The foodie website Chowhound recently posted a complimentary report on the San Diego beer scene. As some commenter’s ponted out they mssed a few worthy spots such as O’Briens’s and the Liar’s Club, but for a weekend trip they did a pretty good job.
Aussie Beer & Chocolate
Despite the questionable questioning question mark in the title, there’s a good, positive beer and chocolate story on tomorrow’s — damned international dateline — “The Age,” a Melbourne, Australia newspaper. When I saw the title, Beer and Chocolate?, and that damnable question mark, I confess that I flinched, expecting the worst. But happily, the author was merely toying with us and, after a short set up, comes clean that it’s “Belgian truffles and Chimay Grand Reserve or a slice of chocolate mud cake with a foaming mug of James Squire Porter or Coopers Stout” that will be the subject matter at hand. Yum.
Marzen Madness, Firkin Final Four
The Washington Post’s Beer Madness, which I’m still calling Marzën Madness, held Rounds 4 & 5 this past Sunday and here are the final results. In the final four, Brooklyn Lager easily defeated Ellie’s Brown Ale while Saranac Pale Ale continued to surprse with an upset victory over Dominion Ale, advancing to the finals.
My prediction last week:
My pick for the winner: Brooklyn. Go Garrett! Brew, Fight, Win!
I may have done horribly in the real NCAA tournament bracket this year, but there’s some consolation in calling this one. Congratulations to Steve and Garrett at Brooklyn Brewery for their victory this year.
The firkin final four.
Laughing Beer?!?
Okay, this one is just too weird not to mention. An Israeli company has figured out a way of infusing beer with nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas. They’ve gotten aproval from Israel’s Ministry of Health to sell it after the process has been patented. Real story or April Fool’s prank? It looks real, but who knows.
Heineken in Takeover Bid for Scottish & Newkie
According to today’s Scotsman, Heineken is the leading contender in a takeover bid for the world’s tenth largest beer company, Scottish & Newcastle. According to S&N’s website, in Europe they’re the fourth largest brewer in volume terms and the number two in profit terms. I believe Heineken is number one in both.
The article relates some interesting history of breweries in Edinburgh and though it alludes to pictures of these old breweries, does not include them in the online version. Though S&N no longer operates a brewery in Edinburgh, they do still employ around 1,000 people there locally. The Scots, naturally are not thrilled at losing so large a company, but S&N long ago lost sight of any sense of community to the areas where they originated and eventually built their empire so it’s hard to get too worked up about this one.
The old Scottish & Newcastle brewery in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh, taken in 1992. The brewery was closed in 2005. This cool photograph was taken by Peter Stubbs and can be found on EdinPhoto, a website dedicated to photographs of Edinburgh and Scotland.
Vending Beer
Two years ago, two business entrepreneurs had an idea to get beer into the hands of more people, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They talked to Pilsner Urquell, who agreed to bankroll the pair. The idea was simple enough. Vending machines currently dispense almost every thing under the sun already, from a pack of gun to expensive iPods. Why not beer? And actually beer is already dispensed in vending machines in some places, Japan for example, as shown below. Notice they even dispense beer bottles, too.
And in other places in Europe, such as the train station in Brussels, where I snapped this picture in January. Along with a wide array of food and other beverages, for a few Euros you could get a can of Hoegaarden, Heineken or Grimbergen beer.
And when I was in the Army in the late 70s, stationed in New York City, we had a vending machine in our day room that dispensed cans of beer for a few coins, something like 50 or 75 cents. But that’s a relative rarity here in the U.S., where we’re completely out of step with the rest of the civilized world in our approach to alcohol. For example, we have no problem showing bloody scene after scene of violent murder and death on television, yet it’s illegal to show someone drinking a beer. The idea is, as I understand it, showing people drinking might lead kids to take up drinking. So using that logic, does that mean it’s okay if our youth turn into murdering psychopaths? It does say something profound, I think, about our priorities as a society though, and especially how screwed up they are. Death, murder, and crime: perfectly acceptable as entertainment. Alcohol: gasp, oh no, not that. Don’t show that. People might get the idea that having a good time is okay.
