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Anchor To Receive Ralston Award From SF Museum & Historical Society

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anchor-steam
Fritz Maytag may have stepped back from his daily duties at Anchor Brewing, the brewery he owned and ran since 1965, but that doesn’t mean he’s slowing down. He’s still running his winery, York Creek Vineyards, and consulting with the new owners of Anchor Brewing & Distilling.

And later this month, on November 18, the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society will present their William C. Ralston Corporate Award to Fritz Maytag and Dave Burkhart on behalf of Anchor Brewing.

From the press release:

Receiving the Ralston Award on behalf of Anchor Brewing will be Fritz Maytag and David Burkhart. Maytag, considered the father of modern microbreweries, had been at the helm of Anchor Brewing for 45 years. Maytag helped spark a revival in the craft of making beer by hand and inspired thousands of entrepreneurs to follow him in creating small, artisan breweries. He won the 2008 James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award. The company was sold this spring but he serves as Chairman Emeritus, Anchor Brewing Company.

Burkhart, a staff member of Anchor Brewing and a California-born historian and honors graduate of Yale, is the author of Earthquake Days: The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake & Fire in 3D and the editor of Cocktail Boothby’s American Bartender. He is also a professional trumpeter who teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and performs with the San Francisco Opera and the San Francisco Symphony. His latest book project is called Cocktails & Punches in Mark Twain’s San Francisco.

Congratulations to both, and to Anchor. Tickets to the Awards Luncheon may be purchased online.

Another View On Defining Craft Beer

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When the Brewers Association redefined “craft beer” a few years ago, it was viewed with controversy and downright scorn by more than a few people. It’s certainly understandable that the BA needs to define what it means to be a craft brewer, because after all that’s their charter. They’re a trade organization for the craft brew industry. They have to be able to define what it means to be a member and to determine who can and cannot be a member. The new definition took a long time to be agreed upon, and even today not everyone does, even within the organization among its members. Some former members were kicked out at the stroke of a pen, so to speak, when they no longer fit the new definition. I personally have mixed feelings about how it’s currently defined and believe it needs further tweaking. But I’m not actually prepared to launch into that discussion right now. Someone else has, however.

Danner Kline is one of the founders of Free the Hops, the grassroots organization that successfully got the Alabama state legislature to raise the maximum a.b.v. allowed from 6% to 13.9% and continues to work toward bringing “the highest quality beers in the world to Alabama.” Kline has his own take on the craft beer definition, What Is Craft Beer?, that appeared in the Birmingham Weekly last Thursday. It’s worth a read, and it’s worth thinking about and discussing, as it will have to change again, especially if the effort right now to change the numbers for breweries in the Unites States Congress is successful.

Beer In Art #101: Vincent Van Gogh’s Wheat Fields

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Today’s artworks are all by one of the world’s most well-known artists, Vincent Van Gogh. Given last Friday’s Session topic — wheat beers — I thought it would be fun to look at some paintings of what fields. Wheat fields were a favorite subject for Van Gogh and throughout his life he painted at least 40 artworks that included a wheat field.

One of his most famous wheat field paintings was Wheatfield with Crows, painted toward the end of Van Gogh’s life, in 1890, the same year he passed away. It was also the subject of an episode of Simon Schama’s Power of Art, a wonderful documentary series on art that I heartily recommend. In addition, it was used in a surreal sequence of a lesser know film by Akira Kurosawa called Dreams. The original is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Van_Gogh-wheat_field_w_crows-1890

Here’s what the Van Gogh Museum has to say about the painting:

Wheatfield with Crows is one of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings and probably the one most subject to speculation. It was executed in July 1890, in the last weeks of Van Gogh’s life. Many have claimed it was his last work, seeing the dramatic, cloudy sky filled with crows and the cut-off path as obvious portents of his coming end. However, since no letters are known from the period immediately preceding his death, we can only guess what his final work might really have been. Some scholars believe it was the Tree-roots, but we have no proof that this was the case.

Another one painted around the same time was Wheat Field Under Clouded Sky, also painted in 1890.

Van_Gogh-wheat_field_under_clouded_sky-1890

Can Gogh also executed a series of paintings called “The Wheat Field” series. All of the paintings “depict the view Van Gogh had from the window of his bedroom on the top floor of the asylum” at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence from June 1889 to May 1890. Here’s one from that series, Wheat Field, Sunrise, painted in 1890.

Van_Gogh-wheat_field_sunrise-1890

And here’s another one, Wheat Field with Rising Sun, from 1889.

Van_Gogh-wheat_field_w_rising_sun-1889

For more about Vincent Van Gogh, Wikipedia is a good place to start, though there’s even more at the Vincent Van Gogh Gallery, which has a complete list of his works. There are also tons of links at the ArtCyclopedia and another biography at the Web Museum.

Guinness Ad #42: The Bale of Hay

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Our 42nd Guinness poster by John Gilroy features carrying the biggest bale of hay, having presumably just finished off a pint of Guinness. The glass in the bottom right is empty, after all. That’s what gave him “Guinness for Strength” to be able to carry such a big load. It also looks a bit like a giant blond afro.

Guinness-hay

Homebrew Star Jamil Zainasheff To Open Commercial Brewery

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heretic
Jamil Zainasheff over the last ten years has become something of a rock star in the homebrewing community, and especially the Bay Area, co-authoring two books on beer and homebrewing: “Brewing Classic Styles: 80 Winning Recipes Anyone Can Brew” (with John Palmer) and “Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation” (with Chris White). He also hosts the Jamil Show on The Brewing Network and has a website online entitled Mr. Malty. I had always heard that Jamil had no plans to turn pro, but that appears to be not the case, after all. [And a tip of the hat back to BeerNews.org].

