Brookston Beer Bulletin

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No. 10 With a Bullet

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I get a lot of e-mails on a regular basis from PR firms pitching one story or another for their clients. Many times they don’t even have anything to do with beer because most firms don’t have a separate category and just lump all beverages, and usually food, together in one category. Today I got one that at first glance seemed destined for the delete key, though it was more interesting than most of the ones I get.

It was titled the “Ten Trends to Watch in Packaged Goods in 2007” and was complied by the market research company Datamonitor. Of the first nine, a few of their predictions could have some relevance to craft beer, but more likely to fringe malt beverages or other kinds of drinks. Those categories are Calorie Burning Beverages, Satiety-Enhancing Foods & Drinks, Local Sourcing of Ingredients, and Immunity Boosting Foods & Drinks.

Number 10, on the other hand, was “Better for You” Beer – Blame it on the “French Paradox.” Here it is in its entirety:

With beer losing ground to wine in many markets around the world, beer makers are beginning to fight back with new products promising new health benefits for beer. Stampede Light is claimed to be the “first ever government approved vitamin beer” for the USA market with its B-vitamins, folic acid and folate. In Germany, Karlesberg Braueri is out with a pair of new functional beers aimed at women. Karla Well-B, for instance, is made with lecithin, folic acid and other vitamins. Karla Balance mixes hops with lemon balm. Both products have just 1% alcohol by volume. Beer may never be the same.

That’s not one of the trends in beer I would have predicted needed watching, but then I don’t have the research apparently Datamonitor does. But I already have prima facie questions about it. Their initial justification is that “beer [is] losing ground to wine in many markets around the world.” But I haven’t seen anything more than polls that only anecdotally support that, and even some of that data doesn’t support that conclusion. Sales of beer are still many times wine (4 to 1 in the U.S.) so how true is that assertion?

I have no problem with the health benefits of beer being touted in beer marketing and advertising. Craft beer without any additives at all has many proven and theoretical health benefits. That the TTB doesn’t permit beer companies to make those claims because it might promote drinking is puritanical nonsense that has no place in a free society. Beer with health additives seem like novelties to me, however sincere their makers may be. Many I’ve tried taste just fine to me, but there appeal seems largely aimed at persons for whom the particular claim of each one resonates in some particular way for that customer. In other words, their appeal is more limited. They are, after all, niche products by definition and many are sub-niches of broader categories like health food products or organics.

So I just don’t see these as trends worthy of our constant attention next year. Far more likely trends to watch, I think, will be organic beers and gluten-free, but only time will tell. What do you think? What will be the hot new trends in beer next year?

Aping Beer

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To start talking about Anhesuer-Busch’s first big ad campaign since acquiring the Rolling Rock brand, you first should see the first volley, this “beer ape” commercial. Go ahead, press play. I’ll wait.

The next commercial on television now features a Ron Stablehorn apologizing for the ad you just watched as being offensive to the “Friends of Rolling Rock.” And you can see why, the ad is about as offensive as any other A-B ad I’ve seen. But if you didn’t already see it coming, the whole thing is a sham, a put-on, a con job — use whatever phrase you like — it’s a fake controversy created as a part of a more complicated ploy. There is no Ron Stablehorn and no “Friends of Rolling Rock” organization. The irony I think is that there truly are no friends of Rolling Rock left after A-B’s controversial decision to not purchase the Latrobe Brewery where Rolling Rock had been brewed since 1939 and move production to Newark, New Jersey. Maybe it’s just me, but a pretend controversy just months after a real one in which the Latrobe Brewery closed and hundreds of workers have been unemployed since late July, seems a tad insensitive to me. I realize the brewery has been sold and should reopen, but that doesn’t change the fact that an entire town was effected by A-B’s decision not to buy the brewery in Latrobe.

Apparently I’m not the only one, either as an article in today’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review makes clear.

From the article:

Kelley Skoloda, a partner at Ketchum Communications, Downtown, said viral marketing generates attention for a company by using outrageous, ludicrous or funny images, which create buzz and give consumers something to talk about. It typically resonates with the coveted Gen Y demographic, and is meant to spread organically, from friend to friend, rather than through a spokesman with an agenda.

But Skoloda and Robert Gilbert, professor of marketing at the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh, agreed that the beer ape-bumbling executive campaign will get a much different response in Western Pennsylvania, since this summer Anheuser-Busch shuttered the Latrobe brewery, home of Rolling Rock beer for nearly 70 years.

