Wednesday’s ad is for another Italian brewery, Birra Dicitura. It seems like it has to be later than the 1920s, because the art is less well-defined, more abstract. It almost seems unfinished, a rough sketch. And I can’t help but wonder; why the five of hearts? Dicitura, by the way, is Italian for “wording.”
I wrote about this last week, where the focus was on the Straub Brewery, in The Extinction Of Returnable Beer Bottles, but they did mention the decision by Yuengling to discontinue offering returnable bottles. Today my old hometown newspaper growing up, the Reading Eagle, picked up the story but centered instead on Yuengling. In Returnable Bottles Leave Beer Drinkers Cold, Dick Yuengling explains the reasons for discontinuing returnables.
Yuengling said returnable bottles still make great sense ecologically. He said that at one point 60 percent of his business was in returnable bottles.
“Now, if you showed a 16-ounce returnable bottle to a 22-year-old, he wouldn’t know what the heck it was,” Yuengling joked. “I like the idea. I installed a bottle washer at our new (Pottsville) location. I was going to try to revive the returnables but the customer just doesn’t want them anymore.”
According to the Beer Institute, in 1981 about 12% of beer sold was in returnable bottles. Today it’s just under 0.3% … and dropping fast. As I opined last week, even though I understand the rationale for this, I still can’t help but lament it. It just feels like a lost opportunity in our current obsession with being green. I did a lengthy feature article for All About Beer magazine a few years ago about brewery’s green practices, and I was astounded by how much most breweries, both big and small, were doing.
It seems like going back to returnables, while undoubtedly difficult and expensive, would be a great way to keep local beer local and show the craft beer industry’s leadership in recycling and being ecological. It may be nearly impossible to ramp up by any national company, but the smaller the brewery, the more manageable it could be, giving an advantage to local brewers. Oh, well, I know it’s not going to happen, but I can still dream.
Tuesday’s ad is for an Italian brewery, Birra Metzger, in Torino, our second ad from this brewery. They were founded in 1848 but closed in 1975. The artist’s name is Filberto Mateldi (1882-1942), a well-known Italian illustrator, who made his name in the fashion world.
Our next Session is fast approaching, ten days away to be exact. This month’s host will be Carla Companion, better know as The Beer Babe. Her topic is The New Kids, by which she means the many, many new breweries that have started up in the last couple of years.
Here’s how she explains it:
Picture yourself starting school, on a cool, crisp September day. Only, you’re not as excited as you usually are because you’re starting at a new school. No one knows who you are, groups of friends are already established, and you have nightmares about getting lost in the hallways trying to find your next class. How will you ever fit in?…
In some ways, there may be a beer-world parallel to this experience: new craft breweries joining an established beer community, or even tougher, breaking into a non-craft beer town.
….With the astounding growth of the number of craft breweries this year, chances are there’s a new one in development, or has just started out in your area. My challenge to you is to seek out a new brewery and think about ways in which they could be welcomed into the existing beer community. How does their beer compare to the craft beer scene in your area? Are they doing anything in a new/exciting way? What advice, as a beer consumer, would you give to these new breweries?
Take this opportunity to say hello to the new neighbors in your area. Maybe its a nanobrewery that came to a festival for the first time that you vowed to “check out” later. Maybe it’s a new local beer on a shelf on the corner store that you hadn’t seen before. Dig deeper and tell us a story about the “new kids on the block.” I look forward to welcoming them to the neighborhood!
Join the welcome wagon on Friday, September 3, and tell us about your favorite new brewery.
Monday’s ad is for a French brewery, Bieres de Montmorillon, most likely from the 1920s. This ad is quite odd, with the weird little man in the red coast actually licking at the beer and giving a strange sidewards glance. I’m not sure that would make me want to try their brand.
For a long while Europe has led the world in beer consumption by continent and also by nation since the EU has increased in economic prominence as a single entity. According to new data by Credit Suisse, China now leads the world in terms of beer consumption, growing at a pace of about 10% per year. The Economist has more details in All Pints East.
I keep forgetting to write about this. Earlier this year I was asked to help judge for the World Beer Awards, which are put on by the former UK beer magazine Beers of the World, which is now published only online at Tasting Beers. They separated the beers into regions and Stan Hieronymus chaired the America’s region, along with me and Eric Warner.
