Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Toasting the New Year

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All of us at the Brookston Beer Bulletin — okay me — would like to wish you and yours a very Happy New Year. 2007 was certainly an interesting year and never dull with plenty of ups and downs to keep us on our toes. Nobody knows with any certainty what 2008 will be like for the beer industry, but I’ll be here for my third straight year of ranting about it, er .. analyzing it, online. I hope you’ll join me on the adventure that 2008 will surely be.

Toasting you a Happy New Year with one of my favorites:

Here’s to the four hinges of Friendship—
Swearing, Lying, Stealing, and Drinking.
When you swear, swear by your country;
When you lie, lie for a pretty woman (or handsome man);
When you steal, steal away from bad company;
And when you drink, drink with me.

The Brookston kids, Alice and Porter, can’t help but getting in on the act of wishing everybody a Happy New Year.

Here’s to those who love us,
And here’s to those who don’t,
A smile for those who are willing to,
And a tear for those who won’t.

Here are more of my favorite toasts. Let me know your favorite ones.

 

D Is For Drunk

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Back in the early 1990s, I wrote a book on bars in the county where I was living at the time, The Bars of Santa Clara County, A Beer Drinker’s Guide to Silicon Valley. In addition to the reviews of over 500 bars, I included several appendices, one of which was a collection of slang terms for being drunk. It’s amazing just how many of these there are, especially when viewed historically as our language has changed and evolved. I finally got around to converting the original list and thought today the most appropriate time to publish it again online. I have nearly 3,000 colloquialisms listed alphabetically. Please have a look and let me know if there are any you know of that I’m missing. I’ll give credit to you for any I don’t have listed when I add new submissions. Please let me any and all information you have about it, such as if it’s local, regional, etc. and where geographically it’s used, it’s origin (if you know) and stuff like that. Just post a comment or send me an e-mail with any new drunk words you know. Thanks, and happy new year.

D is for Drunk

 

Top 10 Beer Stories of 2007

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As the year winds down yet again — didn’t we just do this a year ago? — everybody and his brother has a top ten list for the year and I’m still no different. It helps, I think, to stop and reflect on what happened over the previous year which puts the whole year in perspective and makes it easier to prepare for the coming one. So here are my choices for the top ten beer stories of 2007.
 

Irish Brewing in the Bronze Age: While seemingly a historical side note story, I think this has the potential to change how we view beer’s history in civilization, especially in Europe, where most our modern brewing heritage has its origins. If bronze age Ireland was brewing it means the impact of beer on mankind began far earlier than originally believed.

Lewes Arms Boycott Successful: I’m a sucker for the underdog and the small fry. The citizens of a small pub in the middle of nowhere took on pub giant Greene King to save their local beer being served in its home town. Greene King foolishly let it go on far longer than was prudent but eventually saw the light and relented.

Sam Adams vs. Sam Adams: The Boston Beer Company, owner of the trademarked Samuel Adams eponymous beers, went head to head in late October with a flesh and blood Sam Adams running for mayor of Portland. In a battle between a corporation’s fictional, but oddly legal, personhood and the real life variety, my money’s always on the real Sam Adams. For Boston Beer it was a public relations disaster and even their half-hearted apology seemed flat. On the plus side, Boston Beer did announce they’d be brewing at the old Rolling Rock brewery in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, which is good for that town. The one they were planning in Freetown, Massachusetts, on the other hand, after months of rumors, was finally canceled.

The Loss of Steve Harrison: Steve Harrison was Sierra Nevada Brewing‘s first employee and was as much responsible for its success, especially early on, as owner Ken Grossman and the rest of the crew from Chico. When he went missing under mysterious circumstances in August, it took a week of searching the area before his body turned up in the river. His passing was a huge and terrible loss to the brewing industry.

It’s Official! Double-Digit Craft Beer Growth Again!: It was another terrific year for craft beer and although there are problems in the horizon, three years of double-digit growth suggests that craft beer is on the right track. Barring some foreseen shortages, things are likely to continue to be rosy for the foreseeable future.

Widmer & Redhook Merger: Rumored since at least January, Widmer and Redhook agreed to merge in November.

