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Top Ten Tuesday: Top 10 Beer Poems

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top-10
Today is St. Columba’s Day. He’s a patron saint of poets, so I thought I’ll pull out some of my favorite poems with beer in them. I’m excluding limericks (since we’ve done them already) and haikus since Beer Haiku Daily pretty has them covered. So for my 18th Top 10 list I present the Top 10 beer poems, although, like before, the rankings are pretty much meaningless. These are just my ten favorite poems that are about beer or drinking. I sort of prefer number 1 to number 5 or 7, but not to the degree of some of the previous lists. They’re all winners. But, of course, I’d love to hear your choices. Anyway, here’s List #18:
 

Top 10 Beer Poems
 

10-25Beer, by Charles Bukowski,
from Love is A Mad Dog From Hell (1920-1994)

I don’t know how many bottles of beer
I have consumed while waiting for things
to get better
I don’t know how much wine and whisky
and beer
mostly beer
I have consumed after
splits with women—
waiting for the phone to ring
waiting for the sound of footsteps,
and the phone to ring
waiting for the sounds of footsteps,
and the phone never rings
until much later
and the footsteps never arrive
until much later
when my stomach is coming up
out of my mouth
they arrive as fresh as spring flowers:
“what the hell have you done to yourself?
it will be 3 days before you can fuck me!”

the female is durable
she lives seven and one half years longer
than the male, and she drinks very little beer
because she knows it’s bad for the figure.

while we are going mad
they are out
dancing and laughing
with horny cowboys.

well, there’s beer
sacks and sacks of empty beer bottles
and when you pick one up
the bottle fall through the wet bottom
of the paper sack
rolling
clanking
spilling gray wet ash
and stale beer,
or the sacks fall over at 4 a.m.
in the morning
making the only sound in your life.

beer
rivers and seas of beer
the radio singing love songs
as the phone remains silent
and the walls stand
straight up and down
and beer is all there is.

09-25The Tavern, by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207-1273)

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that,
And I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I’ll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I’m like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
But who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

This poetry. I never know what I’m going to say.
I don’t plan it.
When I’m outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

We have a huge barrel of beer, but no cups.
That’s fine with us. Every morning
We glow and in the evening we glow again.

They say there’s no future for us. They’re right.
Which is fine with us.

08-25A Glass of Beer, by David O’Bruadair (1625-1698)

The lanky hank of a she in the inn over there
Nearly killed me for asking the loan of a glass of beer;
May the devil grip the whey-faced slut by the hair,
And beat bad manners out of her skin for a year.

That parboiled ape, with the toughest jaw you will see
On virtue’s path, and a voice that would rasp the dead,
Came roaring and raging the minute she looked at me,
And threw me out of the house on the back of my head!

If I asked her master he’d give me a cask a day;
But she, with the beer at hand, not a gill would arrange!
May she marry a ghost and bear him a kitten, and may
The High King of Glory permit her to get the mange.

Beer, by George Arnold (1834-1865)

HERE,
With my beer
I sit,
While golden moments flit:

Alas!
They pass
Unheeded by:
And, as they fly,
I,
Being dry,
Sit, idly sipping here
My beer.

O, finer far
Than fame, or riches, are
The graceful smoke-wreathes of this cigar!
Why
Should I
Weep, wail, or sigh?
What if luck has passed me by?
What if my hopes are dead,—
My pleasures fled?
Have I not still
My fill
Of right good cheer,—
Cigars and beer

Go, whining youth,
Forsooth!
Go, weep and wail,
Sigh and grow pale,
   Weave melancholy rhymes
   On the old times,
Whose joys like shadowy ghosts appear,
But leave me to my beer!
   Gold is dross,—
   Love is loss,—
So, if I gulp my sorrows down,
Or see them drown
In foamy draughts of old nut-brown,
Then do wear the crown,
   Without the cross!

06-25The Empty Bottle, by William Aytoun (1813-1865)

Ah, liberty! how like thou art
To this large bottle lying here,
Which yesterday from foreign mart,
Came filled with potent English beer!

A touch of steel — a hand — a gush —
A pop that sounded far and near —
A wild emotion — liquid rush —
And I had drunk that English beer!

And what remains? — An empty shell!
A lifeless form both sad and queer,
A temple where no god doth dwell —
The simple memory of beer!

05-25Get Drunk!, by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

Always be drunk.
That’s it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time’s horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
Get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On beer, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;
and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
“Time to get drunk!
Don’t be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On beer, virtue, poetry, whatever!”

04-25From The Hour Before Dawn, by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

A great lad with a beery face
Had tucked himself away beside
A ladle and a tub of beer,
And snored, no phantom by his look.
So with a laugh at his own fear
He crawled into that pleasant nook.
‘Night grows uneasy near the dawn
Till even I sleep light; but who
Has tired of his own company?
What one of Maeve’s nine brawling sons
Sick of his grave has wakened me?
But let him keep his grave for once
That I may find the sleep I have lost.’
What care I if you sleep or wake?
But I’ll have no man call me ghost.’
Say what you please, but from daybreak
I’ll sleep another century.’
And I will talk before I sleep
And drink before I talk.’
And he
Had dipped the wooden ladle deep
Into the sleeper’s tub of beer
Had not the sleeper started up.
Before you have dipped it in the beer
I dragged from Goban’s mountain-top
I’ll have assurance that you are able
To value beer; no half-legged fool
Shall dip his nose into my ladle
Merely for stumbling on this hole
In the bad hour before the dawn.’
Why beer is only beer.’

03-25Lines on Ale (1848), by Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)

Fill with mingled cream and amber,
I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber
Through the chamber of my brain.
Quaintest thoughts, queerest fancies
Come to life and fade away.
What care I how time advances;
I am drinking ale today.

02-25Excerpted from Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff, poem LXII in
A Shropshire Lad (1896), by A.E. Housman (1859-1936)

Why, if ’tis dancing you would be,
There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:
The mischief is that ’twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

01-25John Barleycorn, by Robert Burns (1834-1865)*
[This version is from 1782]

There was three kings into the east,
Three kings both great and high,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die.

They took a plough and plough’d him down,
Put clods upon his head,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead.

But the cheerful Spring came kindly on,
And show’rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up again,
And sore surpris’d them all.

The sultry suns of Summer came,
And he grew thick and strong;
His head weel arm’d wi’ pointed spears,
That no one should him wrong.

The sober Autumn enter’d mild,
When he grew wan and pale;
His bending joints and drooping head
Show’d he began to fail.

His colour sicken’d more and more,
He faded into age;
And then his enemies began
To show their deadly rage.

They’ve taen a weapon, long and sharp,
And cut him by the knee;
Then tied him fast upon a cart,
Like a rogue for forgerie.

They laid him down upon his back,
And cudgell’d him full sore;
They hung him up before the storm,
And turned him o’er and o’er.

They filled up a darksome pit
With water to the brim;
They heaved in John Barleycorn,
There let him sink or swim.

They laid him out upon the floor,
To work him farther woe;
And still, as signs of life appear’d,
They toss’d him to and fro.

They wasted, o’er a scorching flame,
The marrow of his bones;
But a miller us’d him worst of all,
For he crush’d him between two stones.

And they hae taen his very heart’s blood,
And drank it round and round;
And still the more and more they drank,
Their joy did more abound.

John Barleycorn was a hero bold,
Of noble enterprise;
For if you do but taste his blood,
‘Twill make your courage rise.

‘Twill make a man forget his woe;
‘Twill heighten all his joy;
‘Twill make the widow’s heart to sing,
Tho’ the tear were in her eye.

Then let us toast John Barleycorn,
Each man a glass in hand;
And may his great posterity
Ne’er fail in old Scotland!

* John Barleycorn exists in many forms, and a number of them I prefer over Burns’ version, but his is the only one I know of done by a true poet. The poem has also been turned into a song recorded by many, many artists, including Traffic, Steeleye Span and Jethro Tull, among others. I also have a children’s book of the story with wonderful woodcuts by artist Mary Azarian. You can read more about the history of this poem and story at my John Barleycorn page.

 

As usual, it was pretty hard to keep the list to ten, and a great many wonderful poems didn’t make the cut. Here’s a few more that almost made it:

From The Old Stone Cross, by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

A statesman is an easy man, he tells his lies by rote.
A journalist invents his lies, and rams them down your throat.
So stay at home and drink your beer and let the neighbors vote.

Old Irish Tale, author unknown

Some Guinness was spilt on the barroom floor
When the pub was shut for the night.
When out of his hole crept a wee brown mouse
And stood in the pale moonlight.

He lapped up the frothy foam from the floor
Then back on his haunches he sat.
And all night long, you could hear the mouse roar,
“Bring on the goddamn cat!”

Doh, Re, Me, by Homer Simpson

Dough, the stuff that buys me beer.
Ray, the guy who brings me beer.
Me, the guy who drinks the beer.
Far, a long way to get beer.
So, I’ll have another beer.
La, I’ll have another beer.
Tea, no thanks I’m having beer.
That will bring us back to…
(reaching the crescendo of his toast,
Homer looks into his beer mug,
which is empty) …DOH!!!

Beers, a spoof of Joyce Kilmer’s Trees (1886-1918)

I THINK that I shall never hear
A poem lovely as a beer.
A brew that’s best straight from a tap
With golden hue and snowy cap;
The liquid bread I drink all day,
Until my memory melts away;
A beer that’s made with summer malt
Too little hops its only fault;
Upon whose brow the yeast has lain;
In water clear as falling rain.
Poems are made by fools I fear,
But only wort can make a beer.

Here’s the original poem:

I THINK that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth’s flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Epic Poems

And way too long, but quite wonderful is the Finnish epic poem, The Kalevala and it’s hard not to mention the Hymn To Ninkasi, which really deserves to be included.

Send me your favorite beer poems by posting it or a link to it in a comment.

Also, if you have any ideas for future Top 10 lists you’d like to see, drop me a line.

Will Travel For Beer: The Next Session

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Vacation season is just around the corner, and Gail and Steve from Beer by BART will be hosting next month’s Session, a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday. Given that their blog focuses on how to safely travel from one beer destination to another, they’ve chosen the appropriate topic “Will Travel For Beer.” Here’s what they’re thinking:

If you just wrote or read about the trek to the furthest brew pub in the last round of the Session, and you immediately thought of other beer destinations near and far, we want to hear all about the good ones that didn’t quite fit the assignment! Tell us about that beer trip.

If you see the words “travel” and “beer” and instead of your best tourist sagas you think of work or logistics, we want to know your tips and strategies on the road. (Perhaps for getting prized bottles home.)

And if you haven’t done much travel for fine beer, either for work or pleasure, but you have a trip you’d love to do, tell us where you’d like to go seeking the experience and the community of beer. Who would you want to meet at your destination, who would your travel-mates be, and what would you most want to taste when you arrived?

Details please, whichever way you take this! You’re welcome to pull out the vacation slide show if you wish. By all means have a beer that reminds you of the trip, and describe it if you wish.

The next Session will take place on Friday, July 3, the day after what should have been America’s birthday and the day before the day we celebrate it. Where will you be traveling for the holiday weekend?

 

National Action Alert: Proposed Increase Of Federal Beer Tax

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Proposed Increase of Federal Excise Tax A Serious Threat to Small Brewers and Your Beer Choice

Contact Your Senators Now

I received the following action alert from Support Your Local Brewery, a national, grassroots partnership of beer enthusiasts, professional trade associations and brewers dedicated to supporting and protecting the legislative and regulatory interests of small, traditional and independent craft breweries. Most action alerts are state by state and this is the first national one I’ve seen. They’re asking for everyone to contact their U.S. Senator, but especially those of you living in the following states:

Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming.

The reason these states are so important is that’s where the Senate Finance Committee members are from, so it’s most important that they hear from constituents in their home states.

Here’s the information from the action alert.

Small brewers are facing an imminent and extremely serious threat to their businesses. The consequences of remaining silent have the very real potential of reducing your choice of beer and dramatically increasing the price of any beer that you purchase.

The Senate Finance Committee in Washington, DC is currently considering a proposal to increase and equalize the excise tax for alcohol beverages as part of healthcare reform deliberations. This proposal would triple the excise tax for 4.5% ABV beer and impose even higher excise tax rates for higher ABV beers.

If such a proposal becomes reality, there is no question that many small brewery businesses will suffer, some will close and consumers will face higher prices and diminished choice in the marketplace.
The Brewers Association brewery members and leadership have been actively engaged in building the case against an excise tax increase, recently submitting a letter to the Committee outlining our opposition.

We need you to speak out now. Today or tomorrow at the latest.

If your Senators are not members of that committee, ask them to contact their Finance Committee colleagues and express their opposition to this proposal moving forward.

Your ask of them is simple:

Oppose the Tax Increase. Let them know that you oppose, in the strongest possible terms, raising the federal excise tax on beer because of the serious consequences it would have on small brewers and the craft beer they brew. Additional talking points appear below.

Once again: If one of your Senators sits on the Senate Finance Committee (roster of and links to members below), urge them to oppose this proposal in committee deliberations.

If your Senators are not members of that committee, ask them to contact their Finance Committee colleagues and express their opposition to this proposal moving forward.

Take Action: Call and/or email your Senators’ Washington or district offices and make your personal case against this massive excise tax increase.

 

DEMOCRATSREPUBLICANS
MAX BAUCUS, MT
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, WV
KENT CONRAD, ND
JEFF BINGAMAN, NM
JOHN F. KERRY, MA
BLANCHE L. LINCOLN, AR
RON WYDEN, OR
CHARLES E. SCHUMER, NY
DEBBIE STABENOW, MI
MARIA CANTWELL, WA
BILL NELSON, FL
ROBERT MENENDEZ, NJ
THOMAS CARPER, DE

CHUCK GRASSLEY, IA
ORRIN G. HATCH, UT
OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, ME
JON KYL, AZ
JIM BUNNING, KY
MIKE CRAPO, ID
PAT ROBERTS, KS
JOHN ENSIGN, NV
MIKE ENZI, WY
JOHN CORNYN, TX

 

ISSUES OF IMPORTANCE TO SMALL BREWERS — EXCISE TAXES

Small brewers are small Main street businesses, typically employing 10 to 50 employees.

Small brewers represent only 4% of the entire U.S. beer market by volume, with 95% of them being very small businesses (producing 15,000 barrels or less per year).

We strongly oppose proposals to increase the excise tax on beer.

  • Proposals to increase and equalize the tax among all types of alcohol will tax small brewers at the highest rates because their specialty, gourmet and innovative beers typically have higher alcohol contents.
  • Brewers already pay a disproportionately higher share of taxes compared with other products – federal, state and local taxes represent over 40% of the retail price for beer while the same taxes equal nearly 24% of the price for all other purchases.

Higher taxes will worsen the economic recession – resulting in less competitive products, reduced sales and revenues, lost jobs and, for some small brewers, business closures.

  • $1 per case excise tax increase will typically cost the consumer at least $1.69 due to successive mark-ups as the case moves from brewer to wholesaler to retailer.
  • Many small brewers are struggling to deal with the consequences of the 2008 spike in ingredient and operational costs.

 

If you want some background on what’s going on with this, here’s where it started with a Senate Finance Committee roundtable in mid-May which then escalated to a written proposal on May 20. This increase is in addition to state excise taxes that breweries have to pay. There’s also additional information at Don’t Tax Our Beer and the Brewers Association’s Excise Tax Resources page.

If you care about the beer you drink and the many small breweries that make it, please take a few minutes out of your day to help keep it affordable and also keep some of them from possibly going out of business. Please reach out to your elected official in the U.S. Senate. They’re supposed to work for you, after all, let them know how you feel.

 

Beer In Art #31: Mark Stosiak’s Beer Bottles

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I haven’t highlighted a contemporary western artist for awhile, so today’s works of art brings us forward once again for a painting completed just three years ago. It was painted by Canadian artist Mark F. Stosiak in 2006. It’s called Beer Bottles and features two Canadian beers, Moosehead and Le Cheval Blanc.

Stosiak’s website only reveals “I’m a Canajun, eh?” and at his Trollboy blog, he doesn’t tell us anything personal but he does talk a little bit about the process of his art:

The process of creating is what I find the most fun. The smell of oil paint, the texture, the act of mixing and applying colour to the surface. running out of paint and reloading the brush. The feel of the pencil scratching back and forth on paper. Smoothing clay with my fingers and detailing with various tools like dental picks, searching for different tools or making my own. Getting a colour or shape just right. Getting my hands dirty.

There’s a little more information on Stosiak at his biography at the Digital Consciousness Artist Database, which lists the following:

Biography: Living in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, he spends a great deal of time trying to get the world in his head onto paper and canvas. Country: Canada Birthyear: 1974 Media: oil Style: surrealistic Subjects: other, A variety of strange creatures, places, and situations

The majority of his artwork is actually fairly surreal, and in fact these beer bottles are a very small part of his online oeuvre that involve fairly normal subjects. He mostly does these delightfully weird creatures he calls Monstah’s.

 
Apart from his own regular website, he also displays his artwork at Trollboy’s Blog, which is where the beer bottles painting is shown. He also has a gallery at Deviant Art.

 

Session #28: Thinking & Drinking Globally

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Today is National Doughnut Day, among other things, and time once again for The Session, in fact our 28th such outing. This time our host is Brian Yaeger, who writes at Red, White & Brew. His chosen topic is “Think/Drink Globally,” which he described as follows:

In honor of Global Craft Beer Forever, I propose everyone writes about the farthest brewery (including brewpubs) you have visited and specifically the best beer you had there. Again, not your favorite or any old brewery you’ve been to, but the one that is the longest haul away, be it by airplane, car, ferry, rickshaw, whatever. (If you blog about beer but have never been to a House of Brewing, get on it!)

Then, the last part, since this exercise gives us an excuse to drink beer, do one of the following:

  1. if you brought home a bottle while visiting the brewery and have it secreted away, crack it open.
  2. if you don’t have any left from that visit but the particular beer is available where you live (or if not your fave from said brewery, another brand from it), go get one.
  3. otherwise, find a local beer of the same style and do a little compare and contrast.

Well it certainly isn’t to hard to figure out the farthest place I’ve traveled so far for a beer was to New Zealand. The whole family went there for two weeks last year around this same time, plus my in-laws, too. We had a great time, and stayed most of the time in a beach house north of Auckland in the middle of nowhere. And since a lot of New Zealand feels like the middle of nowhere, that’s really saying something. We explored caves, went on hikes, lounged at the beach and tried our damnedest not to hit anything driving on the wrong (for us) side of the road. There were sheep everywhere and the joke is that there are more of them than people in New Zealand, and it’s not hard to believe.

The last few days were spent in the capital city of Auckland, where there was more beer, I’m happy to say. Though, sadly, only a minority was actually worth drinking. I did an article on beer in New Zealand for All About Beer. There were several decent breweries, the best I tried were from Emerson, Epic, Galbraith, and Hallertau.

Of those four, I spent the most time at Hallertau, as they also sell bottled beers and owner Stephen Plowman and Luke Nicholas (who brews the Epic Beer line) and I opened a couple dozen ebers so I could get a good cross section of the islands’ beer. Here’s what I wrote about the place in All About Beer:

Near the edge of the city limits, in Riverhead, is Galbraith’s polar opposite, the Hallertau Brewbar & Restaurant. Opened just three years ago by Stephen Plowman, the restaurant is thoroughly modern in both décor and cuisine, with an emphasis on local ingredients wherever possible. The menu includes esoteric fare as well as new takes on traditional dishes, and everything tastes homemade and delicious. The brewing equipment, though much less modern, and looking as if designed by MacGyver, still manages to create some terrific beers. Plowman makes an interesting range of beers, and likes to play around with his seasonals. His regular beers include a Kölsch-style ale, an American pale ale, an Irish red and a German-style Schwarzbier. His seasonal offerings have included an Imperial IPA (big, hoppy beers are a veritable rarity in New Zealand), a Belgian-style Tripel and a Saison flavored with Manuka tips, a local shrub sometimes also called a tea tree.

But by far my favorite of his beers was an experimental beer he was making, and I bought a couple bottles of it to bring home and age. Here’s what I wrote about it at the time:

But Plowman’s most ambitious beer may also be his best. His Porter Noir is a barrel-aged beer, which may be the first beer in New Zealand to use Brettanomyces. He brewed a strong Porter (6.6% abv) and aged it in local Pinot Noir barrels for four months before bottling. In the bottle, Brettanomyces was added and left to condition for another six months, before being released for purchase. It’s a wonderful beer, with rich, complex flavors of thick figs, raisins and the like, with strong Brett horse stable character. I can’t say for sure whether or not the people of New Zealand are ready for a beer so vastly different from their popular, but insipid, draught style. But ready or not, here it comes.

The second time I tried it, with Vinnie Cilurzo, from Russian River Brewing, here’s what I found:

Dark in color and a very thick tan head. The nose was marked by characteristic barnyard aromas with just a touch of malty sweetness. The nose was slightly less pungent than the sample I had in New Zealand, but Vinnie and I both declared it to be quite tasty. The Brett character married quite nicely with the nutty, malty porter flavors.

So let’s see what a year has done to it. The Bretty barnyard is still there, possibly even stronger, at least as I remember it. It’s still very malty but seems more complex to me as well, with all sorts of aroma and tastes mixing about on the nose and on the tongue. Dark fruit and some spiciness predominate, but there’s more there, too. I don’t know if Plowman is making new batches of this beer, but I certainly hope so, it’s definitely one of the most adventuresome being made in New Zealand.

I realized that I never posted photos from the New Zealand trip because I was saving them for the All About Beer article, but it’s been a year now, so I think it’s okay to post some of them now. So here’s a gallery of beer-related photos and also some non-beer related photos, in case you’re curious about what else we saw when we were there. [Note: the photos have no captions because I didn’t have time to put them in before leaving for Monterey. I’ll try and put them in Sunday after we get back, so check back Monday if you want to have more information about what’s in the photos.]

Oldest Brewery In Ireland Closes

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I’m a little behind on this one, but thought it worth mentioning all the same. Last Friday, a week ago, the oldest brewery in Ireland was shut down. Heineken, who’s owned the Beamish & Crawford Brewery in Cork since last October, decided in December to close the brewery and move production elsewhere to cut costs. The brewery, located on South Main Street, has been making beer since 1690, making it Ireland’s oldest brewery. There had been talk of turning it into a museum, a plan endorsed by Cllr Brian Bermingham, The Lord Mayor of Cork. Its mock-Tudor counting house is already a “protected structure” and, according to The Independent, “the National Conservation and Heritage Group (NCHG) argued that the existing Beamish site offers an opportunity to create a tourism-heritage complex similar to the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin.” Heineken decided instead to sell it “on the commercial market” since they obviously couldn’t care less about the history of the place. Like any multinational corporation, they only care about short-term profit.

British beer writer Roger Protz has a nice summary of who’s owned Beamish over the past few decades, and how those events led to Heineken acquiring it last year.

While Murphy’s fell into the hands of Heineken, Beamish also had a turbulent life in the 20th century. In 1962 it was bought by the Canadian group Carling O’Keefe, which in turn was bought by the Foster’s lager group of Australia. This allowed Beamish Stout to be sold through Courage pubs in Britain as Courage was owned by Foster’s. Eventually Courage was taken over by S&N, which gave the brand little promotion in Britain but, incongruously, marketed it in France alongside its French subsidiary Kronenbourg.

Abut 120 jobs will be lost and production will be moved across town, to what for most of its existence was known as the Lady’s Well Brewery, also owned by Heineken, where they make Murphy’s Irish Stout.

 

Cross-Border Beer Buying

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While looking through the information at the Tax Foundation today I came across a very interesting article and a study about cross-border sales of beer and tobacco and how it effects tax revenues. It’s not something I thought much about or figured had that much impact but the study, done ten years ago, seems to suggest otherwise. Essentially, what happens is that between state borders, people either living near them or happen to be traveling through them will purchase items in the other state, the one where the taxes are less, making the products themselves less expensive. I hadn’t thought about this phenomenon in a long time, but I recall that as a kid, my stepfather — a heavy cigarette smoker — had people bring him cartons of cigarettes back from southern states where, presumably, the taxes were so much cheaper that the cost of a carton of smokes was worth the effort of buying them in another state and hauling them back to Pennsylvania. And I’ve heard in some states, particularly on the east coast where they’re closer together, people would travel across state lines to buy a car for the same reason though as I understand it most states have enacted laws to make that practice not work anymore.

How this relates to beer is that in states where the excise tax differs greatly from a state bordering it, the price of beer can likewise be pretty dramatically different between those states, primarily because the base tax gets marked up along the distribution chain so the difference in the tax is magnified. That makes it susceptible to cross-border buying resulting in lost sales and tax revenue for the state with the higher tax rate. How much of a problem could this be? I confess I was initially skeptical, but the study, How Excise Tax Differentials Affect the Cross-Border Sales of Beer in the United States, done by the Tax Foundation in 1999 found that nationally it resulted in nearly $35 million in “lost sales & excise tax revenue.” That certainly sounds like enough that it should give any state pause before jacking of their state’s excise tax rate on beer. It’s just one more reason why raising a state’s beer tax might be a losing proposition economically.

Here’s an excerpt from the abstract for the study:

Cross-Border Shopping for Beer

While the study measures cross-border shopping in every state, the results are naturally most dramatic along borders where the tax differential is high. For example, Washington state, which levies a statewide 6.5 percent sales tax, additional local sales taxes and a $7.172 per barrel beer excise tax, shares a border with Oregon, which levies no state or local sales taxes and has a state beer excise of just $2.60 per barrel.

Huge quantities of beer cross the border in these circumstances, but this migration of economic activity affects more than just sales and product-specific excise tax collections. Cross-border shopping affects income and property tax collections, license fees, and a host of other sources of government revenue.

Policymakers are frequently surprised by the magnitude of the revenue effects, and such surprises can be particularly unnerving when the government in question is required to maintain a balanced budget.

According to the study, California alone lost $5,248,466 for the year studied. The conclusion seems fairly unambiguous, here are the last two paragraphs:

The per capita sale of packaged beer varies widely by state. It has long been suspected that these differences are due in part to cross-border shopping. Building on earlier work in this area, this study sought to explain differences in packaged beer sales among the states. A model of demand for beer and its supply by source was constructed. This model was created in a manner that allowed it to capture the effects of both interstate and Canadian cross-border shopping on beer sales in the states.

The model was then tested empirically using data from 1990–1997. Cross-border shopping was found to have significant effects on packaged beer sales in the states. In particular, the study found that in 1997, 18.1 million cases of beer, on net, moved from low- to high-tax states. Such exports accounted for approximately 2.0 percent of sales in net exporting states and allowed them to export $18.8 million in sales and beer excise taxes to their high-tax neighbors. In addition, states along the U.S.-Canadian border were able to export 10.9 million cases of beer and $14.6 million in sales and beer excise taxes to Canada. The study clearly shows that high sales and excise tax differentials lead to significant increases in cross-border beer sales.

The pull-quote that lawmakers should pay attention to is that by being too heavy-handed with imposing higher excise taxes on beer, it just might backfire to the point where it’s actually counter-productive and even reduces the amount of taxes collected. It could, it appears, actually wreck a state’s economy

Policymakers should be aware that the effects of cross-border shopping on income taxes, property taxes, and license fees can match or even exceed the revenue changes in state and local sales and excise taxes measured by the model.

The study is long and complex, but worth your time if you’re in a position to speak with or write to a state lawmaker, or if you’re a geek for this stuff like me. It’s 24 pages and is available as a pdf file.

 

 

Beer Excise Taxes By State

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tax
I found this nice map of the 50 states with the individual beer excise tax brewers in each state has to pay in addition to the federal excise taxes at Charlie Papazian’s blog, too. It’s originally from Don’t Tax Our Beer, a website maintained by the Tax Foundation.

The map provides an interesting snapshot of all the states. It’s worth noting that all the southern states have high excise taxes on beer, where the idea of drinking being sinful is, I think, more prevalent.

excise-taxes-2009

Sin Tax Tyrannies

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There’s an interesting opinion piece at the Christian Science Monitor by Patrick Fleenor, who’s the chief economist for the Tax Foundation. It’s called The Tyranny of Taxing ‘Sin’. There’s some good stuff there, but here’s my favorite part:

Fleecing the minority is made much easier by an army of busybodies who make a comfortable living feeding “studies” to the media, proclaiming that Americans eat the wrong foods, drink the wrong beverages, don’t exercise enough, and are generally sinful. These modern-day Carrie Nations’ denunciations of nearly every commonplace pleasure — from Girl Scout Cookies to movie theater popcorn — are fodder for the nightly news.

To dispel the notion that their sin taxes go too far, the nanny-staters rely on a clever sleight-of-hand: Instead of pitching the tax as a punishment for sin, they claim they’re merely compensating society for costs imposed by bad habits. These claims are often unsupported by science, but many media repeat them without question.

That’s certainly true of the neo-prohibitionists, who keep insisting that vague alcohol-related “stuff” accounts for an enormous cost burden for taxpayers, but the supporting evidence I’ve seen for that is either non-existent or ludicrous at best. Yet the media repeats that endlessly and people comment here trying to asset is as a fact, too.

 

Montana’s Victory & More

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There’s a nice round-up on Charlie Papazian’s blog about some current state legislation around the country, for example some good news out of Montana, similar to Alabama’s news two weeks ago:

Montana just passed a law which will allow beer to be up to 14% alcohol by volume (before it was max at 7% by weight, about 8.75 % by volume), effective in October. That new limit is conditional.The beer must be built 75% from malted cereal grains, if above 8.75% by volume. If over the 8.75% and less than 75% from malted cereal grains, the beer must be sold in liquor stores.

That’s followed by a summary of pending issues at various states and some interesting tax information, too.