In Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle there was a nice little overview of four breweries in Reno, Nevada that includes basic information about each of them. If you’re planning a trip to Reno in the near future, you check this out before you leave the house.
Every year since 1975 the brewers at Anchor Brewery have brewed a distinctive and unique Christmas Ale, which is now available from early November to mid-January.
From Anchor’s website:
The Ale’s recipe is different every year—as is the tree on the label—but the intent with which we offer it remains the same: joy and celebration of the newness of life. Since ancient times, trees have symbolized the winter solstice when the earth, with its seasons, appears born anew.
Until recently, Anchor’s Christmas Ale was not released until the Monday before Thanksgiving each year. A few years ago they bowed to pressure from their distributors, who wanted to have it earlier to compete against all of the other holiday beers that are released much earlier. So while I can’t argue it’s a bad thing to have this wonderful beer both earlier and for a longer period of time each year, I do actually miss it coming later on a very specific date. There was something I really liked about having to wait for it — admittedly vague and unspecific, but the feeling was there all the same. And there was something I admired about their stubbornly refusing to release it until they were damn well ready. I think it added something intangible to the beer’s mystique, making it more special somehow.
I realize I sound like a sentimental fool, but beer (and many other things) used to be ruled by the seasons and their availability was something that created anticipation and deep satisfactions, too. To me fruit is a great example. Wait, hear me out. There was a time when you couldn’t get almost every fruit year round, but now thanks to agreements with growers in the Southern Hemisphere, we can get most of them all year long. But the very fact that they’re around all the time makes them less desirable. How much better did a strawberry taste when you couldn’t eat one all winter and they suddenly appeared each spring?
Of course, I don’t really think Anchor’s Christmas Ale will lose much — or any — of its specialness by being released a couple weeks sooner each year. I know I still wait eagerly to try the new one each year. But I really think there is something to building up demand and the perceived value that artificial scarcity brings. And there are beers that have suffered for going from a seasonal to a year-round beer. Mendocino’s Eye of the Hawk comes to mind. Back in the early 1980s they only brewed it three times a year (for the 4th of July, their annual anniversary and Oktoberfest). They released the strong ale in 22 oz. bottles in limited quantities and it sold out quickly like clockwork every time it was released. That went on for years until around 1999, when they made it available all the time and in unlimited quantities. Sales fell and although it sold steadily, we sold more in three bursts than when it was always there. Let’s also not forget that seasonals are now the number one craft category at mainstream outlets like grocery and liquor stores. It’s clear people like picking up something different. I don’t think we’ll see popular everyday beers going away, but it should be remembered that limited and seasonal releases can have their own cache and sell better in direct proportion to the difficulty in obtaining them.
Today I’m celebrating “Anchor Christmas Ale Day” and picking up some more today, I’ll drink some tonight, and also save some for my Thanksgiving Day meal on Thursday. This holiday will continue to be the Monday before Thanksgiving, to honor the idea that some things are worth waiting for.
But back to Anchor’s “Our Special Ale.”
Each year our Christmas Ale gets a unique label and a unique recipe for the Ale itself. Although our recipes must remain a secret, many enthusiasts save a few bottles from year to year—stored in a cool dark place—to taste later and compare with other vintages. Properly refrigerated, the beer remains intriguing and drinkable for years, with different nuances slowly emerging as the flavor mellows slightly.
Over the years, there have been 34 different labels and each year Anchor prints a beautiful poster with all of the past labels plus the current years’ label.
A Bulletin reader let me know that that Dirty Jobs episode I wrote about in September where they picked hops in the Yakima Valley will be airing this coming Tuesday — November 25 at 9:00 p.m. — on the Discovery channel. Mark your calendars. I assume the 9:00 is Eastern time, but you should check your local listings to make sure what time it’s on in your area. The episode is actually called “Vellum Maker,” undoubtedly for the second segment of the one-hour show, the description of which is “Mike travels to Yakima, Washington to harvest hops, the main ingredient in beer. From there Mike goes to the Hudson Valley where he turns animal hides in to paper.” Should be fun.
Mike Rowe and the crew of Dirty Jobs with Ralph Olson in the upstairs break room at HopUnion’s offices in Yakima.
