Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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License Plates as Free Speech

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When you read this is happening in Utah, perhaps you’ll be less surprised about it, but it’s my feeling that these sorts of attempts at censorship should be fought wherever they happen. Because however innocuous they appear, they always seem to lead to more serious attempts at curbing peoples’ rights of self-expression. Nip ’em in the bud, I say. It seems the State of Utah will not allow a man to keep his vanity license plate that reads “MERLOT” because, according to a UPI story, it violates the state’s ban on vanity plates linked with intoxicants. A similar AP story on CBS News makes a similar claim.

But if you visit the Utah DMV website, this is all that they say on the subject:

Guidelines and Standards

What are the rules or guidelines regarding the combination and numbers of characters on a plate, or the content of the message on the plate?

In general, the statute forbids any combination of letters or numbers that “may carry connotations offensive to good taste and decency or that would be misleading.” In general, this law prohibits combinations that:

  • Are vulgar, derogatory, profane or obscene;
  • Make reference to drugs or drug paraphernalia;
  • Make reference to sexual acts, genitalia or bodily functions, or
  • Express contempt, ridicule or superiority of a race, religion, deity, ethnic heritage,
    gender or political affiliation.
  • Express or suggest endangerment to the public welfare.

Now, raise your hand. Who thinks the word merlot is “vulgar, derogatory, profane or obscene?” And it clearly doesn’t fit the third and fourth guidelines, either. So okay, let’s look at the second, that it makes “reference to drugs or drug paraphernalia.” Now I realize that alcohol is technically a drug, but I think it has one unique feature that makes it very different from what I assume the intent of that language was, which is that it’s legal.

Now I know there are some fine beers brewed in Utah, but by and large a healthy percentage of the state’s citizens have chosen to voluntarily abstain for religious reasons. That’s a lifestyle decision. I don’t happen to agree with it personally, but I respect it as a personal decision … except when you try to force that opinion on the rest of us. In this particular instance, the “MERLOT” plate has been on a 1996 merlot-red Mercedes for ten years. The owner was told he must remove it simply because one pinhead “anonymous caller told the state that merlot was also an alcoholic beverage.” It’s hard not to find it a little funny that they had to be told that. But it’s not at all funny that there is at least one person out there who had such a problem with a single word he saw on the back of a car. And not only that, but he felt compelled to do something about it. I can’t even imagine the thought process that led him to rat out a fellow human being for the word merlot. How on earth was this person damaged by the sight of it? How could seeing this one word be offensive? I just don’t get it. Did seeing the word tempt him so much that he was in danger of abandoning his commitment to abstinence? If so, it doesn’t seem too strong a commitment. Was he afraid of his children seeing it? If so, he’s not a very good parent if all it might take to corrupt his kids might be seeing the word “merlot.” Did his religious beliefs blind him to the fact that there are other equally legitimate ways in order to live one’s life? Maybe it’s the progressive in me, but I can’t for the life of me come up with a scenario in which this is in any way reasonable.

Believe it or not, there’s a website where a Salt Lake City man has collected vanity plates he’s seen driving around the Beehive state. Apparently the Utah DMV is also unaware that “CHIVAS” and “WHISKEY” are alcoholic, though they have thoughtfully put up a web page of links to other vanity plate websites.

Perhaps the real joke is that the man who owns the car chose the word “merlot” because that was the color of his automobile, not even because it’s also a varietal wine grape. Apparently, he’s go to fight the state on this one, and I, for one, am glad.

Savoring Beer

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I generally eschew going out on the major holidays, primarily because America — and especially the business sector — has turned them into reasons to get drunk and sell crap that none of us need. Much is written about the commercialization of Christmas but, really, is there a single holiday that Hallmark isn’t trying to sell you on the idea that you should buy your loved ones a card to celebrate it? And perhaps most sad of all is how many holidays that used to be a chance to spend time with family, to commemorate something worthwhile or to celebrate a shared history with your community have been turned into another drunkfest. The most egregious of these are New Year’s Eve, Cinco de Mayo, the 4th of July, Halloween (the #1 keg sales weekend for most beer retailers) and, of course, St. Patrick’s Day. Since I essentially drink most days and as a paid professional, I refer to these holidays simply as “amateur drinking days” because it seems like people just go nuts and drink as much as humanly possible. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the holiday’s original purpose, but is used simply as an excuse to drink to excess. And it’s hard, for me at least, to be around such people. They give drinking a bad name, not to mention providing neo-prohibitionist’s fuel for their bonfires of intolerance.