Skoloda also said that “from what she’s seen of the campaign, most people don’t think it’s all that funny. I think the key to creating a viral campaign is transparency,” she said. “It may not be as clear as it needs to be with this campaign.”

Gilbert added that the campaign “is probably a whole lot less offensive than taking their jobs away from them. I’m not sure the people at Anheuser-Busch are getting great joy throwing salt in the wound, I just think it never dawned on them.” It may not give them great joy, but they do seem to do it an awful lot. See for example, my previous rant about that very issue, in which I even used the exact same language.

Tom Marflak, the mayor of Latrobe, Pennsylvania (and now a Coors Light drinker), had this to say:

“They destroyed this city. It was a total slap in the face when they came in here, and just bought everything, even the green bottles.”

It’s funny how good A-B’s advertisers are at doing an ad with no substance that’s designed to be just slightly offensive, just enough so that they’d be convinced it was possible that viewers less enlightened then they are could find it offensive but without finding it offensive themselves. That’s a pretty thin tightrope to walk. Did they succeed? Apparently half-a-million visitors have gone to Rolling Rock’s website to learn more about the supposed controversy, so yeah, people really are that gullible.

Another oddity about the new ad campaign is the way they’re framing the kind of beer Rolling Rock is, which the ads describe as a “classic extra pale lager with a rich tradition.” First, I don’t see how you call something that’s “extra pale” a classic, but perhaps that’s my own prejudice. Pale is defined as “lacking intensity of color; colorless or whitish.” How can something have an “extra” lack of color or be “extra” white? Next, invoking a “rich tradition” is weird when you consider Rolling Rock’s richest tradition is that the beer came “from the glass-lined tanks of old Latrobe,” a tradition A-B dismantled when they moved production to the next state over.

Is this a dignified way for A-B to rebuild the brand after buying it? Over the years they’ve used horses, frogs, dogs, lizards and now an ape to promote one of their brands so it’s certainly fits with their pattern of ad campaigns. They’re going after young twenty-somethings, obviously, and I realize the “beer ape” is not really a spokes-animal for Rolling Rock (unless of course, it proves popular) but it’s hardly an audacious beginning. I would have expected something aimed above the level of primates, but maybe that’s the demographic A-B is going after: people who closely identify themselves with apes. Was Jane Goodall at that pool party?

Be a Beer Tycoon

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I’m generally not one for video games, but this one could be interesting. According to GameShout, an online resource focused on computer gaming, the British company Virtual Playground has just released a new game called Beer Tycoon. According to the company’s website the game is described like this:

In Beer Tycoon you build, staff and manage your very own brewery. Invent new beer recipes from dozens of available ingredients, set them into production, create market leading brands and distribute them to your customers.

Starting with limited funds, build a micro-brewery and learn the craft of the brewer from the ground up in one of three European countries; Germany, the UK or Belgium. Eventually you’ll be confident enough to run a high tech industrial scale brewery on a truly massive scale.

 

 

As GameShout describes it, “the game offers the opportunity to enter the beer business as head of a micro brewery or a medium sized suburban brewery, or even enter the global competition managing a full-blown big brewery. These companies can consist of up to 21 different brewery building types. There are 50 ingredients one can brew the beer from, including various kinds of hops and malts, and even specialities like chili and chocolate.”

Now that could be a game I might enjoy playing. Unfortunately it appears to be only for Windows users right now, so us Macheads are left wanting, as usual.

A screen capture of one of the types of breweries you could build for your virtual brewing company.

Pacific Coast Brewing’s Holiday Tasting Announced

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Pacific Coast Brewing’s 18th annual holiday beer tasting will be held at the brewery in downtown Oakland on December 9, from Noon until 4:00 p.m. Tickets are $40. Call 510.836.2739 for reservations. If you’re planning on going, make your reservations to be there now, because it will sell out quickly.

12.9

Pacific Coast Brewing’s Taste of Holiday Beers (18th annual)

Pacific Coast Brewing, 906 Washington Street, Oakland, California
510.836.2739 [ website ]

 

Cellerman?