Today’s masterpiece of art — and beer — is in one of my favorite styles of art: Pre-Raphaelite. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters “who aimed to revive the style and spirit of the Italian artists before the time of Raphael.” According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, they were a “group of young British painters who banded together in 1848 in reaction against what they conceived to be the unimaginative and artificial historical painting of the Royal Academy and who purportedly sought to express a new moral seriousness and sincerity in their works.”
While today’s artist, Ford Madox Brown, was not formally a member of the Brotherhood, he was friends with several of the other artists and tended to paint in a style strikingly similar, so much so that his is often considered alongside of the Pre-Raphaelites.
The painting is titled “Work,” and is one of his most famous works, as it attempts to depict all of Victorian English society.
Click on the image above for a larger view. There’s an interesting interactive display at the Manchester City Galleries — which is where the original painting hangs — that discusses the symbolism of the sailor drinking a beer in the center of the painting.
This beer represents attitudes towards drinking alcohol.
Beer was often drunk by navvies during the day to quench their thirst. While some people campaigned against drinking alcohol, it was often considered to be safer to drink beer than drink dirty water and risk death.
You can then click on six different character within the painting to hear their thoughts about drinking beer.
Brown himself wrote about the drinking sailor. “‘Here are Presented……the strong fully developed navvy who does his work and loves his beer; the selfish old bachelor navvy, stout of limb, and perhaps a trifle tough in those regions where compassion is said to reside; the navvy of strong animal nature, who, but that he was, when young, taught to work at useful work, might even now be working at the useless crank.”
From Wikipedia:
Brown’s most important painting was Work (1852–1865), which he showed at a special exhibition. It attempted to depict the totality of the mid-Victorian social experience in a single image, depicting ‘navvies’ digging up a road, Heath Street in Hampstead, London, and disrupting the old social hierarchies as they did so. The image erupts into proliferating details from the dynamic centre of the action, as the workers tear a hole in the road – and, symbolically, in the social fabric. Each character represents a particular social class and role in the modern urban environment. Brown wrote a catalogue to accompany the special exhibition of Work. This publication included an extensive explanation of Work that nevertheless leaves many questions unanswered.
For more about Ford Madox Brown, the ArtCyclopedia has some good links and the Art Archive has a good biography.
Apparently this is a good decade old, but it’s the first I’ve run across it. A company that makes music tuning products, Peterson Strobe Tuners, on a whim, built an organ that produces music by blowing air over beer bottles filled with varying levels of liquid inside, just like we’ve all done after a few too many in our local pub.
The first one was made for Guinness, who commissioned it. That first organ was self contained with brass fittings, lighting and is housed in a walnut enclosure on casters. It includes an air pump controller and self playing device which allows the organ to also play tunes unaided.
But the history of bottle organs is far older than this one, according to the Peterson website:
The story stretches back to 1798, on the island of Helgoland (formerly Danish territory, now German) whose church congregation were tired of paying for an organ tuner to sail out every month to tune the church organ. The pastor, who was tired of hearing the complaints, subsequently commissioned an ex-mercenary soldier/organ builder from Eisleben, (later East Germany) called Johann Samuel Kühlewein, to build an organ which would not go out of tune due to changes in temperature or weather conditions. Kühlewein thought about it for a while and decided to build an organ using bottles instead of standard organ pipes and using sealing wax to fine tune the bottles. This organ spent a long life on the island until it became depopulated in the late 1800s and the organ fell into disrepair.
Exactly 200 years and 4500 miles later in 1998, we at Peterson were preparing for our 50th anniversary celebrations when one of our organ designers, Gary Rickert, had a novel idea, to build an organ that played bottles. Just like Johann Samuel Kühlewein before him (at that stage we had no idea that there had already been an attempt) he set about working on weekends and late into the night, experimenting with different bottle sizes and shapes. Together with woodshop supervisor Joe Farmer & cabinet maker Bill Bernahl they tried several different kinds of designs until they finally found the answer.
And it looks like Leinenkugel had one made, too, and possibly Coors.
Here are some samples of how the organ sounds:
The Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby.
A Sonata by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The theme from Star Wars.
And, naturally, 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.