Michael Jackson Passes Away: This was a huge and somewhat unexpected blow to the cause of better beer. Many of us who’d known Michael for a time had speculated about his health and last year he had finally publicly announced that he’d been battling Parkinson’s for at least ten years. I know I breathed a sigh of relief because I knew Parkinson’s could be treated and wasn’t the immediate threat it had once been. So when I got the news I was taken aback, as were most of us in the industry. It was news of the worst kind, especially coming on the heels of the losses of several other beer industry personalities throughout 2007: Alan Eames, Steve Harrison and John White. As I’ve said many times before, Michael’s impact on the craft beer industry here in the U.S. and better beer throughout the world cannot be overestimated. He was a singular talent that I can’t imagine being replaced. And beyond the loss to the industry, for me personally I think Michael Jackson’s death should be nearer the top because it’s doubly difficult and surprisingly emotional to lose a friend so unexpectedly.

Assaults on Beer by Neo-Prohibitionists & Wine Writers: Perhaps because of craft beers’ recent gains and renewed attention, the number of attacks on beer by both anti-alcohol groups and misguided and ignorant beverage and food journalists seemed to be on the rise with hardly a week passing without yet another egregious example. Neo-prohibitionists accused beer of all sorts of evil and wine writers blasted beer with all manner of misinformation and twisted statistics. Here’s a sample of some of the worst:

Coors & Miller to Merge U.S. Operations: In an unexpected, if not altogether surprising move, the second and third largest American beer companies decided to pool their efforts in competing against number one. What the impact will be on the rest of the industry still remains to be seen, but I, for one, am not convinced it will be all for the better or that there’s nothing to fret about.

The Hop and Malt Shortages: The shortages of hops got most of the attention but shortages of malt is just as serious. This could not have happened at a worse time for the industry as shortages quite possibly could have disastrous consequences for continuing the roll that craft beer has been on for a half-decade.

And what will next year bring? See tomorrow’s post with my predictions for the beer industry in 2008.

 

My Report Card From 2007

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Last year at this time, I made five predictions for the 2007 beer year. Let’s see how I did.

 
Craft beer growth will hit double digits for 2006 and also will continue to rise through 2007.

My Score: A+ This one wasn’t a stretch, of course, though things will likely be trickier next year.

 
Price wars among the large domestic producers and the popular import brands will heat up again beginning in spring or early summer.

My Score: B Price wars by the major players did indeed start up again after a short ceasefire, but didn’t begin until late summer, which I continue to believe is bad for the industry and the image of beer as a whole.

 
Mainstream media attention will increase and will actually begin to improve.

My Score: B While there was certainly some shoddy reporting, overall things did improve for beers’ coverage by the mainstream media, and I’m not just saying that because I started doing some writing for one of the mainstream news outlets. There weren’t nearly as many of the really horrific articles that were so common in 2006. As craft beer regained its cache, good beer again became the story and happily one that’s being told with a bit more accuracy and attention to detail.

 
A-B’s Here’s to Beer PR campaign will either quietly disappear or if the website remains up will not have any new content added now that Bob Lachky is no longer in charge of the effort.

My Score: C+ While Here’s to Beer has not disappeared, after Bob Lachky was promoted, the website did indeed lie dormant for many months but last March a new version was launched to much fanfare. But when I look now the current edition is only Vol. 3, meaning since March it has only been updated with new content twice in nine months rather than the promised monthly changing content.

 
Gluten-Free beer made for the growing number of people with Celiac disease will surprise most predictions and become a bigger niche than expected.

My Score: C This wasn’t quite as big as I anticipated, but I understand Red Bridge and the others are holding their own. It’s probably going to remain small but steady.

 

Bavaria in Pictures: Updated

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Roughly the first two weeks of November, I was fortunate enough to be invited along on a press junket to the Bavarian part of Germany along with a dozen colleagues. I took around 2,000 photos and it’s been taking me forever to go through them all. Day one of our trip went up in early December and today I’ve finally gotten up the next day’s photos. I’ll keep updating this post as I get more of the photos up and in the photo gallery.

 

The gang of twelve plus three at the Faust Brauerei in Miltenberg, Germany. From left: Cornelius Faust, me, Lisa Morrison, Johannes Faust, Julie Bradford, Andy Crouch, Peter Reid, Horst Dornbusch, Jeannine Marois, Harry Schumacher, Tony Forder, Candace Alstron, Don Russell, Jason Alstrom and Todd Alstrom.

 

For more photos from my trip Germany, visit Miltenberg Sunday, Miltenberg Monday: Faust Brewery Tour, the Wurzburger Hofbrau, Weyermann Malting and Schlenkerla Tavern in the photo gallery.
 

