This weekend, September 11 & 12, the 7th annual Brews on the Bay beer festival will take place aboard the S.S. Jeremiah O’Brien anchored off Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. It’s put on by the San Francisco Brewers Guild. Tickets are $45 in advance, and may be purchased online. At the door, tickets are $55. See you there.
British beer writer Phil Mellows, who also specializes in alcohol policy, had an interesting observation in a recent post, Alcohol Consumption Down, Alcohol Harm Up. In his native England, as is happening here, overall alcohol consumption has been on a slow but steady decline for a number of years. The problems associated with alcohol abuse, however, have not. Yet the policies here and there are based on the anti-alcohol organizations and “the medical profession who say that to reduce alcohol harm we have to reduce overall consumption, [which is] the logic behind raising the price of alcohol and restricting its availability.” That’s also one of the reasons that these same people keep trying to impose more and more taxes on alcohol. Yet it’s not working. It’s never worked. Phil concludes by trying to make sense of it.
Rather than trying to get the whole population to drink less (which they are, in any case, already doing), alcohol policy should be focused on the growing minority of people, more stressed even than [the prime minister], who are quietly drinking themselves to death out of despair.
And that’s been the problem with alcohol policy here, too. They keep trying to punish the industry and the majority of people who drink it responsibly in order to stop the problem drinkers. It doesn’t work. It’s never worked. It ignores the underlying causes of alcohol abuse. The people who don’t abuse it and in fact enjoy it in moderation — which is a healthy choice — are the ones who pay the price. It’s frustrating. It’s ineffective. It ignores the real problems and punishes the innocent, not to mention it may damage one of the few healthy industries in the economy. But it keeps on happening. Someone has to say enough. I’m happy to start. Enough, already.
Tuesday’s ad is for the Mexican beer Tecate, brewed by Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery. The brewery was founded in 1890. I have no idea when the ad is from, though it has a look of the 1950s or early 60s. Norman Rockwell south of the border.
Our 44th Session will be hosted by Ashley Routson a.k.a. The Beer Wench. In honor of Halloween month, she’s chosen “Frankenstein Beers” as her topic, which Ashley likens to Frankenstein’s monster, a creation that was “constructed of human parts and various other inanimate objects,” defying nature’s laws and ultimately “unlike anything the world had ever seen before.” She continues.
Many craft brewers are like Frankenstein. They have become mad scientists obsessed with defying the laws of brewing and creating beers that transcend style guidelines. These “Frankenstein Beers” challenge the way people perceive beer. They are freaks of nature — big, bold and intense. The ingredients resemble those of a beer and the brewing process might appear to be normal, but some aspects of the entire experience are experimental, unorthodox and insane.
An altercation with these beers produces confusion in the eye of the taster … is it a beer, or a monster?
“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.” — The Monster.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a blog post on “Frankenstein Beers.” There are no rules about how to write about this topic — feel free to highlight a Frankenstien brewer, brewery, beer tasting notes … or just your opinions on the concept.
So don’t be afraid, pull out the surgical tools and make a trip to the cemetery (or bar) for parts — just don’t grab the jar marked — “abnormal” — for your own post for the next Session, on Friday, October 1.
For the second time, San Francisco supervisor John Avalos has gone back on his word. As the sponsor of the the new proposed tax on all alcohol sold in San Francisco ordinance, he first told the Small Business Commission that he would delay a hearing on the tax in mid-July. But because of Proposition 26 on the ballet having the potential to do away with the type of tax masquerading as a fee that he’s proposing, he changed his mind and went forward with the hearing anyway. Later, in late August, it looked like it was all but inevitable that he would send it back into committee for more review due to overwhelming opposition by the business community. Well that didn’t last long either, and he changed his mind again and later today, at 2:00 p.m., the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will vote on the new tax. It’s likely that it will get the required six votes to pass and at that point will be voted on a second time at another board meeting on September 14.
It will then go to mayor Gavin Newsom, who has ten days to either sign or veto it. The mayor is on the record saying he’ll veto it, at which point it will be sent back to the Board of Supervisors who can override Newsom’s veto with eight votes. That would most likely be in early October. Why Avalos keeps saying one thing and doing another is pure politics, of course. The strategy now is that “he wants to push for a veto override.” The likeliest reason is that someone — perhaps the Marin institute? — has whispered in his ear that they can flip two supervisors and get him the two additional votes he needs to override the anticipated mayoral veto. The Marin Institute has begun marshaling their base to contact the politicians against the alcohol tax in a web alert. Obviously, that works both ways and I’d suggest that if you’re against the new tax, you should contact them and ask them to continue to oppose it.
If you’re in the city today and want to oppose this tax, please consider attending the meeting and voicing your opposition. I’ll have more on this later on today, but wanted to get this out as soon as possible.
UPDATE: Today’s vote has been canceled due to some sort of mix-up with the clerks office. It has now been rescheduled for next Tuesday, September 14.
Monday’s ad is from a French brewery in the medieval village of Albi, the capital of Tarn, a tourist area in southern France. Founded in 1822, I assume that’s King Gambrinus holding the bottle with his picture on it. I also imagine those are supposed to be hops in the foreground, but they look more like strawberries.
In honor of labor day, here’s a fun series of illustrations showing all the labor necessary to make beer, in this case Guinness. In 1981, Guinness commissioned British illustrator and artist John Ireland to create twelve paintings whimsically depicting the steps that go into making Guinness beer for a calendar.
From the Guinness Collector’s Club website:
John was born on the 19th March 1949 at Aldershot Hants and attended Farnham Grammar school, Farnham Art School and finally Ravensbourne College of Art and Design. He lived and worked in London from 1971 until moving to Norfolk in 1976. John has two sons, two sheep, a dog and a wife Tessa and has worked as a freelance illustrator since leaving college, principally for magazines and publishing, with a little bit of advertising. In recent years. A lot of his work has involved caricatures including collections of sporting personalities and a weekly drawing for the TV Times for over nine years.