In the Czech Republic, where per capita beer consumption is the highest in the world, the only problem with a beer vending machine is how to keep people under the age of eighteen from buying it, so Karel Stibor and David Polnar came up with a solution, a card reader that solves this basic problem. From the Prague Post report:
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Curiously, the most obvious American objection isn’t even mentioned. If someone tried this here, the hue and cry would undoubtedly be about how easy it would be for kids to borrow or steal their parents or another adult’s I.D. In the Czech Republic (and most of the rest of Europe) that’s not even an issue because alcohol is not the stigmatized taboo it is in the U.S. So this might actually work in Europe, but it would requite a paradigm shift in thinking before it would be viable here.
Alstroms Profiled in “The Pour”
A Bulletin reader in Hawaii sent me this link (thanks, Doug). Eric Asimov’s New York Times’ column The Pour, is one of the few columns in a big, mainstream paper to write about beer in a respectful tone, without the condescension so prevalent in much of the media’s mis-handling of better beer. I’ve always enjoyed his pieces, and am pleased so prominent a paper as the Times seems to “get it” more often than the rest. Today’s column, entitled “Overcoming a Frat Party Reputation,” features a nice profile of Todd and Jason Alström, the founders of Beer Advocate and their new monthly magazine (for which I have written a few feature articles). Asimov discusses those of us associated with craft beer and better imported beer and our desire for such beers to be treated with greater respect. The Alströms have certainly been at the vanguard of our grassroots movement for ten years now, and much progress has been made here of late. It’s great to see beer celebrated in this way. Congratulations, guys.
Beer Advocate founders Jason and Todd Alström, profiled today in the New York Times.
(photo by Jodi Hilton for The New York Times)
Lewes Arms Boycott Reaches 100 Days, Greene King Still Clueless
I wrote about this before, the residents of Lewes, in East Sussex, England, have been boycotting their historic local pub, the Lewes Arms, because the new owner, Greene King, stopped serving Harveys beer, which is brewed just a few blocks away. The locals have set up a protest website, the Friends of the Lewes Arms. According to the British newspaper, Argus, the boycott today has been going on for 100 days and shows no signs of slowing down. In a prepared statement, Greene King shows how clueless they really are. And mind you, that means it’s not just a spokesman responding to an Argus reporter’s inquiry extemporaneously, off the top of his head. Somebody actually thought long and hard about what to say, probably going through several drafts before being satisfied with the final language to represent the company’s position. So let’s examine what the spin doctors came up with:
“All over the country, brewers sell their own beer in their own pubs — it’s a practice as old as the pub itself.
We recognise that some of our customers at the Lewes Arms don’t accept this practice but we are proud of our wonderful beers and proud to sell them.
Greene King is one of the biggest supporters of community pubs in this country. Last year we invested nearly £40 million on improvements to our pubs.
The direct feedback we receive on a daily basis is central to the way that we shape our service and our pubs.
We have been serving communities by running great pubs for more than 200 years and intend to carry on doing so for another 200 whatever challenges are thrown our way.”
So let’s look at this so-called statement:
- Brewers selling their own beer in their own pubs — “it’s a practice as old as the pub itself.” So what? I’m all for tradition when it’s a good tradition but the tied house rule is a terrible tradition and what’s more is why the English pub scene is so dire today. Because large companies are buying up pub chains and turning them into the fern bars of England: they all look the same and have the same beers in them. Yawn. I talked to Roger Protz about this in January when I was in London and he was adamant that these big chains were killing the good pubs.
- “We are proud of our wonderful beers and proud to sell them.” Go ahead, be proud, but don’t be stupid. Can Greene King really be so thick as to think this argument carries any weight whatsoever in Lewes? Is it really possible so shrewd a business could actually be this monumentally stupid? Doubtful, but this arrogant and clueless, well there you have me. When not biblically excessive, pride can be a wonderful thing that shows one’s own dignity, importance, and civic loyalty. So what should the people of Lewes be proud of? Hmm, let’s see. How about the local brewery that has been there for over 200 years, employing local residents and bringing all manner of economic benefits to the town. Should a small town support their local businesses that in turn make where they live a good place to be? I guess to Greene King, pride is only useful if it’s their kind of pride, the first person kind. Third person pride, as in what others might be proud of, well that just gets in their way.