Believe it or not, three of these samples are from the CD “Hits From the Bottle Organ.”
And here you can see the organ in action on ABC Channel 7 News:
It is not known precisely where the mythical Gnome originated, or why, but their mythology spread throughout Europe. Eventually the more common garden gnome originated in Germany in the 1800s and by the 1840s had spread to England and other parts of Europe.
In Germany, the gnomes (or dwarfs as they are known there) were often portrayed as miners. There is a theory that miners, of small stature, came from the island of Crete around 1,500 BC to dig for gold and silver in parts of Europe, including southeast Germany, and they might have been the origin of the mining dwarf myth. Dwarfs often featured in German fairy tales, such as those told by the Brothers Grimm, and dwarf figurines were thought to bring good fortune to a home if placed in the house or garden which is why they were adopted by so many German homes. The familiar pointed red hat that we see on many garden gnomes today was originally a representation of the hat that was once worn by miners in the mountains of south-east Germany.
Now Gnomeland, a UK dealer in garden gnomes is offering a beer drinking garden gnome, perfect for your hop yard.
You can also customize the label on the beer bottle your garden gnome is holding on to, as shown in this Newcastle example.
Of course, at least one other beer variety exists, the gnomes created by Bas for his wife’s Urthel beer. Oh, and you want more gnomey puns — and who doesn’t? — check out Gnome Pun Intended.
Another interesting find while searching for images. There’s a contemporary Chinese artist, Lei Xue, who’s making art out of handmade bone china. He’s taking ordinary objects and creating porcelain versions of them. Lately, he’s been making beer cans that are hand-painted and resemble Ming Dynasty vases.
The title of this piece is “Teetrinken.” It’s amazing how he’s captured the crumpled, flattened look of them.
These porcelain beer cans littered in the corner were for an exhibition in Germany. I imagine they’re heavier than they look.
Amy Mittelman is the author of Brewing Battles, the “story of the American brewing industry and its leading figures, from its colonial beginnings to the present day. Although today’s beer industry has its roots in pre-Prohibition business, major historical developments since Repeal have affected industry at large, brewers, and the tastes and habits of beer-drinking consumers as well.”
There’s an interesting excerpt of an interview with Mittelman in US News & World Report online entitled Will Beer Be the Next Casualty of the Crisis where she discusses beer throughout history during slow downs in our economy and her thoughts on what might happen in our present situation. It looks like you’ll have to pick up the print copy to read the full interview, though it might be worthwhile to see what else Mittelman has to say.
There’s a great in-depth article in this week’s New Yorker. It’s a profile of Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery entitled A Better Brew: The rise of extreme beer by Burkhard Bilger, who’s also the author of Noodling for Flatheads. A few months ago I spoke to Bilger at length about the craft beer world in general and extreme beer more specifically. At that point, I don’t think he knew exactly what the focus of the piece would be and I gave him a few brewer’s names — including Sam — to talk to who were known for brewing making extreme beers. It’s easy to see why Bilger chose Calagione. I’ve known Sam for a number of years and he gives great interview. He’s a terrific spokesperson for the craft beer industry. Congratulations Sam.
A little over a week ago, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed raising the state excise taxes on alcohol producers in order to fix the state’s budget problems, in effect punishing an entire industry for a problem not of their making. Neo-Prohibitionist groups across the country heaped praise on the proposal, none more glowingly than the Marin Institute, a neo-prohibitionist organization that styles itself as an “alcohol industry watchdog.” Their mission is “to protect the public from the impact of the alcohol industry’s negative practices. [They] monitor and expose the alcohol industry’s harmful actions related to products, promotions and social influence, and support communities in their efforts to reject these damaging activities.”
One can only assume that the supposed “negative practices” and “social influence” they claim to be watching must surely include the notion that lying is morally wrong and the idea that no one should use false or misleading information to sell a product … or an agenda? If so, I have one question. Who watches the watchdog?
I just received their latest missive to their membership both urging and titled “Tell Your California Assembly and Senate Leaders to Pass the Tax Proposal” and further spreading the belief that “A Nickel a Drink is the Change We Need!” I’ve already written about why the proposed tax increase is unfair on many levels, but what struck me about their latest public pronouncement is how riddled with misleading statements and outright falsehoods it is.