 

Bell’s in the Wall Street Journal

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I’m trying to catch up a little with interesting items sent in by Bulletin readers. Last week my cable modem went down and it took a few days for the cable company to come out and replace it, so I missed a few days. It continues to amaze me how dependent I am on internet access, far more than the telephone or cable television or even my car. Despite the fact that I was born when Eisenhower was President, it’s hard to remember what it was like before the internet was such a ubiquitous feature of our modern world. I feel naked without my laptop. Anyway, this comes from Doug in Hawaii (thanks Doug) and is the Wall Street Journal article about Larry Bell’s brewery and his distributor fight in Illinois. I saw the original Journal article when it came out, but I don’t have online access to the WSJ. Happily, it was reprinted on the free site Small Biz.

Beyond Bell’s specific travails, the larger issue of franchise laws is discussed. Franchise laws are one of those things that people in the industry are familiar with but which get very little public attention. They should, because by and large franchise laws are not good for small breweries. There, of course, exceptions — good distributors who care and do a god job with smaller breweries. But in my experience I’ve heard far more horror stories about distributor mistreatment of craft brewers than the other way around.

Distributors love franchise laws, of course, because for them, in many cases, they are a legal stranglehold and something of a disincentive for distributors to actually do a good job promoting a particular brand. In some states, Nevada for example, once a brewer signs up with a distributor, no matter how bad a job they do by law they cannot switch distributors without the distributor’s consent (something which is almost never given). My understanding is that franchise laws were originally enacted to protect distributor’s from spending years building a brand in a particular market only to have the brand go to a competitor. But in most states, distributors — which despite their rhetoric are large businesses — have deep pockets to lobby politicians and get favorable legislation to protect their business at the expense of smaller, weaker microbreweries. As the Wall Street Journal touches on, that balance of power is just beginning to shift slightly, but entrenched power tends to hang on far longer than anybody ever expects, so I’m not persuaded things will change for the better anytime soon.

 

Winning Friends Resolution

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For regular Bulletin readers who recall How To Win Friends and Influence People from the beginning of the month, where a South Dakota A-B distributor’s “Contemporary Marketing Coordinator” responded to harsh criticism of one of their products — Rolling Rock — with a textbook example of poor customer relations, has apparently come to a resolution. I received word, not from E-Rokk (the original poster), but from one of his bandmates, Nick Fitt, that the issue had been resolved and he has written up the story of how and why at their Hey Stupid blog. It’s rambling and incoherent at times — Nick’s writing style is reminiscent of someone suffering from Tourette’s Syndrome and an obsessive preoccupation with pornographic imagery — yet pieces of an actual story do peek out from time to time. As far as I can tell, he called the distributor and spoke to Cassie Kimball’s boss, eventually having a conference call with both her boss and that person’s boss, too. Her fate remains vague, though he hints that they told him she “was now hauling skids in the mail room, suffering from many splinters of wood that had been treated with PCP,” whatever that means. In the end, the distributors apparently coughed up some free cases of beer to mollify the situation — Budweiser, not Rolling Rock — and the final paragraphs are spent slobberingly praising “Anheiser Bush” [sic] and their new favorite beer. I’m not sure why, but it all feels a little unsatisfying to me. Considering one of the original complaints was that A-B had sold out by altering E-Rokk’s beloved Rolling Rock, it sure feels like the hey stupid gang do likewise for a few measly cases of free Bud. C’est la vie.

 

Let No Good Deed Go Unpunished

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I confess at the outset that this story has nothing to do with beer, but is about bourbon … sort of. But it is also about the assault on alcohol — and to some extent civil liberty — a subject I find myself writing about more and more these days, so that’s why I decided to write this. I certainly didn’t set out to make the neo-prohibitionists my cause célèbre, but I find that few things get me as worked up and angry than people whose sole mission appears to be telling the rest of us how to live. I guess that makes me an anti-control freak, or something.

At any rate, the story involved a St. Petersburg, Florida man named Evan Preston who local authorities have dubbed the “Woodstock Santa.” He’s been given this epithet by local authorities, and especially city council member Bill Foster, who hopes to stop Preston from giving gifts to the homeless. Now lest I paint Foster as a complete Scrooge, he’s apparently okay with giving them blankets or a warm bowl of soup. What he doesn’t like is that Foster gives the homeless what they really want: booze.

The eccentric Evan Preston (at left in the long gray beard), age 72, owns a well-known jewelry and art store and has in the past helped the local community raise money for a variety of causes by donating artwork.

