After the Bistro’s IPA Festival, I stopped by the Toronado for their 21st anniversary party. Last year, for their 20th, they pulled out all the stops. This year things were more subdued but great fun nonetheless.
Owner Dave Keene opened special bottles throughout the evening.
Like this special bottle of Duvel, which he poured for a toast.
Which everyone lucky enough to get a glass used to raise a toast to the Toronado’s 21st Anniversary.
Betsy and Melissa Myers share a festive squeeze.
Here’s a perfect illustration of why we desperately need alcohol education for our nation’s youth. I’m sure that neo-prohibitionists will read this story and view it as a vindication of their draconian policies of abstinence and keeping the minimum drinking age the highest in the civilized world.
Yesterday in Boulder, Colorado, a dozen college students from the University of Colorado gathered at a local residence with cheap beer and other alcoholic beverages to wile away the late summer weekend. They put up a sign on a pole facing a busy thoroughfare that read “You honk, WE DRINK.” Cars passing the group honked en masse, causing police to show up because of complaints about the noise. Their response was interesting. As one member of the group, Lauren Boyd, described what the police said, they told us. “I like your style, just be more quiet.” They were also told they were on the “edge of legality” because of their proximity to the sidewalk. The group was instructed to back up and quiet down. They complied, changing their sign from “You Honk” to “Give Us the Finger.”
The brouhaha continued another five hours with passersby flipping them off with glee the entire time. The police did not return because, in their words, “they were on private property and of legal drinking age, [so] the party was allowed to continue — sign and all.” Surprisingly enough, I’m probably in agreement with the neo-prohibitionists that this is not a responsible way to use alcohol. We part company, I suspect, on why. To me it points out the need for education about alcohol before young adults are set loose in the world, often for the first time in college. If children were allowed to sample alcohol under the supervision of their parents in the home (which in most places is illegal), with other responsible adults (ditto) or were allowed to begin legally drinking earlier, by the time they were living on their own, the taboo associated with suddenly being free would be far less likely to lead to this type of binge drinking.
Boulder is also, ironically, the home of the Brewers Association, a trade group that looks after the interests of the nation’s small brewers. For this somewhat embarrassing display of youthful exuberance to have occurred in their backyard makes it doubly clear that the current policy regarding youth and alcohol is not only not working, but is more than likely exacerbating the problem by using a foolhardy all or nothing approach and ignoring the value of education. Once kids reach college age knowing absolutely nothing about the effects of alcohol it’s easy to explain such binge behavior because they’ve never seen responsible drinking and are completely unfamiliar with it, thanks in large part to the efforts of the anti-alcohol elements of our society. A little knowledge might go a long way to raising more responsible children into adulthood but as long as that’s not permitted, we’ll continue to have college binge drinking. And not coincidentally, neo-prohibitionists will continue to have something to point to in furtherance of their agenda of keeping the minimum drinking age at 21, ignoring the likely cause that it’s their own efforts that continue to make binging a problem.
The 11th annual Bistro IPA Festival took place yesterday in Hayward, California. The niche festival is one the must-attend festivals in the Bay Area. Vic and Cynthia put on a great festival with over 50 IPAs.
In the tent at the festival, outside of the Bistro, during the event.
For more photos from this year’s Bistro IPA Festival, visit the photo gallery.
My friend and colleague Rick (thanks, Rick) sent me the first one of these and the second one just called out to me. They’re not strictly about beer, but are really about foods that go quite well with beer. But they were just too damn funny not to share.
Efes Pilsen is the most popular beer in Turkey. First brewed in 1969, it quickly established itself as a local favorite. The Efes Beverage Group is one of the largest beverage companies in the region, and also contract brews Beck’s, Foster’s, Miller Genuine Draft, Sol, Warsteiner and even Coca-Cola.
But Efes Pilsen is the flagship brand, and is in over 50 markets throughout Europe and Asia. In Turkey, Efes has 82% of the market in Turkey, 72% of Moldova, 23% of Kazakhstan and even 9% of the Russian market. From a recent press release:
I can’t any specific information about the contest below, but based on the signs, it would appear that Efes Pilsen sponsored some sort of competition to create art using their beer cans or other paraphernalia, such as bottle caps. Even though they’re all pretty impressive, I have no idea who might have won. |
Below are some of the entries in the Efes Beer Can Art Competition:
Someone from Time sent me a link to a story from Fortune magazine on CNN’s Money website (if you ever needed an illustration of how concentrated the mainstream media is, this is it). The story itself is short, but quite interesting.
