Our ninth Guinness poster by John Gilroy features a frustrated goldfish who can’t reach a pint of Guinness just outside his fishbowl. Under the “Guinness For Strength” banner, it also uses the curious tagline. “It’s a poor fish that never has a Guinness.”
Whatever your feelings about Newcastle Brown Ale, it is perceived as one of the classic English brown ales and its label is one of the most recognizable.
So I was surprised to see that Newcastle is sponsoring a contest to redesign their iconic label. The contest is known as Your Beer Your Label and gives you two ways to create a new label, either using their online label generator or download a template and have at it with your favorite graphics software (or at least Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop).
The Online Design Tool is actually pretty fun to use and you can do quite a bit of manipulation using it, as evidenced by the many submitted designs.
Unfortunately, the contest ends tomorrow, so if you want to play around or submit your own, you better get cracking.
Though you can still look at the submitted designs and vote for your favorite until the end of March.
Though in the end I wish they were going to do a run of bottles with the winner’s design or, better still, with the top few vote-getters. I think that would have been cool. But instead all the winners get is displayed on Newcastle’s website which seems like a pretty poor payoff for all the effort.
Oh, well, perhaps it’s just as well, as despite some very cool label designs submitted, the label below is currently at the top of the heap with the most votes cast. I guess that either says something about human nature or the demographics of Newcastle drinkers.
Friday’s ad is for Miller High Life featuring the “Girl in the Moon,” which was originally created in the early 1900’s by an unknown artist. The beer itself debuted in 1903 and was advertised with the girl in the moon from the beginning, though to me she looks more like a witch. I think it’s that hat. It’s rumored that the model for her was brewery founder Frederick Miller’s granddaughter. But I’ve always liked the stylized, colorful costume she wears.
And here’s another one featuring her.
After the furor caused by the state police raids on three Philadelphia bars, and a subsequent raid on a beer distributor, there does appear to be a backlash coming. Several people predicted that was one possible outcome — I believe Don and Lew both mentioned it — and now it may indeed be playing out that way. In a new report posted today by Don Russell and Bob Warner, Beer-Raid Flap Coming to a Head, Hearing Ordered, it appears that the state legislature has scheduled a joint hearing (of the House Liquor Control Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee) for April 13 to look into the matter.
From the article:
“We’re scared,” one bar owner told the Daily News. “I’ve instructed my staff to match every beer we get delivered with the PLCB’s list of registered brands. If it’s not on the list, we’re not going to take delivery.”
Sources told the Daily News that several beer distributors in other parts of the state had been visited by State Police in search of unregistered beer.
As I’ve opined before, this is creating a culture of fear among legitimate business people and that’s not something our government should be doing, especially under the economic duress of today. Lew Bryson has even set up a new Facebook page, Abolish the PLCB-Rewrite the Code. After a few short hours there were nearly 3,000 members. Even if you’re not from Pennsylvania, join it and show the world that we’re tired of arcane alcohol laws and they need to be changed.
There’s also a new separate account by Patrick Walters of the Associated Press, Brew-haha Frothing Over Philly Bar Raids.
Please indulge me for a moment as I go off topic, beery news will follow. Regular Bulletin readers will know I’m a huge fan of the late stand-up comedian Bill Hicks, who died in 1994. Even though he’s been gone 16 years, his comedy is as fresh and relevant as it was then, a testament to how far ahead of his time he was and how universal his message was. I saw his act live at least a dozen times, probably more, and even had the pleasure of meeting him after a show once and chatting briefly. At every one of those shows, at least one person, and sometimes more, would get offended and leave. That was because Hicks challenged his audiences to not just laugh at his jokes, but to think about ideas and consider inequities in the world. In short, he made some people feel uncomfortable who weren’t ready to confront the world’s hypocrisies and their role in them. He was nothing short of a genius in that regard. Since his death, his popularity has continued to grow in the UK, where people “got” Bill. Over here, sadly, he’s been largely forgotten.
But there’s a new documentary film coming out, American: The Bill Hicks Story, and it’s premiering tonight in the U.S. at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas. There’s also a Facebook page for the film. No word yet on when or if it will get a wide theater release, but fingers crossed, you’ll be able to see it soon at a theater near you. As the filmmakers have asked people to help them spread the word about the film, below is the trailer for it. If it comes to your town, go see it. I can’t, of course, vouch for the film-making (though the trailer looks good), I can vouch for the subject matter. Bill Hicks deserves to be more widely known, and especially the ideas he espoused during his lifetime.