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About the only sentence that’s essentially true is the first one, where they state that “California Governor Schwarzenegger has proposed a nickel a drink alcohol tax increase on wine, beer, and distilled spirits to take effect January 1.” That is true. Unfortunately, that’s the last time you’ll get to read those words. The second sentence is: “This tax increase on alcohol producers is long overdue.” That statement’s wrong on several levels. First, the only industries in America that pay excise taxes on the goods they produce are alcohol and tobacco. The reason they do so has to do with morals and their origin goes back to the Civil War when temperance zealots managed to make temporary war measure permanent because they didn’t like alcohol on moral grounds. |
Our country is supposed to be founded on the principle of separation of church and state, meaning one set of morals have no place dictating policy that effects everyone. Since excise taxes are already an unfair measure that punishes industries that some people deem against their own morals, there’s nothing overdue about an increase of a tax that’s already fundamentally wrong.
Next up. “Alcohol-related problems now cost the Californians $38 billion dollars annually.” This is a number made up by the Marin Institute from a study they themselves funded and which they then parrot as if it were gospel. It’s not. Not even close. There are holes in reasoning all the way through it. Anyone can use statistics to say whatever they want, but that doesn’t make them true. What they also don’t mention is that just the beer industry (that is, not including the wine and spirits segments) contributes $24,646,539,216 to California’s $1.6 trillion economy, and the beer industry alone represents just over 1.5% of our state economy. Employees of beer businesses pay annually over $3 billion in federal, state and local taxes ($3,408,824,767) and over $240 million ($242,183,691) in Consumption Taxes.
But just for argument’s sake, let’s assume that the alcohol industry does “cost Californians” some amount of money each year. Is the alcohol industry the only one that costs people money from the products they sell? Let’s talk about the burdens on the healthcare system from soda, red meat, and everything with high fructose corn syrup. How much do the diseases associated with those bad-food-related problems cost taxpayers? I’m willing to bet it’s many times that $38 billion figure neo-prohibitionists throw around. If it’s traffic fatalities, what business probably has more to do with those than any other? Simple, car manufacturers. Automobiles could be made safer, but that would add to the price of a car and industry lobbyists have resisted more stringent safety standards. And talk about costs to taxpayers, who do you think pays for all the roads cars drive on? You guessed it, you and me. If car companies had to pay for the roads which the products they sell use, cars would cost many times their current price. How about mobile phones, which studies have shown using while driving make people as likely to have an accident as the average drunk driver? Aren’t those traffic accidents costing taxpayers money? Of course they are, yet I don’t see neo-prohibitionists attacking Verizon or AT&T for tax increases to pay their “fair share.”
I could go on and on, but the point is that every single business provides benefits and exacts costs to society. Everything has pros and cons. But it’s a slippery slope we’ll start sliding down if we try to make every business reconcile those costs and benefits in order to balance government budgets. But of course, it’s not really about fairness. It’s about attacking one industry because certain people don’t like it.
In the second half of sentence three, they continue with “while the last alcohol tax increase in the state was in 1992.” What they don’t tell is at roughly the same time, the federal excise tax was doubled, from $9 to $18 per barrel! Also, the state excise tax they’re complaining about is only one of around 21 separate taxes businesses pay, many which have indeed increased in the sixteen years since 1992. And of those, four are unique to the alcohol business, meaning no other businesses (except tobacco) have to pay those. The alcohol industry already pays more taxes than any other product made and sold in the U.S.
Next, the Marin Institute insists that the “nickel a drink tax increase will raise $878 million over the next 18 months and help reduce the state’s serious budget shortfall.” That number’s nowhere near the figure that the Governor’s own calculation predicts, which is only $293 million. That comes nowhere close to “fixing” our budget, and simply unfairly harms an industry already struggling to recover from record increases of crucial ingredients, like hops and malt.
