year. Despite the self-serving rhetoric to the contrary, the big guys aren’t experiencing a period of turnaround and rapid growth. They’re still on the ropes — so to speak — with their core brands. Craft beer, on the other hand, was up 9% last year and looks to be tracking at 11% this year. What growth there is in the industry, that’s where the majority of it resides.

Having not met Bob Lachky personally, it’s hard for me to say he isn’t an enthusiastic supporter of beer. He certainly appears to have worked very hard on this project. And he may be a great guy, who knows? (I will have an opportunity to meet him in Denver next week.) So despite the fact that we’d all like to see the image of beer elevated to its proper place, has the “Here’s to Beer” campaign actually accomplished anything award-worthy? Are there droves of people who’ve been turned around and educated by the information on the website or the marketing materials made available to beer distributors? It sure doesn’t seem that way from where I’m sitting. It takes more than putting up a website and running a few PSAs for a mere eight months to undo the damage to beer’s image that A-B and the other industrial brewers have perpetrated over the last several decades.

So why did the NBWA choose to “honor” Bob Lachky and his “Here’s to Beer” campaign after only eight months and very little obvious or verifiable results? To me that’s the question in all of this. It reminds me a little bit of our President’s recent tendency to give the “Medal of Freedom” to beleaguered underlings as he shows them the door. Screw up, get a medal. Which is not say that Bob Lachky made any mistakes — as far as I know he didn’t — but awards and medals should be for achieving something tangible and measurable. Otherwise they’re meaningless, aren’t they? And while I mean no disrespect, I can’t see that the “Here’s to Beer” campaign has achieved any of its goals or united the industry. We don’t live in a world that, unlike eight months ago, now reveres beer’s social value, romantic allusions and diversity. And while there does seem to be anecdotal signs that the media may be taking beer slightly more seriously lately, I can’t draw a line of causality between that and A-B’s PR efforts, however well-intentioned. And frankly, that could be simply wishful thinking on my part since I’m watching the industry more closely (and a little differently) this year than I have the previous couple of years.

The only way beer will be brought to more people is the only way it’s ever worked, at least in my experience. And that’s one-on-one. The people best positioned to create any sort of “grassroots” movement are the people already doing just that. The servers in brewpubs, the brewers giving tours and pouring beer at festivals, passionate retail clerks and “common people” — like you and me — who simply like good beer and want to share it with their friends. That’s the only grassroots I can see succeeding.

Again, the idea of providing more information to consumers who want to learn more about beer is quite laudable. But it has to come from people who really believe the message they’re preaching, not from the largest beer manufacturer in the country trying to raise it’s share price by any means necessary. And until the “Here’s to Beer” campaign is truly an industry-wide effort with its true goals free from ulterior motives, it’s hard to applaud the effort as shamelessly and unquestioningly as the NBWA did in honoring it. I’ll join the NBWA in praising Bob Lachky for making the effort he has — if for no other reason than to give him the benefit of the doubt — but the results of that effort in the form of the “Here’s to Beer” do not yet deserve such accolades.

Costco Decision Stayed

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U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman placed another stay on her earlier ruling in the closely-watched Coscto decision she handed down in April. Her earlier ruling essentially dismantled Washington State’s three-tier system without regard to the consequences, including many of the protections that ensure a level playing field for businesses of varying sizes. Costco originally brought the suit because, if successful, they would reap enormous benefit, as would other big box retailers. The losers would include small retailers, small brewers and ultimately consumers once the landscape of the state’s alcohol business has been greatly altered after the changes are implemented. Costco and the business press have continued to spin the story by claiming it will lower prices of beer to the consumer, but that’s simply propaganda as I’ve pointed out before and again in response to a thoughtful comment.

The recent stay gives state lawmakers until May 1, 2007 to change Washington’s beer and wine laws through new legislation. Since her initial ruling effectively makes the current laws invalid, an entirely new system to control the relationships between manufacuters, distributors (if any) and retailers must be created. Whether that can be accomplished in under eight months in a way that’s fair to all concerned, including consumers, remains to be seen. But it seems a Herculean task and fated to fail, at least in my opinion. There are just too many competeing interests for almost any legislature to come up with a workable solution. It seems more likely that if any legislation is passed, it will favor the big box stores and big breweries but will at least appear to balance critics’ concerns, while not actually doing so. That’s been the general pattern of legislation in our business-dominated times. Big business contributes to political campaigns and politicians enact legeslation favorable to their benefactors. And as usual, you and I wll be left holding the empty non-returnable bottle.

Bourbon Barrel Beer Waning?

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history
According to the “Beer Man” of Wisconsin’s Appleton Post-Crescent (and syndicated nationally on the Gannett News Service) — Todd Haefer — bourbon barrel stouts are just a fad. It’s nice to see any newspaper embrace beer and give space regularly to reporting on beer so I hate to contradict such a worthy endeavor, but I think misinformation can be just as damning as no information at all. Todd, who took over for the previous “Beer Man” in October of last year, had this to say in the course of reviewing a beer from Tyranena Brewing of Lake Mills, Wisconsin:

There was a craze a few years ago in microbrewery circles involving the aging of imperial stouts in bourbon barrels. Some were very good. But, as will likely happen with the current trend of “imperial India pale ales” and “imperial pilsners,” it soon ran its course. Examples do still exist, but not on a national scale.

Really? Bourbon Barrel beers are just another fad? As far as I know, there are still dozens of breweries still making a barrel-aged stout. I’m especially troubled by his characterizing them as no longer being “on a national scale.” Were bourbon barrel stouts ever on a national scale, by which I can only presume he means at least one beer that’s distributed nationally to all fifty states? Having just done a barrel-aged tasting for the next issue of the Celebrator, I can say quite comfortably that all beers aged in wood are on the rise. These things are quite literally coming out of the woodwork. More and more brewers are experimenting with what barrel-aging can add to their line-up of beers. Every year, there are more festivals dedicated to this niche style. The Bistro in Hayward, California, just added one which takes place November 11 and will include judging in three categories.

Perhaps Todd is speaking specifically about stouts aged on wood. But if there are less barrel-aged stouts today then a few years ago — and I don’t know of any evidence to suggest that — then there are many more styles now being aged in wood then ever before in the history of American beer. If a brewery today chooses an IPA to age instead of a stout does that make stout just a fad? I think stouts were the obvious place to begin experimenting with barrel aging beers and having found success there brewers are branching out in ever-widening directions to discover what other complexities can be achieved through the aging process. This is an exciting time in brewing and I don’t like the idea of saying that if bourbon barrel stouts led to barrel-aging other beers and a whole new type of beer-making process that they were “just a fad.” It’s just the wrong message to send, especially when the real story is much more positive.

All manner of beer today is being aged not just in bourbon barrels, but in various wine barrels, whiskey barrels, and even fruit barrels and who knows what else with some pretty spectacular results. And having previously been relegated to the experimental category, since 2002 the Great American Beer Festival has been judging “Wood- and Barrel-Aged Beer” as a separate category. Clearly this type of beer is here to stay. Barrel-aged beers are not “dry beers” or “low-carb” beers created by marketing men. The are a legitimate new additive process that produces some spectacular complexities in craft beers. We should celebrate that fact, perhaps with a barrel-aged stout? Who’s with me? I’m pouring.