We were each sent four large boxes filled with bubble-wrapped bottles or cans with a number assigned to each and the labels and even crowns obscured by labels and stickers. They were then separated into five broad categories: pale ale, dark ale, lager, stout & porter, and wheat beer. Then within each of those five, they were further subdivided by style. I don’t know how the rest of the judges did it, but I invited friends with judging experience and/or beer knowledge over to help taste them and bounce descriptors off one another and also had a volunteer steward to help keep the beers as blind as possible, but each beer’s numbered score came strictly from me.
The other two regions were Europe (chaired by Jeff Evans) and Asia (chaired by Bryan Harrell) with Roger Protz overseeing the entire process. In stage 2, the chairmen re-tasted all the regional winners and then a final round was held to determine the overall winners. It was great fun and the results are certainly interesting with a lot of beers with great reputations — and personal favorites — doing quite well. Because participation was not universal (that is, not every brewery submitted beers for judging) there are, of course, many beers not represented which may or may not have done as well or even better than the winners and I certainly hope more breweries will enter their beers next year. But within the group of what was submitted, it’s a pretty damn good list.
Here are the big winners in each of the Five main categories:
The rest of the winners within each style and also the regional winners can be found on the Tasting Beers website.
I didn’t know this going in, but they actually published a small book with all the winners, including a mash-up of all the tasting notes for the beers. It’s a nice small-size (3-3/4″ x 8-1/4″) paperback. In 162 full-color pages, there are features about the winning breweries and listings for all the winning beers, including at least a bottle shot for each. If you’re keen you can buy one online at Amazon UK or directly from the Tastings Beers website. Amazon US also has a listing for the book, but I believe it’s from a vendor selling copies from overseas.
London’s Sunday Times is giving credence to the rumors and is reporting that SABMiller is seriously considering buying Carlton & United Breweries from the Foster’s Group, the makers of Foster’s, for $10.9 billion.
Earlier this year the Foster’s Group announced that next year that they would split their wine and beer divisions, and rumors began of potential buyers. Since SABMiller already owns the rights to Foster’s in the U.S. and India, speculation naturally centered on them, and now it looks likely they will make a bid for it. This would also give SABMiller Australia’s best-selling beer, Victoria Bitter, and a stronger presence throughout southeast Asia.
Today’s paintings are part of an exciting new project by a married couple working collaboratively on their Beer Paintings. Louie Van Patten is from Des Moines, Iowa but studied painting in Central Oregon. His wife, Cara Thayer, learned her craft at the Art Institute of Chicago, but she’s originally from Bend, Oregon, and that’s where the pair now make their home. Their regular art, showcased at The Gryllus has been exhibited in Bend and from Palo Alto to Vancouver. But being in Bend, home to Deschutes, “phenomenal beer is unavoidable and is bound to convert anyone who tries it,” as was the case with Thayer and Patten. So they decided to combine their love of good beer with their art, and the result is the newly launched Beer Paintings project. The very first painting was done for their local beer store, The Brew Shop.
They’ve also been painting bottles, cans and crowns. Here’s a representative sample below.
North Coast’s Imperial Stout Old Rasputin.
Oskar Blues’ imperial stout Ten Fidy.
A crown from Three Floyds Brewing.
I asked Patten about the beer paintings.
These beer paintings have been somewhat of a side project, with our regular, very different body of work being the paintings at The Gryllus. Craft beer has always been a huge part of our painting ritual and one of our biggest interests outside of art. We did the first painting as a gift to The Brew Shop, but we found there was something really enjoyable about merging our hobby of collecting and drinking craft beers with our full-time painting practice. There is also something we like about the idea of an un-ironic contemporary still-life, especially in the case of painting something like Oskar Blues’ Ten Fidy, with canned beers typically being derided for their aesthetics. Ultimately, these paintings are about externalizing the beer drinking experience into something that can be enjoyed when you can’t imbibe. We like the idea of giving people who are passionate about good beer another way to show it, with the dignity it deserves.
And here’s their most recent painting, featuring some more really great beers, including a few local ones to me.
Our 32nd Guinness poster by John Gilroy was a one-off for a specific event, the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
The zookeeper is shown holding up a bench — presumably made possible from drinking a Guinness — with four of the animals used in various Guinness ads over the years, all waving British flags. There’s no text at all, but I assume everyone would have understood it at the time.