There are also some other interesting statistics there, too, such as Anheuser-Busch’s market share over the past five decades. In 1970, A-B had a 17.&% share, which grew 10% to 27.7% by 1980. In 1990, it had risen steeply again to 43.3% but growth slowed by the year 2000, where it essentially leveled off at 48.3 and then began sliding back very slowly. By last year it was 48.2%.
In 1970, Miller wasn’t even in the top five, but thanks to the phenomenal success of Miller Lite by 1980 they enjoyed a 20.6% share of the market, but never got much higher than that and by 2007 had even dropped to 18.4%. Coors, likewise, wasn’t in the top five in 1970 and wasn’t even a national brand at that point. By 1980 they’d just cracked the top five, with 7.6% and continued to grow very slowly until by 2007 they were 11.1% of the total beer market.
There’s also an Q&A with Jim Koch, founder of Boston Beer Company, who is now the largest remaining American brewer, depending on how that’s defined. Pabst and Yuengling also have claims to the throne. Pabst makes more beer than the other two but owns no brewery of their own. Boston Beer brews more beer than Yuengling, but contract brews a little over half of their production. Fortune describes the maker of Samuel Adams “as the country’s largest, independent, publicly-traded brewery.”
California State Bill AB 1245, better known as the Trash & Trinkets Bill, comes up for a vote in the state Senate early next week, possibly even on Monday. To re-familiarize with what’s at stake, please read my earlier post about the bill, which managed to make it through committee at the end of June. The California Small Brewers Association has issued an Action Alert in an effort to let state Senators know that craft beer lovers are not in favor in this bill, because it will give large breweries yet another competitive advantage and will make it more difficult for small breweries to get their product to market. If you live in California, please consider helping today, if possible, or as early Monday as you can. Here’s what you can do, from the CSBA Action Alert:
It is important to take just a few moments right now to pick up the phone and call your state Senator this afternoon and ask them to vote NO on AB 1245. This will only take a few minutes but will help our cause.
This phone call DOES make a difference. You can find the number to your Senator’s office here
Please call their Sacramento office and ask to speak to the Senator. If they cannot take your call, ask to speak to the chief of staff. If they can not take your call, talk to any staffer and ask them to be sure your message gets to the Senator.
Simply let them know that AB 1245 is a special interest bill that only one brewer supports — Anheuser-Busch. ALL other brewers are opposed to this bill. This bill is highly detrimental to the viability of craft brewers, it is anti-small business and will affect access to market for craft brewers.
Background: This bill will increase the spending limit on give-aways to consumers from $0.25 to $5.00. What A-B can buy in large quantities for $5.00 would cost a craft brewer $10-20.00. Imagine this; an A-B sales rep goes into a retailer and asks to do a Monday Night Football promotional night and will give away to all of the patrons a free mini cooler backpack. It is suggested that it might be a good idea to take off the three independent craft beers on draft and replace them with A-B brands. This is not far fetched. This bill could decrease access to market for the craft brewers of California.
If you love craft beer, please help the cause by contacting your elected Senator as soon as possible. Thank you.
Yesterday, 21st Amendment Brewery & Restaurant launched their Brewer Outreach Program, where co-owner/brewer Shaun O’Sullivan will invite brewers to the 21st Amendment and have them brew whatever beer they like. The first guest brewer was Mitch Steele, brewmaster at Stone Brewing, who brewed his Imperial English IPA with Shaun and Jesse Houck.
In the brewery: Mitch Steele and Dave Hopwood (both from Stone) and Shaun O’Sullivan.
For more photos from Mitch Steele’s guest brewing at 21st Amendment, including a short movie of the boil, visit the photo gallery.
The tiny Northern California town of Weed is home to Mt. Shasta Brewing Co., makers of Weed Ales. The town was named for its founder, Abner Weed. Since the other, more notorious kind of weed is illegal, Mt. Shasta had crowns printed up that read “Try Legal Weed.” Sure, it was a bit of cheek, but all in good fun. Of course, the TTB, who approves what goes on beer labels and such at the federal level, didn’t agree and told the brewery they had to remove the offending crowns because it violated a vague policy against referencing illegal drug use. Of course, given a moment’s thought, reason, common sense and a familiarity with grammar should suggest that what they were saying was exactly the opposite: they wanted people to NOT buy illegal weed but instead spend their money on the legal kind, their beer that is. Like most businesses, they’d like to turn a profit and make a living so it’s hard to understand why the TTB would think they were trying to encourage buying a product other than the one they were selling.