This Thursday on an episode of Brewing TV, Zainasheff announced that he was starting a 30-bbl brewery in the East Bay. The brewery will be called Heretic Brewing, but the website is just a place holder for now.

Jamil says he’s hoping that his first beers will be available beginning in February or March of next year. Initially, the beer will be available in kegs only, and will then make either 750 ml or 22 oz. bottles once they’re up and running.

heretic-brewing

Brewery Unharmed In Dark Horse Fire

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A fire broke out yesterday at the complex housing Michigan’s Dark Horse Brewing. The brewery and brewpub appear to be unharmed and are open for business. According to the Battle Creek Enquirer, the building that burned “housed a general store that sold Dark Horse merchandise and was rented by Dark Starz Tattoos. A corner of the building was collapsed and the interior was gutted.” On Dark Horse’s website they have the following. “The fire was in our General Store and Skate Shop across the parking lot from the Taproom.”

The Fire Marshall is saying that there are suspicious elements to the fire. “Firefighters recognized abnormal fire behavior as they fought the blaze in the 500 block of South Kalamazoo Avenue, according to Marshall Assistant Fire Chief Bill Hankinson. ‘The way the fire burned’ was what raised suspicions, Hankinson said. ‘It was way too fast, and incorrectly for an accidental fire. But we are not ruling out the possibility that it was accidental.’

WWMT Channel 3 Also has a video report on the fire.

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The scene at Dark Horse after the fire was put out.

MolsonCoors To Launch “Girlie Beers” In UK

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According to the Publican, next year MolsonCoors will launch a line of beer aimed specifically at the female market.

From the Publican:

Molson Coors is to have another crack at the female beer drinking market next year with the UK roll-out of a range of products that it hopes will appeal to women.

Mark Hunter, chief executive of the UK arm of the global brewing behemoth, said today that the range had undergone more than a year’s worth of research, including a series of trials with numerous focus groups, and was ready for sign off before Christmas.

“This won’t be just about launching a beer aimed exclusively at the female drinker,” he said, although with 60 per cent of women admitting to not drinking beer he added he was encouraged to go after some of that potential customer base.

The soon-to-be launched beers, details of which have yet to be revealed, will be partnered with special glassware designed by fashion guru Amy Molyneaux, with goblets made of black glass, embossed with gold lettering.

Hunter said the range evolved from the Bittersweet Partnership, a strategy created by the brewer to help broaden beer’s appeal.

I don’t know why big companies keep doing this, as they seem to miss the point entirely. First, they emphasize the packaging — it’s always about the packaging and rarely about what’s inside of it — and that just feels foolish.

They also seem to always make beer aimed at women lower in alcohol. But isn’t the stereotype that women prefer wine to beer? And wine is three times stronger than the average English beer, so what am I missing? My wife loves barley wine, and many other stronger styles. She hates low-calorie beer because it tastes of nothing. She wants, like all of us really, flavor. And I can’t see how that’s a gender issue.

My son Porter has been train obsessed since he could express a preference, so I’ve watched a lot — I mean a lot — of train videos. I remember in one the story about how Lionel, the toy train company, a number of years ago came out with a pink train engine, with all pastel cars, to appeal to girls, hoping to pull more of them into the hobby. It was, of course, a miserable failure because the girls who liked toy trains wanted authentic-looking ones, not pink trains that some marketing “expert” thought she would like. And that’s how I see beer. Pandering to women with something you think they’ll like, no matter how many focus groups you conduct, seems like the wrong approach on so many levels.

To me, the fact that women don’t drink beer has more to do with the male-leaning marketing that the big companies have been doing their entire lives. That pandering I have to believe has left them feeling like beer is not aimed at them and is not for them. Pandering to them now with a pink beer in the hopes of undoing decades of stereotyping seems doomed to fail.

The other common stereotype is that beer is too bitter for many women. Again, I think that’s due to stereotypes, too, but this time of the beer itself. I hate to keep going back to Mrs. Brookston Beer Bulletin, but hers is a story I know only too well. When we first met, she drank Natural Light and knew precious little — nothing, really — about beer. The first thing we did together, before I even asked her out on our first date, was go to a brewpub where I ordered her a sampler of the beers they offered. I tasted her through the range of beers, talking about each one, and explaining the differences, the history, how they were made, etc. Not only was she very open and responsive, but she loved them. In fact, she’s never looked back and has been a lifelong lover of good beer from that point to today, some 16 or so years later. And I’ve heard similar stories from people over the years, too. That leads me to believe that the stereotypes heaped on women about why they don’t like beer are, for the most part, pure horseshit. But alcohol companies continue to treat them as gospel and make business decisions as if they really were true.

Carlsberg is also currently testing their own female-friendly beer, Cardinal Eve, or just Eve, from their Swiss brewery, Feldschlösschen Beverages. According to the press kit, there are four flavored beers — lychee, passion fruit, peach and grapefruit — at 3.1% a.b.v. Frankly, those sound like they’re treading dangerously into wine cooler or alcopop territory.

Since I know dozens, perhaps hundreds, of women who love beer — and I see thousands more all the time — it’s hard to take seriously this notion that women don’t like beer. I continue to think the reason that more women (that is more, from a purely business point of view) don’t drink beer is a self-inflicted wound by the big beer companies that they’re now trying to figure out how to undo without losing their core marketing techniques involving sports and images of women that appeal to men but often demean women. They could also make beers that taste of something, too. I’ll be interested to hear what the more vocal female beer writers think about this.