John [Ireland] writes:
“I had been asked a few years prior to 1980 to submit ideas for a Guinness Calendar but nothing came of it, and when I was asked to produce roughs for a W. Heath Robinson pastiche I was initially reluctant, suggesting I could do something in my own style. When it became obvious that they – J.Walter Thompson the advertising agency — were set on doing it their way, I decided that it was better I should do it rather than someone else mess it up and do Heath Robinson a disservice.”
“There were similarities in our styles, which is presumably why I had been asked in the first place. I had been interested in his drawings since I was a child, having bought his books at jumble sales. The whole job went amazingly smoothly and following a guided tour of the Park Royal Brewery, it was left up to me to decide on which elements of production I should highlight.”
“This is so unusual for advertising, normally you are presented with layouts that you have to stick to rigidly and all the copy has been written already. In this instance I even wrote the captions. My initial roughs were accepted with hardly any changes suggested. I only had to make the May drawing a little busier and ensure that wherever possible both bottled and keg beer should be depicted as apparently there was intense rivalry between the two divisions of the company. The barman in the December drawing is actually a portrait of Heath Robinson with his cat ‘Saturday Morning’ and the customer is my Father.”
Blogger Phil Beard, at his Notes on the Visual Arts and Popular Culture, also has a nice post on the series. These days John Ireland is best known for his caricatures.
January: Hop Picking Time in the Guinness Fields
February: Early Morning on the Guinness Farm
March: Industry in the Guinness Maltings
April: Roasting the Guinness Barley
May: Mixing the Guinness Mash
June: Filtering the Guinness Wort
July: Fermenting the Guinness
August: Bottling the Guinness
September: Signing the Day’s Production of Guinness
October: The Training of the Guinness Quality Testers
November: Delivering the Guinness
December: The First Guinness of the Day
Yesterday, we took our annual family-outing to pick hops at Moonlight Brewery in Sonoma County, California. Founder and brewmaster Brian Hunt has a quarter-acre he planted several years ago after Vinnie Cilurzo, from Russian River Brewing, had to pull out the hops he had at Korbel when he moved the brewery to Santa Rosa. Russian River’s now growing their own and Moonlight has continued to keep his hopfield going, using the hops primarily to brew his fresh hop beer Homegrown.
I’ve been volunteering to help pick hops for a number of years now, and began taking the family a few years ago, recreating how it would have been done in he later Nineteenth century before hops were harvested using machinery. In those days, the entire community would turn out to pick the hops, with the men working the fields, women putting on lavish picnic spreads (and helping with the picking) and the kids pitching in andalso playing among the hopvines. It’s great fun and really does feel like the community coming together to help out. Everyone does their part, and we all talk and laugh while sitting in the circle and picking the hops.
The Abbey de St. Humulus hop field, a.k.a. Moonlight Brewery
The beautiful green of hops in the field, ripe for the picking.
My daughter Alice outstanding in her field … hop field, that is.
Hops on the vine, as far as the eye can see.
A close-up of the hop cones, the flowers that will be picked and added to the beer.
Moonlight brewmaster Brian Hunt holding a bundle of hops, freshly cut down for picking.
The hopvines are placed in the center of a circle, where people work on each vine, pulling the hops off by hand and putting them into a plastic bucket.
My wife Sarah showing off her hop-picking skills.
Below is a slideshow of our family outing to pick hops. This Flickr gallery is best viewed in full screen. To view it that way, after clicking on the arrow in the center to start the slideshow, click on the button on the bottom right with the four arrows pointing outward on it, to see the photos in glorious full screen. Once in full screen slideshow mode, click on “Show Info” to identify each photo.
And below is a short video of cutting down the hops and taking them to be picked.
Today’s painting is by one of the most famous post-impressionist artists, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The painting is most often called “The Hangover,” though occasionally subtitled “Portrait of Suzanne Valadon,” an artist on her own right. It’s also been called “The Drinker.” The original hangs in the Fogg Museum at Harvard. It was painted in 1888.
And yes, I realize it may very well be wine in the glass and the bottle, but I’m holding out hope that it may also be beer because I like the painting so much. Toulouse-Lautrec was an alcoholic most of his adult life, and originally had a taste for beer and wine, though he later began drinking American-style cocktails, too. He had a hard time coping with people’s cruel tendency to mock his short stature and turned to drink as a result.
Art and alcohol were his only mistresses, and they were mistresses to which he devoted all of his time and energy. He was doing one or both almost every day of his life until he died.
For more about Toulouse-Lautrec, Wikipedia is a good place to start, and there are a number of links at the ArtCyclopedia and the Artchive. And you can also see a number of his other works at Olga’s Gallery, the Artliste, the Web Museum and CFGA.
To celebrate International Bacon Day I modified a decadent comfort food my wife came up with a few weeks ago. She takes a hot dog and slices it down the middle, filling it with cheese. Then it’s wrapped in a Pillsbury crescent roll and baked in the oven. I call them “super dogs” for no particular reason other than it rolls off the tongue nicely. Today I added a slice of bacon to each one to make “super bacon dogs.” I ate five of them, boy were they tasty.
My daughter Alice slicing the hot dogs.
Ready to go in the oven.
Fresh from the oven and ready to eat.
Afterward, my wife Sarah had a special bacon treat for dessert.
Chocolate-covered bacon on a stick, which a friend of my wife’s from work discovered at our local candy shop (thanks Brian). They come in both milk chocolate and dark chocolate.