So I was glad to see I’m not entirely alone on this one. An editorial in Pittsburgh’s The Times Leader by Michael O’Hare today discusses what’s happened to our holidays using the recent St. Patrick’s Day as a catalyst. In his editorial, he gives voice to the frustrations of his older Irish-American friend, Seamus, who tells him he didn’t go out on the holiday because he’s no “pop culture Irishman.” Asked to explain, Seamus relates the following.

“Well, you know, the Irish have a reputation for drink. But the Irish were like the Brits, the Welsh, the Scots and any number of nationals and races who at one time shared their time with neighbors in pubs. And, but for the local drunks, they didn’t pound down their beer and whiskey; they savored it, along with the conversation. It was the celebration, not the drink, that was the center of the gathering,” he said.

Exactly. Beer should be savored with good friends and good conversation. I couldn’t agree more.

33 Things

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The magazine Men’s Health has an interesting list of 32 Things You Can Do With Beer.

Here’s the list, but you’ll need to read the article to get their explanation for each.

  1. Bathe in it
  2. Put out a fire
  3. Marinate Meat
  4. Polish pots
  5. Make a beer barbecue sauce
  6. shampoo hair
  7. Loosen rusty bolts
  8. Clear up brown spots on your lawn
  9. Steam clams or mussels
  10. Pass a kidney stone
  11. Boil shrimp
  12. Kill Slugs
  13. Find due north
  14. Sooth tired feet
  15. Make a beer slide
  16. Lower your blood pressure
  17. Trick a cheap landlord
  18. Bake beer bread
  19. Catch mice
  20. Tie a fly
  21. Cure insomnia
  22. Massage yourself
  23. Calm an upset stomach
  24. Build your next home
  25. Cook rice
  26. Stop snoring
  27. Build a plane
  28. Roast chicken
  29. Ice a hamstring
  30. Build delightful patio furniture
  31. Tame a wild hair
  32. Scale fish

Notice the list has only 32 on it, the 33rd thing, of course, is using it as intended. There are some interesting non-intuitive ideas here, such as “loosening rusty bolts” or “clearing up brown spots on your lawn.” I’m going to give that one a try this morning. But several of them seem the same, in a way, like the seven cooking with beer suggestions. Isn’t that just one suggestions in seven different guises? And stopping snoring by tying a beer bottle to your back so you won’t sleep on it seems just plain silly, especially since it’s not really the beer but the package you’re using. You could use almost anything for that. That’s true of a few others, too, where it’s the bottle cap that you’re using rather than the beer itself. And frankly, I’m not sure beer suffers from not being versatile enough that we necessarily need to find more uses for it. Even if it’s only purpose was to drink it, wouldn’t that be enough for most of us?

Beer Drinkers More Irreligious

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The neo-prohibitionist organization Join Together is reporting on a doozy of a research study today from the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs entitled “Measures of Spirituality Increase with Sobriety.”

The gist of it is that people who drink are less religious or spiritual than teetotalers. According to Join Together, the study looked at a whopping grand total of 154 (actually it was only 123) people from an “outpatient treatment program for alcohol dependence and abuse” and then extrapolated that data to the general population. The study examined “10 measures of spirituality,” whatever that means. These included “views of God, religious practices such as prayer or church attendance, forgiveness, spiritual experiences, using religion or spirituality to cope, and existential meaning.”

More speculation from the Join Together summary:

The study found that half of the measures of spirituality changed over the six-month study period, including daily spiritual experiences, the use of religious practices, forgiveness, positive use of religion for coping, and feeling of purpose in life.