He’s apparently helped his town’s Make-A-Wish Foundation and also nearby Tampa’s Big Cat Rescue. Four years ago, he decided he wanted to do something for St. Petersburg’s growing homeless population that congregate around the downtown Williams Park, near his business. So for a few years now, he and several friends and colleagues pass out 100 bottles of bourbon and cigars to the homeless.

Here, let’s pick up the story from Tampa’s Creative Loafing website:

“At first, I thought it would be interesting to give out a six-pack and a cigar,” he says over a glass of homemade sangria in his kitchen. “When I saw the excitement in their faces, it was inspirational.”

After a few outings to various homeless enclaves around the city, he says, St. Pete’s homeless began to recognize him. When he pulled up in his Bentley, they would run at him, jump on the car and hug him tightly.

Preston became the homeless’ Santa Claus, a 6-foot-2 bearded Samaritan in a T-shirt and jeans who gave all the good street men and women what they really wanted for Christmas.

“Last time, a man came up and said, ‘Thank you, this is so much better than a warm blanket,'” he recalls. “It’s shocking how much everybody loves it.”

“There is no motive to what we do,” he says. “It’s a gesture of goodwill.”

Well, you just know something like that will not be permitted for very long, not without somebody trying to put a stop to it. And right on cue, Foster is appalled that someone might give alcohol to alcoholics. Part of his reasoning is that alcohol is what put them on the street in the first place. While that may be true in some cases, he really doesn’t know that with any certainty whatsoever. But the idea that not giving a homeless person that alcohol is somehow going to cure them or make their life any better seems ridiculous at best, and uncharitable and obnoxiously self-righteous at worst.

Apparently there’s already a local ordinance in force that prohibits passing out alcohol in public parks — which seems weird enough, why would that be a problem? — but the code does not apply to city streets or right of ways, a loophole that Foster is trying to close. He’s sent a memo to the mayor and other city council members urging them to make it illegal to hand out alcohol in essentially any public space. If you want to give your neighbor a bottle of wine this Christmas, you better be careful not to hand it to him on the sidewalk. Stay on your own property if you don’t want to break the law. Apparently it doesn’t matter that alcohol is legal for adults and giving gifts is likewise not a crime, but don’t put those two things together in Florida. Yeah, that seems reasonable.

In the memo Foster claims “Mr. Preston is an affront to every business owner and resident of the downtown area, and should not be a welcomed figure in St. Petersburg.” An affront? An affront is a “deliberate act or display of disrespect,” an “intentional slight.” I don’t know who Bill Foster thinks he is, but he obviously believes people should be bowing and scraping to his delusions of grandeur. Can he really have convinced himself that Preston is giving the homeless booze to personally offend him? This is a difference of opinion at best. I don’t see how it’s the business of government to regulate where citizens can commit a legal act like gift-giving? Foster may not like what Preston’s doing but in a free society that should be the end of it. But Bill Foster apparently believes a free society is only one where people do what he likes, and apparently he’s not even the only nut job on the city council.

“Is that really the best gift you can give somebody sleeping outside—bourbon?” said Rene Flowers. “I don’t know what a bottle of bourbon goes for these days, but I’m sure that would buy some soap, a small washrag, maybe a comb, some coffee, maybe a nice, hot meal.”

Where exactly would a homeless person use a washrag and soap exactly since they probably don’t have a bathtub for them to use there in Williams Park? And while a nice dinner does sound good, why does Flowers think that private citizens have to confine their charity to what she thinks is appropriate? For all their posturing, the homeless problem itself is never addressed by the city council, only that a private citizen shouldn’t be allowed to give them a little comfort from time to time at his own expense. It really doesn’t matter if you or anyone else thinks giving alcohol to a homeless person is a bad idea, in a free society any private citizen is and ought to be allowed to choose both the scope and nature of his charity. They should be applauding the fact that’s he’s doing something, anything. But from the response of the city council, they don’t seem overly concerned about the homeless people themselves. The very fact that there is such a homeless problem in this medium-sized town (the population is just under 250,000) suggests that whatever the city council is doing, if anything, it has not alleviated the situation or the conditions that caused these people to become homeless in the first place. Maybe it’s the guilt over their own failures that makes them lash out over someone merely trying to provide a little solace and comfort to someone whose life is, I can only assume, complicated and difficult, to say the least. But please, let’s stop attacking alcohol already, shall we? I’d like to get back to talking about beer again, thank you very much.