That’s followed up by “[t]he new tax revenue will be specifically allocated for alcohol treatment and prevention programs.” Okay, but doesn’t that negate the statement that it will “help reduce the state’s serious budget shortfall” if this money is earmarked for specific programs. Even if it’s just some of the money, it’s incorrect to say this will fix the budget if the revenue isn’t used to fund budget items, but instead a specific state expenditure. But what the Marin Institute is also leaving out is that the proposed use of the alcohol tax revenue will fund both “drug and alcohol abuse prevention and treatment services.” That means that while the neo-prohibitionists are arguing that the alcohol industry should pay for the problems they believe are created by alcohol, they also believe the industry should pay for prevention and treatment services from drug abuse, something they clearly can’t pin on the alcohol industry. And if that doesn’t convince you fairness is just not in their vocabulary, then I don’t know what would.
I think a better use of the excise tax revenue would be to fund public transit. That would create conditions where people could get where they’re going without having to drive in the first place, thus eliminating the alcohol-related traffic accidents and deaths. Of course, it was the automobile manufacturers and oil companies who bought up and dismantled public transit systems all over the country so they could sell more cars in the early part of the last century. That’s one of the reasons that people have to drive everywhere now. But it’s easier to make alcohol the bogeyman than addressing the real source of the problem. It’s easier to punish everybody who drinks, even though the majority do so responsibly, than to advocate for a true fix to problems associated with driving drunk.
They sum up by stating that “[a] nickel a drink will save lives, reduce crime, and lower the devastating costs of alcohol-related harm.” Of course, that hyperbole neglects to convincingly explain how. The notion of “saving lives” by raising the taxes, and therefore the price, is a complicated stretch of logic. I know there are studies funded by and created by neo-prohibitionsts that claim that, but critics have also questioned those findings. Their claim, and the underlying statistics, is a Gordian Knot and I won’t try to tackle all that here. Suffice it to say, it’s not as cut and dry as the Marin Institute and others would have you believe. As for reducing crime, they haven’t offered any rationale for why more expensive alcohol would reduce crime. If anything, it’s seems that people strapped for cash might be more inclined toward theft if the price was higher, not less. And as for the costs, well I’ve already examined that canard above.
The e-mail concludes by urging people to “tell your State Assembly Member and Senator that a nickel a drink is the change we need, and to pass this important policy proposal as soon as possible.” I can’t help but be surprised to see neo-prohibitionists — an overwhelmingly socially conservative bunch — co-opt liberal socialist (and President-elect) Barack Obama’s tagline and appropriate it for their own use. And that last bit, that this is an “important policy proposal” sticks in my craw. This is our state government looking for a convenient scapegoat to raise money to get us out of a fix that was created by politics, not alcohol. That neo-prohibitionists have jumped on a bandwagon of inadvertently helping the state is merely them being opportunistic. This is simply not a policy proposal, it’s one agenda helping another because each gets what they want, despite the obvious lack of fairness or logic, and the consequences be damned.
Sign up today for Support Your Local Brewery, an activist organization of the Brewers Association. Their mission “is to promote and protect American craft beer, American craft brewers and the community of brewing enthusiasts.”
The goal of Support Your Local Brewery is to support small, independent and traditional brewers’ efforts to secure fair legislative and regulatory treatment by mobilizing beer enthusiasts across America into a national grass roots movement that will collectively impact the legislative and regulatory process when necessary.
Also, please sign up for their E-mail Action Alerts and you will be contacted in the “event that national or state legislative or regulatory initiatives threaten the livelihood of small, independent and traditional breweries.”
But even before that happens, you can send a message to your elected officials now. To figure out who your elected state representatives are, put your zip code into either Your Legislature or Project Vote Smart. Send them an e-mail, write them a letter or even give them a call. You’ll probably reach a staffer. Don’t worry. Tell them your side of the story, it will reach the ears of your Senator or Congressperson.
Let your elected officials know that you’re a responsible drinker, enjoy alcohol in moderation and that you vote. Let them know that raising the tax on alcohol is bad for the economy, harms the poor with higher prices disproportionally and that it’s unfair to punish an entire industry for a budget problem that they didn’t cause. We need to find solutions to the budget crisis facing California, and reportedly 38 other states, but we must fix these problems in a way that puts the burden equally on all citizens, not a proposal that targets one industry unfairly while leaving all others alone. We must fix problems that effect all of us together.
Think globally, but drink — and vote — locally.