“While people’s actual beliefs don’t seem to change during recovery, the extent they have spiritual experiences, and are open to spirituality in their lives, does change,” said lead researcher Elizabeth A.R. Robinson, Ph.D. “This effect was also independent of their participation in Alcoholics Anonymous which has a strong spiritual aspect.”

Use of alcohol also declined, with 72 percent of participants successfully avoiding heavy drinking for the six-month study period. Participants whose spirituality increased were less likely to drink heavily, researchers found.

Where to begin? Join Together titles the study summary “Measures of Spirituality Increase with Sobriety,” clearly implying that the less you drink, the more religious you are. But the study itself is titled “Six-Month Changes in Spirituality, Religiousness, and Heavy Drinking in a Treatment-Seeking Sample,” indicating something quite different. The study itself states that the people studied were already in a treatment facility and/or attending AA meetings (where a spiritual aspect is emphasized). That means more accurately that people pre-disposed to abuse alcohol are the ones more likely to trade one addiction (alcohol or drugs, for example) for a more socially acceptable one, like religion. In my experience, such people use this personality trait to replace their substance abuse for obsessive spirituality. I won’t argue whether or not that’s a good thing, though clearly for many it’s preferable to alcoholism and often better for the families effected by alcoholism (for the record, I grew up with an alcoholic and abusive stepfather).

Then there’s the size of the study, a mere 123 people (despite Join Together mis-quoting the size slightly higher) extrapolated to speak for the entire population. For statistics to be meaningful, of course, the sample size must be sufficiently representative of the demographics of whatever population you’re studying. It must be random and there must be demographic diversity of at least several types, be it ethnic, geographic or what have you. The study’s abstract gives no information about the range of who was studied, where they were located, etc., apart from the following: “66% male; mean age 39; 83% white.” But if they were all from the same place, had the same core beliefs, and on and on then it’s meaningless to try extrapolating it out to say something about the entire country. The study was conducted by the Addiction Research Center, itself a part of the Substance Abuse Section of the University of Michigan’s Department of Psychiatry. So it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to think the study may have been conducted at a few or even one rehab facility near the university, further reducing the truthiness of the study’s conclusions. Even if we accept the findings, as a preliminary study with a small sample, no universal truths or really useful conclusions can be drawn until confirmed by additional similar studies using a different sample in terms of size, make-up, etc. But neo-prohibitionist groups like Join Together have no time to wait for details like reality or truth and thus report any study that appears to support their agenda, and even spin them to their own purposes, presumably hoping no one will notice.

Join Together also suggests that the study proves that the more religious you are, the less likely to drink you are. But that conclusion is utter nonsense based on the fact that the study’s subjects were all already in an “outpatient treatment program for alcohol dependence and abuse,” meaning they were already trying to stop drinking. It wasn’t increasing religiosity that made them stop, it was their own efforts at reducing destructive behavior in their lives. There will likely always be certain people who cannot restrain themselves or partake of something responsibly. Some are benign, such as an obsessive hobbyist, a sports fanatic or a collector. Others may be harmful to ones’ self, such as obsessive over-eating. Still others may also be harmful to the persons around them directly, such as smoking; or indirectly, such as an addiction to drinking or using drugs. You probably know people who fit each category. I used to be a wildly obsessive collector, for example, but my wife has largely kept that personality trait in check so that I now collect far less than I used to. And I feel much better for it, but I don’t personally have any difficulties whatsoever knowing when to stop drinking. I am a very responsible drinker, and not just because it’s part of my profession. It’s simply part of the way I am. You may be different. The guy or gal next to you, different too, in their own unique way.

My point is that each of us have a different response to these things, and to make a blanket statement such as you’ll drink less if you pray more is propaganda at its worst. It may feed an agenda, but it’s in no way truthful or honest. And frankly, if you want to advance a position by using faulty statistics then I believe you lose your credibility and whatever sincerity you brought to your position. I know people use statistics however it best serves them, that’s nothing new. But the way Join Together has taken this already questionable preliminary study (at least in my opinion) and selectively used it to support their neo-prohibitionist agenda is irresponsible.

Setting the study portion aside for a moment, I don’t really understand why the neo-prohibitionists — who are usually closely aligned with fundamentalist christian groups — are so against drinking when the Bible is replete with instances of drinking alcohol. There’s the famous story where Jesus turned the water into wine (though it was probably beer, not wine) at a wedding he was attending. And the most important event in many Christian’s minds is the last supper, which is commemorated by one of the most sacred rituals, communion. Jesus poured wine for all of the guests at the supper, telling them it was symbolic of his blood so they would remember him and his teachings. People all over the world repeat that act today, making alcohol an integral part of what it means to be religious in that faith. So why then is alcohol so demonized?

But back to the study. Another problem I have with it is trying to quantify spiritual experience and assuming it’s always positive. The researchers titles of the ten supposed “measures of spirituality” are revealing. They include a “Daily Spiritual Experiences scale, the Purpose in Life scale, S/R practices scale, Forgiveness scale, and the Positive Religious Coping scale.” I’m sure you could get people to assign an arbitrary number to these vague ideas on a daily basis and track the numbers, but how on earth can you ever be sure one person’s “purpose in life” is the same as another persons? The meaning of life has at best a deeply personal definition, that would probably not be the same for any two people. And religious practices? I can only assume that means going to church or praying, etc. But it could also mean lighting incense or taking peyote, depending on the religion. To assume taking any of those actions by themselves will keep you from engaging in addictive behavior ignores that those rituals are also addictive. Have you ever watched people in church going through the motions of worship? When to kneel, when to chant and when to respond with an “amen” are done without thought, out of habit. Apart from social acceptability, how is that different from reaching for a bottle or a cigarette in a habitual response to some stimuli.

The last sentence of the abstract reads. “The results of this descriptive study support the perspective of many clinicians and recovering individuals that changes in alcoholics’ S/R occur in recovery and that such changes are important to sobriety.” That means that it’s something of a self-fulfilling prophecy since the study is said to confirm what anecdotally was already assumed or believed to be true, that religiosity is linked to sobriety. But at least one other study done by the Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse and Addictions at the University of New Mexico concluded that the opposite was true. That study, “Atheists, agnostics and Alcoholics Anonymous,” looked at 1,526 alcoholics (or more than 12 times the Michigan study) attending AA meetings and found that “God belief appears to be relatively unimportant in deriving AA-related benefit, but atheist and agnostic clients are less likely to initiate and sustain AA attendance relative to spiritual and religious clients.” That means people don’t like to have beliefs forced on them and thus stay away from such organizations. It also seems to indicate that religiousness does not equate to levels of drinking among alcoholics.

I’m not against these studies per se, but their capacity for misuse is increasingly rife in these divisive times. As a result, I think they must be examined very carefully, especially when they so often are said to say one thing but on closer examination either do not or are flawed in some other way so as make the argument made based on their findings meaningless. To accept everything we read without questioning it is to invite manipulation, blind acceptance and coercion.

I’m in the middle of reading a fascinating book right now entitled “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?” It’s edited by John Brockman, who created the Edge, an online think tank of sorts, whose mission is the following. “The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.” Each year, a question is posed to the loose membership and last year’s was the book’s eponymous title. There are over a hundred short (about two pages on average) essays by some of the world’s best minds relating their dangerous idea, which is defined as ones which threaten or challenge the collective wisdom of the age. A historical example might be the Copernican revolution that replaced the earth with the sun as the center of the solar system. I think my own dangerous idea might be that there is no one right way to live or view the world. This is dangerous because so many people seem committed to the idea that everyone must believe as they do, and failing that should be pushed aside at best or, at worst, killed simply for disagreeing. To not notice how polarized the world has become of late it to not have been paying attention. This is true even of so seemingly inconsequential an issue as drinking alcohol, where there are entire societies and religions that forbid it. And it appears that they won’t rest until we either capitulate or die. I think this idea transcends religion, nation identity, race or ethnicity. Choosing how to live should be a matter of personal choice, from the big things like what to believe down to the smaller ones, like whether or not to enjoy a beer.

But Neo-Prohibitionist groups have chosen to dedicate themselves to taking away that choice from people like me and you. Such groups are growing in power and influence and will not rest until they achieve their goal of another Prohibition. They appear willing to say or do almost anything to achieve that goal, as their twisting and use of this flimsy study illustrates. They care only about their agenda, and not one wit about how you want to live your life if it’s in any way different from their own views. And that, in the end, is as scary a future as I can imagine, where all my decisions on morality, what to think, what to believe and how to live are made for me. Let’s not let that happen. I need a drink.

Marzen Madness, Sweet Stout Sixteen

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As several people have sent me an e-mail asking if I was alright, I figure a word of explanation may be in order. Every two months, because I write for a few different bi-monthly magazines, I have paying gigs whose deadlines are all the same week. Usually, my posting just diminishes somewhat, but this time I had a particularly heavy writing load — not that I’m complaining — and so I had to abandon the blog temporarily. I still have one short article to go, but I’m waiting to hear back from someone so I thought I’d do a quick post in an effort to get back on track. So enough rambling, back to the games.

The Washington Post’s Beer Madness, which I’m still calling Marzën Madness, held Round 2 on Sunday and here are the results.

The only surprises in round two were Anchor Steam Beer being ousted by Dominion Ale and Sierra Nevada being defeated by Saranac Pale Ale. Since they’re both pale ales, it should have been an easy victory for Sierra Nevada. I’ve had Saranac’s Pale Ale, and while it’s not a bad beer, it’s no Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, which literally defined the style for American Pale Ale in the early 1980s. Anyway, there a few interesting matchups coming up in round three, which will take place this Sunday, March 25. There are two browns slugging it out as Ellie’s Brown goes up against Pete’s Wicked, though it’s looking less wicked and more amber these days (sorry, Jaime). Brooklyn Lager should be able to handily defeat Bud, and Dogfish Head’s pale ale really should be able to pin Saranac’s. But the one to watch, I think, will be Allagash White going up against Dominion, an amber ale. I predict Allagash will make it to the Elite ESB Eight.

The bracket through round two.

Marzen Madness

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The Washington Post has an interesting little diversion along the lines of the 32-team bracket for the NCAA basketball tournament more commonly known as March Madness. The Post is calling it Beer Madness, though I think Marzën Madness is more clever, entirely on the flimsy basis that I thought of it. Essentially they chose 32 American beers from 19 states and then seeded them to go head to head at random. A panel of five then tasted each and declared a winner for each pairing. And although they chose one worthy colleague, Greg Kitsock, and a waitress from the world famous Brickskeller in D.C., the majority of the panel were chosen “entirely for their good looks.” Now I know this is just for fun, but for me it would have been more fun to have five reasonably beer-savvy panelists tasting the beers, but perhaps this will prompt me to try doing it myself next year.

Since the pairings were chosen at random, there were some unllikely beers going head to head, such as Allagash White vs. New Grist (a gluten-free beer) and Anchor Steam vs. Widmer Hefeweizen. There were few upsets, with the notable exception of Budweiser besting Victory Lager (though Victory’s Prima Pils would have been a better contest). The first round was completed yesterday and round 2 will take place this Sunday, March 18 with the finals two weeks after that on April 1. It’s certainly a fun idea, and will be interesting to see how it all turns out, even if I continue to wish the panelists all had some prior beer knowledge.

The bracket through round one.

Supermarkets Stocking Superior Suds

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According to a post today on Miller’s BrewBlog, craft brewers are getting increased placement on supermarket shelves. Citing ACNielsen statistics through the middle of February, craft beers’ presence in grocery stores has increased 16%, while at the same time imports went up 6.5%. As BrewBlog’s Jim Arndorfer notes, the real question now isn’t who’s gaining and how much, but “what brands will lose out?” This will be especially interesting to watch as beer season is about to kick into high gear with spring fast approaching.

Clinking Voyeurism

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Another “Here’s to Beer” effort to try bringing people back into the beer fold is “Clink,” within the social networking website MingleNow. There, members are encouraged to post photos to the site of friends clinking their glasses together. So far, a few hundred have been uploaded, many similar to this one.
 

 

Anheuser-Busch is the exclusive advertiser at the Clink portion of MingleNow, but that of course won’t stop the clinking glasses or bottles being filled with all manner of different beer. In one of my favorites currently at the site, a trio of Oktoberfest attendees enjoy mugs of Spaten.
 

 

Unfortunately, in their drive to entice younger people, most of the photos have a voyeuristic feel to them that I’m not entirely sure brings out the best in beer. Some of the photos do appear to be genuine expressions of friendship and good times shared over a pint, but a majority are exactly what you’d expect, mere titillation, especially as evidenced by the most popular photos which are voted on by MingleNow’s 300,000+ members. There are also contests for submitting pictures, such as one running now where you can win a VIP Trip to the Bud Light Aspen Spring Jam, a four day live concert festival.
 

 

As a recent BusinessWeek article put it, A-B is in “pursuit of the elusive 25-year-old Everyman. There’s the struggle to recalibrate how the brewer sells big brands in stupendous volumes amid the vicissitudes of an uncooperative and fractionalized market.” MingleNow focuses on the 21-35 nightclub demographic, which is ideal for A-B’s purposes though really it’s the 21-25 age bracket that gets most of the attention. ClickZ News and BizReport also have their own take on this story.

So my initial reaction is that this part of Here’s to Beer phase 2 push is much more helpful to Anheuser-Busch in recapturing the youth drinker than to beer as a category. It does little that I can see to realize the supposed goal of increasing beer’s share among all alcoholic beverages. Unless I’m missing something, can’t you clink a wine glass or tumbler of whiskey just as easily? As Silicon Valley business blogger Tom Foremski notes, “beer has helped build social relationships for centuries—maybe online social networks can now help build sales of beer.” Maybe, but I get the distinct impression that nobody thought through how this is really going to help persuade people to order a pint of beer instead of something else. Again, like the new Here’s to Beer website, Clink is not without it’s charms but hardly seems capable of changing anybody’s mind about the respect that good beer deserves.

Here’s to Beer Alive and … Well, Here Comes Phase 2

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HtB
My rumors of Here’s to Beer’s demise were premature, it seems, as evidenced by some e-mails sent to me by colleagues and a call from Anheuser-Busch. I guess they were just taking a break. Brandweek is now reporting that “Phase 2” of the Here’s to Beer (HtB) campaign is about to be launched, coinciding with the warmer Spring weather that signals the beginning of beer’s big selling season (which generally continues through Halloween). When the Brandweek article begins by stating that “Skeptics and craft brewers in particular said that once Anheuser-Busch has wrung out whatever benefit it sought with ‘Here’s to Beer,’ it would drop the category-promoting campaign and move on to corporate priorities,” it would probably be presumptuous to think they meant me. Perhaps there were others, too.

But after I suggested HtB was a dead parrot, in part based on the fact that the website had not been updated since late summer of last year, A-B’s PR department gave me the opportunity to speak with Bob Lachky, the mastermind behind the Here’s to Beer campaign and the newly named Executive Vice-President for Global Industry Development. We talked for almost an hour about two weeks ago. Bob talked about the future of the HtB project with his now familiar polished enthusiasm. He characterized my criticisms as “fair” and indicated that they were in fact taking a break on the project and working behind the scenes on phase 2.

The second phase will consist of several steps. First, beer distributors and wholesalers around the country will start receiving generic materials that they can use to promote beer as a category. I haven’t seen the display pieces yet but if the distributors can manage to get them into retail stores, where consumers can see them, that might indeed be worthwhile, assuming that they do in fact have some educational value. There are many retail stores, including some large chains, that do not accept outside display materials as a matter of policy. Often these are high end stores who want to achieve a particular look that is more sophisticated than the corner liquor store. And though the high end stores are where the materials would likely find more customer willingness, any beer education at any level seems like it should be useful to the industry as a whole.

Also coming over to HtB will be Food Network chef Dave Lieberman. I don’t necessarily see anything in his bio or on his website that indicates any special affinity for pairing beer with food or cooking with beer, but at least he appears to be a prominent chef. But apparently he’ll be creating “educational videos about brew styles and food pairings” so I’d sure like to believe he knows more than having read a book or two. Then they’ll be a comedian impersonating historical persons such as Genghis Khan, Ben Franklin, Confucius, and Catherine the Great in online commercials about who you’d want to share a beer with if you could choose any person throughout history. And Chicago’s DDB advertising agency will create new spots in the continuing saga of who you’d share your beer with, including singer/songwriter Lyle Lovett and Columbian model/actress Sofia Vergara, which seems like the same old thing A-B is doing in their regular advertising.

All of these and more are now available at the new Here’s to Beer website which launched this morning. It has a decidedly green feel to it owing presumably to it being March, with St. Patrick’s Day around the corner. It’s marked Web Volume 1.01 (and further inside as Vol. 1 – March 9, 2007), so I presume content will be changing on a monthly basis. The new site reminds me a lot of A-B’s other new venture, Bud.TV. There are loads of little tiny videos at almost every part of the website. Some are introductions, some are more detailed and all are fairly short.

Sofia-Vergara
This is helpful in raising beer’s reputation and status?

So maybe it’s because I’m an old curmudgeon — and a reader — but I’m not convinced that these little video presentations are the way to reach people. Sure, it’s cutting edge technology and has that gee whiz factor but this is information we’re talking about. I can read it much more quickly, and I don’t need to be entertained every second of my day. I actually like reading and learning new things. Does that make me out of step with the modern world? Because if we use the internet as the arbiter of what people want, you’d think no one had any patience for reading but needed passive watching to amuse themselves à la television. But if I want to watch TV, I can turn mine on. If I want sound files, I can turn on the radio or fire up my iPod. In my opinion, the internet works best when it disseminates text and pictures, the other stuff is just empty bluster most of the time. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy the occasional viral video as much as the next guy, but it’s not necessarily the best way to educate. Just because there is new technology doesn’t mean it has to be used. But all the big corporations — A-B is certainly not alone here — insist on using flash technology and online video to make their websites seems more modern but the end result is just that it’s less useful and there’s so much less information that you grow tired of it more quickly and move on to something with more meat in it.

The lead story in the new HtB website is “The Pen and the Pint: Pub Fiction” (the first part of which I actually floated as a potential title for the beer bloggers “The Session” project) and it’s a mere 441 words, far shorter than my average blog post and about half the size of the average short magazine article. There are also video segments such as “Fresh” and “Thirsty Artist” which, while not without some interest, have little to do with teaching people about beer. And so it feels more like entertainment and less like there’s a lot of good information about the beer. Some of it is downright distracting although there still is some basic information available. But also some of the information that was part of the original website, such as beer and industry news, the beer archives, the brewhouse and more is curiously gone.

Is the new website better than the old one? To me, that’s trickier because the new one at least promises to change more often and as such may bring people back more regularly. I think I’d still like to see a basic component of educational information that was always available there for people to learn about if they wanted to. After all, if the ultimate goal is to have more people drinking beer then we have to provide reasons why they should rather than simply entertain them and hope that’s enough persuasion.

When I spoke to Lachky, he indicated that A-B was prepared and expecting to go it alone with HtB. There were no plans to encourage industry-wide participation as a trade effort, though he certainly seemed willing to embrace cooperation if it was volunteered. With an almost 50% market share, A-B felt it was enough to help themselves and further believed that they’d be helping the industry as a whole, as well. He again used the aphorism of a rising tide lifting all boats to illustrate this point.

As he put it in Brandweek:

“We’re a 50-share market leader, we’re an American beer company primarily, so it is incumbent upon us to grow this industry here,” said Lachky. “Other brewers may not have the same mission we have. Our mission is to grow the beer category, and others may have a mission to cannibalize the category. I don’t know; you’ll have to ask them what their mission is. Does Anheuser-Busch want to grow Anheuser-Busch? Yes, but if you make the pie bigger, everybody gets a bigger slice.”

Hmm. Maybe, but only if the effort does indeed celebrate all beer and doesn’t get stuck in one company’s agenda. Since A-B maintains complete control over what is essentially presented as an industry project then only one message is being sent. Right now that’s not necessarily problematic, but it may not always remain so. Imagine if “Got Milk?” was only funded and managed by the largest dairy or if “Pork, the Other White Meat” was done solely by the largest pig farm and you have some idea of what problems could arise for everybody else.

Is it working? Bob Lachky certainly believes it is and takes at least “partial credit” for the increased amount of beer stories in the mainstream media of late. Is that even in part because of HtB’s efforts? It’s hard to say, of course, but I have a hard time accepting that theory though it’s certainly possible HtB played some role, however small. Because the big three brewers (plus Pabst) gained a mere 0.5% in 2006 over 2005 whereas craft beer was up 11.7% for the same period. To me, the resurgence of craft beer is the story and more likely the catalyst driving increasing attention in the media. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, when microbreweries were new and hot, the media paid plenty of attention. Then the fledgling industry went through a shakeup and media attention dried up. But now renewed interest has sparked more coverage as well as more consumers. It’s not all been rosy, as any regular Bulletin reader can tell you, I think many of the stories have been downright injurious to the cause of raising the level of beer to where it belongs. But if you accept the theory that there’s no such thing as bad publicity then yes I guess it’s all good.

Something else that struck me while I was doing some research before interviewing Lachky was that in terms of the volume of sales beer far outsells the rest followed by spirits and then wine, trailing at the end. This is exactly opposite of the attention paid to these broad categories by the mainstream media with wine getting the lion’s share of attention yet accounting for the smallest slice of the sales pie. Most newspapers have a food and wine section, making them completely out of touch with the reality of what people are really drinking. So clearly the beer industry needs to do something to reverse this situation.

Phase 2 of HtB also brings more projects outside the website, too. Happily, the Roger Sherman documentary American Brew will finally air April 7 — the anniversary not of Prohibition’s repeal, but the return of low-alcohol 3.2 beer — on A&E at 10 p.m. EST (meaning 7:00 here on the left coast). It will also be available for sale on DVD shortly at the HtB website with loads of great extras. I’ll review the film later in a separate post.

Then in May, for Father’s Day, the slogan “give your dad something he will use.” As Lachky put it. “He will use beer.” Having worked for an alcohol retailer, I like this idea. For some reason it was virtually impossible to get people to buy dad beer for Father’s Day. Wine and spirits, yes, but beer’s bad image made it akin to buying dad a carton of smokes as a present. Years of dumbing down beer as a drink for the masses made it a poor choice to show dad how much you cared about him, even if was something he really wanted. It would be nice to see that change, but I can’t say I’m overly optimistic since I also believe it was the large breweries who created that poor image in the first place.

One last issue I have with the HtB website, though I want to stress that this has nothing to do with A-B per se, is the age verification entry to the website. Since the HtB website is purely for educational purposes, why on Earth do you have to be 21 to learn about beer? I know it’s illegal to drink beer before you’re 21, but is it likewise forbidden to read about it or learn about it? If you wanted to check out one of Michael Jackon’s beer books from the library, would you have to show I.D. to prove you were 21? I’m not just being facetious when I ask that, because it seems strange that minors are not allowed to even read about alcohol and educate themselves about it. It’s sadly consistent with America’s neo-prohibitionist and puritanical leanings, but isn’t this just one more self-fulfilling prophecy? If you don’t make it possible for kids to learn about beer then it’s a fait accompli that they’ll become ignorant binge drinkers in their late teens and early twenties. And how is that good for society or battling underage drinking as the neo-prohibitionists pretend to care about?

But it looks like HtB is back, at least, to make an effort in promoting beer. As much I embrace and encourage this idea, I also remain a skeptic and hope like hell I’ll be proven wrong in the end. And I certainly hope they stop undermining their own efforts with commercials that reinforce old stereotypes about beer. It will be interesting to see how it plays out over the coming months and whether or not they will continue to add useful and educational information to the website or if remains largely entertaining with some education thrown in. So I’ll try to reserve final judgment until we see what else the coming months will bring to the table from the in-store display pieces to the documentary American Brew. There’s so much that’s good about beer in almost all its myriad forms. Let’s hope that message comes across from Here’s to Beer and the rest of us.