Thursday’s ad is for the Spoetzl Brewery, makers of Shiner Bock. Today is their 101st anniversary. This isn’t too old, but I like the concept of it. It has an old-time look and feel to it and it’s part of a larger series that focuses on the actual brewery workers. If you’ve ever been to the actual brewery, it’s a very cool-looking historical brewery in a small Texas town. This one features Richard Hartmann, who’s in shipping and receiving. But it’s the slogan, possibly being attributed to Hartmann, that really makes it for me. “There’s more to life than brewing beer. There’s also drinking beer, talking about beer ….”
To same more, similar ads from a campaign in 2009, see the Behance Network.
Since we’ve been in the Middle East and Afghanistan, we’ve struggled with how to keep our soldiers happy and yet respect local laws and customs. In March of 2006, General Abizaid of the U.S. Central Command, signed General Order No. 1 to help clarify and determine how our men and women fighting overseas are permitted to relax and conduct themselves. One thing General Order No. 1 prohibits them from enjoying is a beer, or indeed any alcohol whatsoever.
Under Prohibited Activities:
According to a Wired report:
In part, the order is out of sensitivity to “host-nation” culture. But it’s also a major safety issue. Alcohol, firearms and heavy machinery don’t mix, and the Department of Defense doesn’t want to have to explain a rise in negligent weapons discharges to angry members of Congress.
Recently, however, Senator Jim Webb of Virginia (Dem.), during a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting, floated the idea that “U.S. military commanders should consider loosening the ban to allow ‘alcohol for stress relief.’”
Now before you jump down my throat, consider that there’s already a problem with the “increased use — and abuse of — of prescription drugs by deployed troops” with “troops popping pills to fight everything from fatigue to depression. The Pentagon is even investigating using pills as a preventive treatment for post-traumatic stress.” So his suggestion that maybe letting the troops have an occasional beer while off duty might have some benefits to the mental and physical health of our soldiers doesn’t seem too outlandish under the circumstances. During my time in the military I was never in a war zone, so I never experienced this kind of prohibition. Hell, we had a coin-operated soda machine in our day room filled with cans of beer.
But beyond respecting the “host-nation culture,” weren’t troops in World War II, Korea and other police actions permitted limited amounts of alcohol? My stepfather was in Vietnam with the Marines in the early 1960s and I know he drank quite a bit while he was there. From time to time, he’d open up about his time “in country” and what they’d do when they were off-duty, and it involved a lot of drinking, much of did in fact seem designed to relieve stress. I can’t help but think the ban is more a sign of the times than about any real danger from soldier’s drinking in moderation.
If soldiers made it through at least WWII, Korea and Vietnam safely while being able to have a drink, it doesn’t seem like they’d fare any worse today. Winston Churchill quipped that his staff should “make sure that the beer — four pints a week — goes to the troops under fire before any of the parties in the rear get a drop.” And before that John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough, said. “No soldier can fight unless he is properly fed on beef and beer.” And before that Frederick the Great concluded that “many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer.” But yeah, I understand the argument that war is different now, but I’m pretty sure that argument has been used during every single increasingly modern war. I just don’t agree with it. Given all we ask of our soldiers and how badly our government has treated so many of them, I think we should be doing everything possible to help them relax and unwind whenever they get a little time away from the job.
And even within the scope of respecting cultures, it doesn’t seem too out of line to me that something like the “green zone” or some other spot that’s secluded and separated from the native population could be created where soldiers could relax and have a drink. They did just that for the Super Bowl, where an exception was made and beer was served during the game.
The Wired piece concludes:
Would the military consider lifting its ban on booze? I highly doubt it. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, banned alcohol at NATO’s International Security Assistance Force headquarters in Kabul, after he noticed coalition officers dozing off at a picnic table.
Now I hope I’m not going too far here, but why were officers taking a nap at a picnic (presumably after drinking alcohol) such an Epiphanal moment for the general? What on earth is wrong with a tired, stressed soldier having a drink and catching a little shuteye while off duty? They weren’t belligerent. They weren’t fighting. They weren’t getting into any mischief. They were taking a nap. And this sight made General McChrystal worried enough that he decided, not to figure out how his soldiers could get the rest they needed, but instead to ban the alcohol that helped them fall asleep. Personally, I’m all for letting them have a beer once in a while. At the very least, they’ve earned it.
Yesterday on Don Russell’s Beer Radar, he had the basic information on a second raid by the PLCB and Pennsylvania State Troopers. As promised, a fuller account was published today, with additional reporting by Bob Warner, in the Philadelphia Daily News. Here’s the account, entitled In Another Raid, State Police Hit Beer Distributor, Origlio’s, in Far Northeast.