| At this year’s Boonville Beer Festival, I listened to Vaune Dillmann chronicle his ordeal with the federal agency in great detail, and marveled at how detached from reality our government can be from time to time. I think that’s the way with most, if not all, bureaucracies. They tend to concentrate their own power in ever narrowing ways so that over time they come to have an internal logic that becomes increasingly detached from the rest of society. There are countless examples at both the state and federal level where oversight on labels has been maddeningly ridiculous. But one thing was clear from listening to Dillmann; he was not going to roll over and intended to fight the ruling. You can read his initial account of the story on their website. |
Countless mainstream news outlets spread the story, which further showed our federal government in an increasingly bad light. Last month, there was an even a story about it in the Libertarian magazine Reason. Author Greg Beato pointed out that there is a perfume called Opium, soft drinks called Coke, energy drinks called Fixx, Bong Water, Buzzed, Speed Freak, and even Cocaine! And not one of those required any federal approval whatsoever. But add alcohol, and suddenly everyone loses their collective minds. Or as Robert Lehrman, an alcohol attorney sees it. “I don’t think they like making all these immensely subjective decisions on every cotton-picking label that comes down the pike. But that’s how the legislature set it up. The government decided that liquor’s taboo and therefore needs restrictions beyond those for food generally.” You have to ask why that should be so, especially when so many other beverages, foods and other goods openly exploit the very subject that TTB want to protect consumers from when it’s associated with beer. But more curiously, the prohibition against drug references came not from Congress, but is the result of a 1994 internal memo that set “new guidelines for socially acceptable labeling.” But it’s entirely unclear how restricting so-called allusions to drugs protects anyone, especially when every other product sold in America is under no such similar restrictions. Not to mention that alcohol can only be legally sold to adults, and why do we need to protect adults from language that might make some passing reference to drugs? I mean, so what? Does the government believe as an adult that I can’t handle it if I read words about drugs? Do they think I’ll be unable to resist actually trying illegal drugs from simply seeing a reference to them on a bottle of beer? If I haven’t done so from seeing drug references on cologne, soda pop, energy drinks and god knows what else, what makes them think beer will push me over the edge into a drug induced lifestyle? I’m simply baffled at the inanity of it all.
Dallimann was prepared to fight the ruling, but his initial appeal was denied. He was in the process of contacting his legislators and consulting with attorneys, but then, late last week, the TTB dispatched a registered letter to Weed, California, telling the brewery they could once more put “Try Legal Weed” on their bottle caps. They gave the following rationale. “Based on the context of the entire label, we agree that the phrase in question refers to the brand name of the product and does not mislead consumers.” I’d like to believe that the TTB honestly thought about their ruling and based their reversal on reason, but it seems more likely that they didn’t count on all the publicity that sprouted up like … well, weeds. Dallimann shared the letter with the Associated Press, who wrote a story detailing the end of the dispute.
Over the 2-1/2+ years I’ve been blogging here I think I’ve revealed a number things about which I’m a self-avowed geek: beer, of course, but also calendars, potato chips, economics and View-Master reels, to name a few. Well, I guess I have to unfurl yet another geeky passion of mine: vexillology. For the uninitiated, that’s the study of flags. Since I was a kid, I’ve loved pouring over books of flags, learning the meanings behind the colors and the symbols on the flags. I find it fascinating while my wife just shakes her head every time we pass a flag unknown to her that I can identify without a moment’s hesitation. I confess it’s not the kind of information that comes in handy very often, but it sure makes watching the Olympics easier.
So I was thrilled when I stumbled across these yesterday while trying to find a picture of Batman holding a beer. An ad agency in Boston, Arnold Worldwide, last December created a series of flags for a beer bar in Boston, the Sunset Grill & Tap. Their website claims they have the best beer selection in Boston with 112 beers on tap and 380 bottled, but given the looks of the site I rather doubt that quality is the driving force, just the quantity of their selection. If I had to guess — and I could be wrong, of course — I’d say they carry things like Stella Artois and not Westmalle from Belgium and Asahi but not Hitachino Nest Beer from Japan.
But the flags that their ad agency did for them are terrific, in my opinion. Simple is often best, I think. They just took the flags from three countries (at least these are the only ones I know of) and altered them ever so slightly to make you think of both beer and that nation in one simple image, their flag. The logo for Sunset Grill & Tap is the lower right-hand corner, but it’s unobtrusive. Now that’s creative, especially to the average amateur vexillologist.