- They’re the “biggest supporters of community pubs in this country” and spent almost “£40 million on improvements to our pubs.” Talk about a disconnect. They spent 80 million dollars to fix up their own places that they own. Well, whoop de f-in’ do! I bought flowers and planted them in my front yard. Does that make me a community supporter? I can’t really see how spending money maintaining their vast property holdings of pubs can equate to supporting communities. They’re spending the money on themselves, to improve their business. They’re not spending that money on the communities where those pubs are located. As this episode so nicely illustrates, they don’t give a rat’s arse about the local communities where Greene King pubs happen to be.
- Daily “Direct feedback” shapes their “service and [their] pubs.” And not just peripherally, but it’s “central” to how they run their pub business. There are kinder, gentler words for what this kind of language is; propaganda, PR, spin. But I think we can dispense with such euphemisms given how insulting this rhetoric is and call it by it’s true name, a lie. And not a little white one, but a great big whopper of a lie. I’d say they’ve been getting some pretty direct feedback about their service and their pub in Lewes for the past 100 days. Their response has not exactly been to listen carefully to their customer and shape their service there accordingly. Even with an estimated 90% drop in business at the Lewes Arms, Greene King refuses to give in to consumer demand. Now that’s customer service.
- For 200 years, Greene King has been “serving communities by running great pubs” and they will continue to do so “for another 200 whatever challenges are thrown our way.” Which is another way of saying F-you, Lewes, we’ll do whatever the hell we want. It’s pretty hard to accept that the community is best served by doing exactly what the community (including the mayor, the local MP and many prominent townspeople) does not want them to do and has quite explicitly asked them not to do. And as for this 200 years proclamation, I suspect that’s utter nonsense. I’m sure Greene King the brewery has been around that long, but for most of those years they owned local pubs around the Suffolk area. It probably wasn’t until around the 1980s that they started expanding rapidly to the point where today they “employ nearly 11,000 people, have a pub estate of around 1,700 houses, and operate distribution depots in Abingdon near Oxford, Crayford in Kent, and Northampton.” So “serving communities” outside their home area is most likely a relatively new phenomenon. According to their website, their “objective is to become the leading pub retailer-brewer, in terms of profitability and market share, in the south of England.” Notice there’s no mention of communities in that mission statement. Greene King pubs were all but ubiquitous during my last trip to London this January, and the city was much the poorer for it. We had to actively look for pubs with a decent and varied selection, and it was not an easy task. In recent years, they have bought out brewery/pub chains Belhaven, Morland, Ruddles, Ridley’s and Hardys and Hansons. Of these, only the Belhaven Brewery is still operating, meaning they shut down at least four historic breweries in their drive for domination. CAMRA has frequently lambasted them for their business practices.
So at every line of Greene King’s response to the Lewes Arms boycott they have not been truthful or even shown any understanding. This is the way of modern corporations, and it’s more than a little sad to see it so nakedly on display. I have nothing personal against Greene King or their beers, but this whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And I don’t think it can be washed down with a Greene King beer anytime soon.
Marzen Madness, Elite ESB Eight
The Washington Post’s Beer Madness, which I’m still calling Marzën Madness, held Round 3 this past Sunday and here are the results.
To me half, the matchups produced surprising results. I still can’t believe Allagash White lost to Dominion. I don’t hve anything against Old Dominion, but I think Allagash’s white is world-class. Rob Tod makes some outrageously good beers. The other surprise was Saranac besting Dogfish Head. To be fair, I have not tasted Sam’s Shelter Pale Ale but I have had the Saranac Pale Ale, and do not recall being much impressed by it at the time. And everything else I’ve had from Dogfish Head at least stood out as being not terribly ordinary. But I wasn’t there for the match so it’s hard to say on this one.
The final frothy four will go head-to-head (pun intended) this Sunday, April 1 with the final match the same day. I’m going to have to go with Brooklyn Lager vs. Dominion Ale in the finals, making it an ale vs. lager extravaganza. My pick for the winner: Brooklyn. Go Garrett! Brew, Fight, Win!
The bracket through the quarterfinals.
Laurelwood at PDX
A friend of mine (thanks, Shaun) was going through the airport at Portland and happened upon the new temporary space for Laurelwood at the airport and thought he’d share some photos. It’s certainly nice to see better beer making inroads at airports. There are several other rumors of breweries planning spots at airports all over the map, which is a great trend for those of us who do some traveling.
This way to Laurelwood.
Not everyone — gasp — wants a beer when they fly so there are also coffee and pastries available.
And a case filled with bottled beer for those of us who do.