 

If you want to hear more about this, a local Tampa television, Tampa Bay 10, station did a report that’s online. Also, a Los Angeles radio station recently did an interview with Evander Preston which you can listen to online.
 

Look Away From the Beer

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This interesting tidbit comes by way of the Fermenting Barrel via Tomme Arthur (thanks, Tomme), who knew my little crusading heart would appreciate the inanity of it all. It seems a new ordinance in the southern Utah town of Springville “requires beer displays be erected no closer than 15 feet from a store’s public entrance.” The Utah County Health Department’s Division of Substance Abuse also wanted retailers to keep all “beer 10 feet back from a store’s front windows,” too, but the City Council decided instead to just keep it away from the front doors. According to a story in the Salt Lake Tribune, “Richard Nance, substance-abuse division director, said the goal is to try to ensure that children do not get mixed messages about where the community stands on alcohol use.” What exactly is that mixed message he’s so worried about? Seriously, what is it? Anybody know? I mean, despite a huge religious influence in Utah, beer is still legal there, right? So what message is being sent by its proximity to the front door, for chrissakes?

Retailers, however, don’t appear too concerned about the new law — not that there’s much they could probably do anyway. Apparently most stores already keep their beer stock in the back of the store, which is also where most keep the milk, isn’t it? One added benefit, I suppose, is that less beer may be exposed to the light streaming through the front door, which may reduce skunking (hey, I’m looking for the silver lining here).

The Fermenting Barrel‘s take:

Tell me this, are the kids absorbing the alcohol by being in the mere vicinity of a case of beer? Can’t the kids still walk to the back of the store and *gasp* be exposed to beer? Or are the children confined to the front of the store?

In my opinion there’s way worse things kids can be exposed to right at the counter, say…pornography, cigarettes, or even junk food, candy, and soda. Last I checked diabetes was one of the worst epidemics in the US. How does it usually develop? Through obesity caused from a poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle. How about going even a little further, what about all the easy access kids have to the crap on TV, the Internet, and movies.

OK, I’m done ranting. You get my point. There’s bigger fish to fry than fretting over kids walking past a case of beer when they walk in a store. Just leave it to Utah to come up with even more insane alcohol laws. As if their laws weren’t already weird enough.

Amen, brother.

 

Harriet’s Beer For Girls

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Harriet Easton, age 19, appears to be one ambitious and entrepreneurially-minded young lass. She’s determined to fill the void created by a continuing drop in UK pub beer sales. “Figures released last month showed beer sales in pubs at their lowest level for 70 years. Seven million fewer pints per day are now being sold, with sales down 49 per cent since they peaked in 1979.” One obvious market being neglected is the female segment. So Easton, a politics student at Newcastle University, spent a year and a half — and £35,000 — on R&D to create a beer especially for women. It’s a “light ale with extract of orange and a modest 4.2 per cent alcohol.” Easton teamed up with a local brewery, Hanby Ales of Wem in Shropshire, to create the curiously named Harry’s Beer, which will be marketed to women beginning Monday at the Salopian Bar in Shrewsbury. On hand will be, Paula Waters, chairman of CAMRA. “Waters said: ‘I applaud the inventive way Harriet has brought this product to market. She’s a sassy and savvy young woman who has recognised there are others just like her who want to drink real ale and retain their femininity.'”

But as far as I can tell, this is not her first attempt. In August of this year there was at least one story about Harriet Easton in the Shropshire Star called These Girls Are For Real. At that time, they reported Easton debuting another beer, this one called Rushing Dolls beer for girls. In that article, Rushing Dolls was described as having “a zest of lime—it’s very light and hoppy.” There Easton was quoted as having created her beer because others were — I just love this expression — too blokey. Hop Talk even did a post about it in September. The lime version was “thought to be the first ever beer for girls” and now the new orange version is being similarly touted, this time by the Publican, who say it’s the “first real ale aimed specifically at women.” This time around, Easton says:

“Real ale has typically and consistently been marketed towards men with names full of cheesy puns and innuendo, and images of buxom wenches serving up frothy jugs,” said the politics student at Newcastle university. “They can keep all that — there’s no need to move on, lads — just move over”.

Still, I can’t help but think of Virginia Slims or pink trains for girls. It seems to me either a woman will develop a taste for beer or she won’t. I know plenty of women who already love craft beer, including my wife, and it didn’t take a specially designed beer for them to like beer. Trying to make one specifically for the ladies seems like a gimmick at best. But if it brings more women into the fold, I suppose that can’t be all bad.