The state continues to confiscate Duvel, Monk’s Café Flemish Sour Red Ale and even Hacker-Pschorr, despite all three brands having been registered and sold for many years. Russian River Brewing’ Supplication was also one of the beers confiscated, but in that case Vinnie Cilurzo admitted he’d simply forgotten the paperwork for the very small number of cases shipped to Pennsylvania. As reported by Russell, Cilurzo stated. “We are a small mom-and-pop brewery and every once in a while something slips through the cracks.”
What continues to be troubling is that this is essentially just paperwork errors and miscommunication and it’s being treated like the crime of the century. Did they really need to go in armed, like storm troopers? Were they expecting trouble or that gunfire might be necessary? It’s not like they were raiding a bootlegger’s den and could expect Tommy guns to be carried by everyone inside the distributorship. It seems absurd to think there might be some justification for that level of power display.
As another remarked. “‘It’s just a clerical problem, but they’re treating this stuff like contraband,’ said one distributor who asked not to be identified.” See what we’ve created? Here’s a legitimate businessman who’s afraid to be identified while criticizing the PLCB and the state police for fear of retaliation, despite the fact that as a citizen he has every right to do so. When we aren’t comfortable exercising basic rights like that because we believe we’ll be targeted by the people we’re criticizing (who, let’s not forget, are there to serve the people), that, to me, is a very scary development indeed. Now that’s a chilling effect. This is just going from bad to worse.
UPDATE: Thanks to James Costa for pointing this out. Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s food writer, Rick Nichols, gives us his take on the PLCB raids in Beer Raid Backfires on Liquor Agents.
Wednesday’s ad is for a presumably short-lived New York City brewery, Brewer’s Best Associates, Inc., which was located at 620 Fifth Avenue. The ad for their Pilsener Beer is from 1947. The normally authoritative American Breweries II doesn’t even have a listing for the brewery, which is odd. It’s the first time I’ve looked up a brewery and it wasn’t listed. Given that I’ve never heard of it and there doesn’t seem to be a record of the brewery, it’s funny that their slogan is all about remembering their name, “The New Big Name in Beer.” I guess it didn’t work out as they’d hoped. The other funny thing in the ad is the endorsement from “Ted Collins, owner of Boston Yanks Pro-Football Team and famous radio producer.” The Boston Yanks were a short-lived team that only played from 1944-47. In 1948, they relocated to New York City and were the New York Bulldogs for a season before becoming the New York Yanks until 1952, when they played their final season in Texas as the Dallas Texans. As for the beer, I guess it wasn’t “the beer you’ve been waiting for” after all.
UPDATE: An alert reader (thanks Beer Dave!) offered some additional information about Brewer’s Best.
Brewers Best was actually not a brewery. This was a franchise of sorts. Brewers Best was brewed at about 25 different small breweries around the US. The headquarters in NY was essentially a sales office. This brand had national distribution through the network of small brewers who brewed the beer under contract.
I probably shouldn’t speak for you, but this is certainly my worst nightmare. I tweeted this yesterday, but thought it still deserving of a snarky comment again today. Somewhere near Manchester, England is the Alcohol-Free Shop, a store dedicated to all things non-alcoholic. They carry non-alcoholic beer, wine, cider, ready-made cocktails and celebration drinks. They actually don’t carry that many different N/A Beers — are there very many? — but have plenty of other products.
But here’s the one think that actually bothers me. The company’s motto, slogan, whatever is “alcohol-free is good for you.” My problem with that is, of course, it’s not remotely true. Study after study has shown that people who drink moderately live longer, and are generally healthier, than people who either drink too much or abstain altogether. Being alcohol-free is therefore, in effect, bad for you. It’s good for you at all.
Under the heading Why Choose Alcohol Free?, they suggest “it is also recommended that we all have at least two alcohol-free days a week.” I’ve never heard that one before, have you? And how convenient that the first place I’ve heard it is a place trying to sell non-alcoholic drinks.
Then there’s this gem:
Our range of non-alcoholic, alcohol-free, and de-alcoholised drinks give people the opportunity to still enjoy a glass of wine with a meal or a bottle of beer on a sunny terrace and keep within healthy alcohol-consumption limits.
I’ve only had a few N/A wines but the ones I’ve tried were every bit as bad as the N/A beers. If you want to lay off the alcohol for a night, just have something naturally non-alcoholic, not an impostor that tastes like crap anyway. What’s the point?
Here’s their list of when and who might want non-alcoholic drinks: