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Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Blue Is the Most Drinkable Color

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Blue is the most drinkable color. That will be $100,000 for services rendered, thank you very much. Ah, such is the life of a marketeer. Given that life-sustaining water, which accounts for about 60% of our bodies, 70% of our brains and 90% of our lungs, is literally the stuff we’re made of, it’s quite remarkable that you’d need an expert to tell you that anything that associates consumers with water will perceived quite positively, especially if you’re selling a beverage that’s made mostly of water.

But last week, Anheuser-Busch unveiled plans to upgrade their packaging on Bud Light to give it a shot in the arm. I wasn’t going to write about this one. I really wasn’t. All of the big beer companies do this from time to time. They revamp their packaging, releasing press releases that all but tout it as the second coming. It’s frustrating, and doubly so because it usually works. I know good packaging is a must in our consumerist world, and that you must continually tweak it to keep it “fresh” otherwise people stop looking if it’s always the same. But I can’t help by being continually dumbfounded at how absolutely predictable and easily manipulated we all are. Look, shiny object … must touch … must buy. Sheesh, how pathetic. We all pride ourselves on our individuality but at the end of the day we’re more alike than we care to admit, myself included. And boy do marketers have our number. Pick up any recent book on the science of marketing and you’ll be astounded at the level of detail by which marketers can accurately predict our behavior. (For two good places to start, try Paco Underhill’s Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping or Douglas Rushkoff’s Coercion: Why We Listen To What “They” Say.) So, as I said, I was going to leave this latest one go, as I’ve beaten this dead horse time and time again.

What changed my mind was a surprisingly hilarious column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Kevin Horrigan entitled New! Improved! Drinkable!. Given that it was written in St. Louis, it’s delightfully snarky, but perhaps now that the new regime is in perhaps it’s finally possible to criticize the local 100-lb. gorilla and get away with it in a way not possible a month ago. Jeremiah McWilliams, the Post-Dispatch’s usual man on the job when it comes to beer wrote about it earlier, but just related the facts with little commentary or asides.

And naturally, the AP towed the party line as well, with Emily Fredrix’s article passing along such wisdom as these choice nuggets:

The change comes as analysts say more people are buying beer instead of higher-priced wine and spirits.

“As the choices continue to grow for consumers, you also have to tell them what is it about this brand in the bottle,” Keith Levy, vice president of marketing, said recently.

The plastic label on Bud Light’s new bottles is 27 percent larger than the current label and touts “drinkability.” The cans, which are nearly all blue, feature the word “refreshment.”

Levy said the shift to blue came after extensive research showed the color helped drive home the message of refreshment.

And that’s where Horrigan picks up the story, taking the idea of “drinkability” (a 17th century word A-B recently appropriated as its own, it wold be interesting to see how fast the lawsuits fly if someone else tried to use the word now) and his article shows how ridiculous A-B’s marketing department’s use of the word really is. Here’s a sample of what he writes:

Literature fanbase, are you tired of reading ordinary newspaper columns? Why not try our new column, with superior readability?

Ordinary columns go down harsh. Our new column goes down smooth, with no bitter aftertaste. That’s what we call readability, a concept pioneered by our German wordmeisters.

They came to this country with but one thing on their minds: producing a newspaper column that would have superior readability. What’s that mean? Simply put, it means we don’t string words together like the Germans do, like schicklegruberhofmeistergesselschaft (literally, the “guy with the razor who grubs in the barn company”). No, we use short words. English words. Easily digestible words.

Readable words.

As cannily effective as that is, it was this next line that really got me back in the game, writing about this nonsense. After spending millions promoting the concept of “drinkability,” the next phase is to change the color of Bud Light’s packaging: the labels, the cans, the six-pack carriers and the mother cartons, all redone with a “fresh” new color scheme favoring blue. Why blue, you may rightly ask? Here’s how Horrigan puts it. “Because expensive marketing studies indicate that the color blue suggests ‘refreshment.'”

If you’re drinking something, now would be the perfect time to involuntarily spray/spit it out in surprise and horror. Really, people will associate the color of water, which is refreshing, with refreshment? How many advanced degrees, consumer focus groups and surveys and polls with appropriate statistical number crunching do you think led them to make so bold a proclamation as “the color blue suggests refreshment?”

What’s more amazing, is that armed with that insight, they’ve made the decision to make the packaging blue, wth the fir belief that this change will therefore make it sell better, too. If that were really so, wouldn’t every package of any sort of drinkable liquid for sale, alcoholic or not, be blue by now to tap into our subconscious desires for something refreshingly blue? Pepsi is blue. Foster’s is blue. Why aren’t they the number one brands in their categories. Coca-Cola seems to be doing reasonably well with their red packaging. Doesn’t red suggest heat. Why would anyone looking for refreshment choose Coke?

I hope you already know the answers to those questions. Marketing is all about manipulation. It’s the practical application of propaganda for business purposes pioneered during World War I by our government to “persuade” us that going to war was not only a good idea, but necessary for our own safety. Ever since, it’s been the same story before every war our politicians have dragged us into. Hitler was so impressed by how effective our World War I government propaganda was that it inspired him to create an entire department devoted to propaganda headed by Joseph Goebbels after he came to power and created Nazi Germany. It was called The Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Isn’t it comforting to know that advertising and marketing has such an impressive heritage and lineage? Modern day P.R. (a phrase coined specifically to avoid the negative connotations that propaganda took on during World War II) and marketing is a direct result of what was learned in the early part of the last century about how to manipulate people in such a way that they would not only do what you wanted, but think it was their idea. If you think that’s no longer going on or that we’re all too smart to fall for such tactics then you’re really not paying attention to the realities of the world. If anything, it has gotten much more sophisticated. Marketing really can make you see white but think its black.

But let’s return to the concept of “drinkability,” a term A-B has toyed with for a number of years before deciding to make it the cornerstone of their latest marketing assault. It’s sure sounds like something you’d want in a drink. But does is have any intrinsic meaning? None whatsoever. It merely means “suitable for drinking,” which fairly defines any liquid that won’t kill you or make you sick if you drink it. It’s hardly some magic idea that any particular drink will have more suitability than another. It’s subterfuge, a gimmick, a deception. But what’s perhaps most chilling about propaganda, is that despite all the science and literature that’s available about it, along with the research and science that forms its basis, it continues to work so effectively. If anything, it works better now than it did a century ago because it is understood today so much more fully and it is generally implemented in such as way that most people have no idea it’s even happening or that they are being manipulated.

Have another look at how the concept of “drinkability” is being sold, as quoted in the AP article:

“Bud Light’s new look will reflect the key attributes of the brand we are touting in all our marketing – drinkability and refreshment,” said Keith Levy, vice president of Marketing, Anheuser-Busch. “Drinkability offers a unique way to express a range of product benefits through a single term. It’s that just right taste – not too heavy or light – that sets Bud Light apart from other light beers.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but really, nothing sets one light beer apart from any other light beer. That’s what makes them light beers, in a sense. If it weren’t for marketing and advertising, they almost would be interchangeable commodities. I have judged “American-style Light Lagers” at the Great American Beer Festival, and there are precious little differences in the taste of the these beers as made by the large breweries. I’ve been training my palette almost continually for nearly twenty years and it was one of the hardest categories I’ve ever judged, simply because of how alike they were. And it discussing them with my fellow judges, I was not alone in this. It was the general consensus. You end up searching more intensely for any defects, no matter how slight, just as a way to distinguish them from one another. There are slight variations in taste that can be perceived, but they are so superficial that they’re almost meaningless.

That’s where marketing comes in. Millions are spent to convince us that one light beer is different from another. And everybody falls for it, brand loyalty is created and money is made. But blue is also the color of sadness, a cold and lonely blue. That’s how this makes me feel. Blue. Sigh.
 

Beer in Art #7: Gabriel Metsu’s The Old Drinker

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Today’s work of art is dates from the 17th Century and depicts an elderly gentlemen enjoying his vices, both beer and tobacco. It’s by a relatively obscure artist, Gabriël Metsu. He was a Dutch painter who lived most of his life in Leiden, and his father was also a painter.

The title of today’s painting is The Old Drinker, which is at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The museum describes the painting like this:

On this minuscule panel, measuring just 22 x 19.5 cm, Gabriël Metsu painted with minute detail this everyday scene of an old man with his Gouda pipe. Gouda pipes are white and have a long, slender stem and a small bowl. They were mass produced from around 1617 in the Gouda area, where white pipe clay (terra alba) was readily available. Copper moulds were used to model the clay, which was subsequently fired in the kilns of local potters. Pipes manufactured in other cities usually had shorter stems, but long stems were popular because they cooled the smoke better. However, they were difficult to produce, and the pipe-makers of Gouda were the only manufacturers with the necessary expertise. and his pewter jar leaning on against a beer barrel. The old drinker looks rather the worse for wear; he sags rather than sits on the chair as he peers through his watery eyes, his chin unshaven, his collar open and his cap askew. Metsu presents the man with a direct honesty and realism that is not in fact harsh; the smile and the friendly eyes of the old drinker lend a certain sympathetic quality.

In more general terms they later discuss the symbolism in the painting.

In the seventeenth century, there was a belief that smoking and drinking in excess accelerated the aging process. Paintings of ‘old drinkers’ are often a reference to this idea. This work is perhaps a warning to avoid excessive indulgence in alcohol and tobacco.

There is a little more information about Gabriel Metsu at Wikipedia, and also some more of his works at the Web Gallery of Art and his official website.

 

Santa Labels

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I’ve written recently about further efforts by neo-prohibitionist groups to take Santa Claus away from his heritage and out of the hands of adults entirely. As the patron saint of brewers, this effort is naturally misguided, but then so is virtually everything that these chuckleheads undertake. I came across this website from Japan today that collects a number of holiday beer labels from around the world, many of which feature Santa Claus prominently, and several of which I’d not seen before. This nicely illustrates how little issue the rest of the civilized world has with Santa Claus being associated with beer. Below is a sample of the labels.

 

This one’s from the Ukraine.
 

And this one’s from Poland.
 

The X-mas Gueuze is from Belgium.
 

And this last one’s also Polish.

Check out the rest of them.

 

Bullies 2, Beer 0

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bully
It’s very sad to me, but the truth is despite all the rhetoric we heap on our kids about bullying never working, it really is an accepted practice in adult society. It’s no wonder kids turn to bullying when they see it modeled for them in countless ways throughout society. To look at me today, you’d never know I was a skinny runt of a kid until I bulked up in junior high school, first growing what was then called “husky” and then stretching taller to lose some of the — ahem — husk. And that meant that I did have several early encounters with bullies to the point where I have essentially a zero tolerance policy for bullying. Few things work me into a lather quite like a bully. And while it would be nice to believe that those same schoolyard thugs grow to realize the error of their ways, the sad fact is that many incorporate such philosophies into their adult life. Violence, fear and threats are all around us from the macro view of governments flexing their collective muscles and going to war down to the microcosm of individuals throwing their weight around in small ways; cutting people off in traffic, ignoring people in retail lines and stepping to the front, and generally throwing their weight around knowing that they can get away with it because most people don’t like confrontation. You also see it publicly in politics, sports, college hazing, the military, the workplace and even online where a lack of face-to-face cues often allows people to write things they would never say to another human being in person.

But where I’m noticing it more and more lately is in the neo-prohibitionist community’s aggressive bullying of society and their targets, the alcohol companies themselves. It sure feels like they look at the rest of us as less than human, to be pushed around, threatened and cajoled, using fear to make us tow their line, as if we were all children who didn’t know any better. Their world seems to allow for only one opinion and woe be to anyone with a contrary one. I personally have been threatened by one of these groups with legal action.

Here’s how Wikipedia defines a bully:

Bullying is the act of intentionally causing harm to others, through verbal harassment, physical assault, or other more subtle methods of coercion such as manipulation. … Bullying is usually done to coerce others by fear or threat.

That’s certainly the tactics used recently by several neo-prohibitionist groups to stop people from raising money for pediatric cancer and also to stop MillerCoors from selling their Alcopop Sparks. And unfortunately for decent society, their bullying tactics are working. They claim to want to protect kids, of course, but what kind of message does bullying send to them? “By any means necessary” is obviously their motto but I can’t help but think that has a cost to society that they’re overlooking (or simply don’t care about).

The Marin Institute, the CSPI and Join Together is crowing about MillerCoors’ decision to stop making Sparks. They’ve also settled disputes with thirteen states attorney and the City of San Francisco. Back in September, Sparks came under fire once more when the horribly misnamed CSPI filed suit. (They’re not remotely interested in the public interest, just a narrow sliver of it that agrees with their agenda.) I wrote at the time that it was a slippery slope for the beer industry not to support MillerCoors and I continue to believe that.

Then there was the Running of the Santas, a charity event in 25 cities to raise money for kids with cancer, which both the CSPI and Join Together objected to because people dressed up in Santa Claus suits, ran two blocks and — gasp — drank alcohol. They were very concerned that kids might see Santa drunk, but apparently not concerned that money was being raised to find a cure for pediatric cancer. Priorities, I guess. But what sort of person thinks it’s more important to stop kids from the mere potential of seeing drunken Santas than to find a cure for the cancer these same kids may soon die from? Anheuser-Busch had already bowed to their bullying and withdrew their support. Now MillerCoors has reportedly done likewise, according to Join Together.

I certainly understand these decisions by MillerCoors, at least from a business perspective. They’re in business to make money. Period. They’re not in business to tackle complex social issues of morality or take on the self-righteous factions of our world. I get that.

Still, there’s a part of me that wishes they’d man up and take on the bully, because that’s the only way to stop one. Bullies count on the fear and the threats that are their stock in trade. It’s that very corporate rule that business is all that matters — legally all that really can matter — that these bullies are using as a wedge to further their agenda. They know that the alcohol companies cannot be perceived as being in favor of underage drinking or people overindulging, and so they paint a false portrait of just that, suggesting the very opposite of what is in the company’s best interests to win over public sympathy. It’s the worst kind of propaganda. Bullying is not exclusively a childhood problem, but one that lingers throughout our lives, it’s only how we deal with a bully that defines us. And that’s perhaps what is scariest of all, that bullying continues to work time and time again. And it will keep on working until we stand up to the neo-prohibitionists.

I’ll leave you with a couple of great quotes that neatly express why I feel propaganda is so pernicious and why we must stand up to the bullies who use it.

“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”
          —Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, 1997

 

“When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, ‘This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,’ the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything—you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”
          —Robert A. Heinlein, If This Goes On, 1940

Woot’s Worst Beer Styles

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If you’re not familiar with Woot!, you should be. It stands for “One Day, One Deal,” which is essentially what it is. There’s a Woot! website and each day they offer one item for sale, usually at a very reduced price. They usually only have a limited number of the item, so when it’s gone, it’s really gone. If you don’t get there early you’re just out of luck. They often do sell out, and sometimes depending on the item very early in the day. I’ve only bought a few things there, as the variety is pretty wide, though you will see more high-tech gadgets than probably anything else. There’s also two companion sites that sell a new t-shirt every day and a wine, too.

The also have a blog, on which they recently posted a list of 11 Failed Beer Styles:

  1. Gruel Stout
  2. Twice-Baked Lager
  3. Turbo-Pilsner
  4. Steam Beer That Is Still Really Hot
  5. Stale Ale
  6. Dry-Humped APA
  7. Luxembourg Gray
  8. Lambicarbonate of Soda
  9. Insect Pale Ale
  10. Bud Light With Brown Food Coloring Irish Stout
  11. Hefvergnügen

I’m not sure they’d all qualify as “styles” per se, but it’s still a fairly funny list. What would you add to it?

 

How Stuff Works Brews Beer Tonight

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The Discovery Channel TV show How Stuff Works tonight visits Charlie Papazian, as well as the Yuengling Brewery in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. The Show, entitled simply Beer, airs twice tonight at 8:00 p.m. and Midnight. Check the schedule for your local airing time. There are also clips from the show on their website.

According to Charlie Papazian, President of the Brewers Association, “the producers spent a full morning and part of the afternoon with [him] this past summer. Shooting [his] hop garden, homebrew “garage,” beer stash and sampling of various brews while asking [him] to tell the story of “how beer works.” He also mentions that he believes Sam Calagione from Dogfish Head will also be featured in the show. It should be interesting, set your TiVo.

Overall, it seems like there’s definitely more general interest in beer from cable television and other video outlets recently, with many more shows being devoted to beer in development and airing. I did another show recently for a new online channel, Reason TV, which is partially funded by Drew Carey. It should air online in a few weeks. The show was devoted more to the politics of craft beer and distribution hurdles and featured a roundtable discussion with me and several Bay Area brewers. I’ll update you here when it’s ready to go live. In the meantime, watch tonight’s How Beer Works.

 

Jamie Smith (right), co-executive producer of the beer episode to be aired on the Discovery Channel tonight (Dec. 18), and Charlie Papazian after shooting on location at his “home” brewery earlier this summer.

 

Budvar Prevails Over Bud In EU Decision

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The EU’s Court of First Instance ruled yesterday that in prior rulings, the European Trademark Agency had “made several errors,” when they went against Budejovicky Budvar and accepted Anheuser-Busch’s arguments over trademark issues in Europe between the two rival breweries. This effectively undoes the trademark for A-B’s “Bud” brand name in the EU’s 27 member nations.

According to the AP report, the upshot is that “Anheuser-Busch can no longer claim trademark rights for the entire EU region but must rely on separate national trademarks.”

From the AP Article:

The Czech company said it had already registered “Bud” under a 1958 agreement which protected the name as a geographical indicator of origin in France, Austria and the former Czechoslovakia.

The court ruled the trademark agency had to “take account of earlier rights” protected in member states, adding the agency had “made an error of law” in rejecting the use of the word and signs in the context of a commercial activity.

There were actually three separate judgments rendered today by the Court of First Instance over different aspects if this on-going dispute. If appealed, the case will go to the European Court of Justice.

The rulings, while each is distinct, all follow similar language, as follows.

Judgment T-225/06 Budějovický Budvar v OHMI – Anheuser-Busch (BUD) Intellectual property

Community trade mark – Action, brought by the proprietor of the right to use the protected appellation of origin ‘BUD’ to designate beer, for the annulment of Decision R 234-2005-2 of the Second Board of Appeal of the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM) of 14 June 2006 dismissing the appeal against the decision of the Opposition Division which refused the opposition filed by the applicant against the application for registration of the word mark ‘BUD’ in respect of goods in Classes 32 and 33

Forbes has additional analysis on the ruling entitled AB Inbev suffers a setback in its attempt to win Europe-wide rights to the trademark the name ‘Bud.’

Their take:

Czech beer maker Budejovicky Budvar won its attempt to ban AB InBev’s application for a community trademark that would have given the Belgian brewer the exclusive right to use the word “Bud” on its beers across all 27 member states of the European Union. A firm cannot acquire region-wide rights if another company holds a separate national trademark, even if it is just in one of the states.

Budvar had used what is referred to as “appellation of origin”–used to protect a name on the basis of geographical origin–to claim trademark rights in several countries such as France and Austria. Budejovicky Budvar was founded in 1895 in the Czech city of Ceske Budejovice—an area called “Budweis” by the German-speaking people that lived there at the time, according to the Associated Press. The founders of Anheuser-Busch had thus originally picked the name “Budweiser” because it was well-known in their German homeland.

An Appeal by A-B InBev is likely, so I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this dispute, which so far is more than 100 years old.

 

Mug Of The World

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I’m not sure where this originated or even if it’s real, but it’s pretty cool looking, at least to me. I guess I’ll have to start a list, but of the growing number of things I’ve recently admitted to being geekily obsessive, please add maps. I love maps of all kinds, though especially pictorial ones and globes. At one time, I had collected at least fifty globes but they’re the sort of things that quickly overwhelm a small house. I still collect postcards with the old-fashioned state maps on them with the small graphics on them to indicate particular features of the state. Anyway, enough rambling. This mug of beer looks eerily like Africa and Europe, with a splash of Asia in the corner.

It almost looks too good to be real, as it’s pretty damn accurate. If it’s fake, they did a great job. Of course, if you can put 100 monkeys in a room and eventually get Shakespeare, who know, maybe it’s real after all? Or perhaps if you have enough mugs of beer it starts to look real. Either, way, color me impressed.

 

Lingering Lager Lies

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Somehow I missed this particular Budweiser commercial, a part of the “Lager Lessons” campaign that began sometime around the Super Bowl earlier this year. The first one, which I have seen many times, starred Ron Riggle from the Daily Show. The series was created by ad agency DDB.

The new one (at least to me) that I saw today while watching the Jets beat the Bills, starred Christine Scott Bennett as a bartender. She’s also been in at least two other similar spots, also as a bartender, entitled “The Perfect Pour” and “Delivery.” This one’s called “Commitment.” Watch it below, it’s only thirty seconds long.

Here’s what Bennett as the bartender says to the three stooges who belly up to her bar. “Budweiser has stayed true to the same recipe for over 130 years, through five generations. They could have cut corners, but they didn’t. Because they won’t sacrifice quality or great taste. 130 years. Now that’s commitment.”

Commitment, eh? No, what that actually is, quite simply, is a lie. It’s not puffing, it’s not hyperbole, it’s just not true. Back at the end of April — as most of us had been speculating for many years — August Busch III finally admitted in the Wall Street Journal that they had in fact changed the recipe for both Budweiser and Bud Light several times over the years. In and of itself, that’s not a big deal. Most, if not all, breweries are constantly tweaking their recipes trying to make them better, perfect, etc. But while the rest of the industry was openly doing so, A-B stubbornly continued to insist that their recipe had never changed, not once, since 1876. Nobody with a brain believed them, but that was the message they wanted to portray to the public. And finally the truth came out.

So why would they continue to insist that they’ve never changed their recipe in an ad, even after it was revealed that they had? That’s a good question, in my opinion, but with the company in transition I doubt we’ll get an answer to that one anytime soon. Still, it’s a galling reminder of what bothered me about the management style of the old A-B. I know advertising is all about creating perceptions and not about absolute truth, but when a company doggedly insists that something is black when it’s actually white — while at the same time suing everybody under the sun when they make any similar statements — then it’s doubly dishonest when they themselves don’t tell the truth. What kind of commitment are they making with such a blatant falsehood? Presumably most of their customers aren’t regular readers of the Wall Street Journal and even if they are, they’ve no doubt already forgotten about what A-B said last year. So in my opinion they’re inadvertently calling their customers too stupid to recognize the truth and see no problem whatsoever with lying to them to make themselves appear to be a better company than their competitors.

I certainly feel for the many good people who are losing heir jobs this month as InBev reduces costs so they can pay the high costs of acquisition. But this lingering lager lie is a final reminder to me that A-B was the bully of beer industry schoolyard.

 

Beer in Art #6: Charles Spencelayh’s Good Health

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Most works of art are locked in museums, completely out of reach for ordinary people. But once in a while, they do become available at auction. Case in point is today’s work, entitled Good Health by English artist Charles Spencelayh.

The painting is currently at auction at Artnet Online Auctions. The price of the work is 50,000 British Pounds, or around $73,970 U.S. Dollars. Of course, when I say “ordinary people,” I mean ones with 75 Grand to blow on a painting.

 
While Charles Spencelayh is not a household name in art, he appears to have been well known in his day and Queen Mary loved his work. Here’s what little biographical information there is about him, from Wikipedia:

Charles Spencelayh (October 27, 1865 – June 29, 1958) was an English painter of the Academic style. Born in Rochester, Kent, he first studied at the National Art Training School, South Kensington. He exhibited at the Paris Salon, but most of his exhibits were in Britain. Between 1892 and 1958, he exhibited more than 30 paintings at the Royal Academy, including ‘Why War’ (1939), which won the Royal Academy ‘Picture of the Year’ for 1939. He was also a founder member of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters. Many of his subjects were of domestic scenes, painted with an almost photographic detail, such as ‘The Laughing Parson’ (1935). and ‘His Daily Ration’ (1946). He also painted still life subjects including ‘Apples’ (1951). Spencelayh was a favourite of Queen Mary, who was an avid collector of his work. In 1924 he painted a miniature of King George V for Queen Mary’s dolls house.

Supposedly, he may have done a painting commissioned by the Bass Brewery for them to use in advertising entitled The Steward, depicting a steward opening a bottle of Bass. But so far I’ve been unable to find anything more about it or see what it looks like.

Five of his paintings are at the Tate in London and a few more are shown at the online Art Renewal Center and Bridgeman has quite a few. There are also some links at the ArtCyclopedia.