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In award-winning Philadelphia beer writer Don Russell’s Joe Sixpack column Friday, he argues persuasively that the term “beer sommelier” is oxymoronic because the word “sommelier” by definition refers specifically to wine. He’s right about that, of course. Here’s the dictionary definition:

a waiter, as in a club or restaurant, who is in charge of wines.

“sommelier.” Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1). Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Other dictionaries also mention wine specifically in their definitions, too. It’s clear the word is clumsy at best. It’s only usefulness stems from being a word most people already understand, at least in wine terms.

But Russell also argues that we should not borrow from the wine industry’s terms, which he describes as “the winofication of beer.” I heartily agree with that sentiment. It seems a shame that wine analogies are often so effective and it’s for that reason I’m guilty of using them, too. But we should be able to describe beer using its own vocabulary.

Don’s suggestion to replace beer sommelier with the term Cellarman, which has a rich history in the brewing world. I’m not quite convinced that’s the right word, but he’s definitely on to something and like the direction he’s taking the debate.

Christgau on Beer

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Here’s a fun little piece of history I stumbled upon yesterday while searching for something wholly unrelated. If you’ve followed music with any seriousness, I probably don’t have to tell you who Robert Christgau is. Christgau has been the rock critic at the Village Voice for over thirty years and has published several books of his music criticism over the years. His column was de rigueur when I lived in New York City (and was a musician) in the late ’70s. According to his new website, he — and over half a dozen others — were fired from the Voice at the end of August when new owners took over management of the paper. Christgau will soon be contributing to Rolling Stone and NPR’s All Things Considered, and has put up most of his writing from over the past 37 years at his website. In addition to his writing about music, Christgau also has written on other topics including, surprisingly, beer. In 1975, he co-wrote a piece, with Carola Dibbell, entitled “The Great Gulp: A Consumer’s Guide to Beer.” It was published in the April 1975 edition of Oui magazine, a men’s magazine that was owned by Playboy until 1981.

It’s a fascinating little time capsule as the pair write about almost fifty domestic beers, many of which are no longer around, along with a a dozen popular imports The piece starts out with a short history of beer and an explanation of the methodology they used to rate the beers. Written two years before Michael Jackson’s ground-breaking first beer book, it’s a surprisingly earnest attempt at writing seriously about beer.

Here, for example, is their review of Anchor Steam Beer:

ANCHOR STEAM BEER (San Francisco, California) This product is the last example of America’s only indigenous brewing process. The main feature of the invention is air-temperature fermentation and its mother was an ice scarcity during San Francisco Gold Rush days. The beer also contains four times the usual amount of hops, the flower that gives beer its bitterness. “Steam” just means carbonation. Our bohemian friends found it winy, but we found it one more instance of San Francisco’s chronic confusion of eccentricity with quality. B

Check it out. It’s interesting to compare how they were writing about the beer versus today. Notice, for example, the way they discuss hops. Hops are not written about lovingly, the way we might but always if the hops are perceivable, it’s considered a negative. A very interesting look back.

 

I say “yes” to writing about beer, they say “oui!”
This is the April 1975 issue, in which Christgau’s
beer article originally appeared.

Fifty-Year Old Coors Found in California Dessert

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This was an odd little story out of Tennessee about some hikers who found a case of Coors that’s fifty-years old in the California dessert near San Diego, at the scene of a famous train wreck known as the “Coors Wreck.” The television station’s website, WBIR Channel 10, includes a link to a video report. In the report they show them opening and pouring out the contents of the beer. It’s interesting to see how it looks after being exposed to harsh temperatures for a half century. One odd thing in the story, however, is the interviewee seems to imply that the find was not made all that recently so I’m not exactly sure what made it news now. Anyway, it’s still fun to see it opened.

A fifty-year old can of Coors.

Man Laws

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This is a strange admission for me, but — geez, I can’t believe I’m saying this — I actually agree with almost all of Miller’s list of “Man Laws,” part of their newest ad campaign to persuade people that drinking Miller Lite isn’t just for kids, er … young adults, anymore. Maybe that says more about me than the Man Laws, who knows? If you’re a regular reader of the Bulletin, you know how I feel about low-calorie light beers — no sane person should drink them … ever. But I have to give Miller their props, especially after a number of ill-fated and ill-advised ad campaigns. Anybody else remember the ads by “Dick” in the late ’90s? Or the infamous Catfight? The Man Laws are at least somewhat clever. There was an interesting article in yesterday’s New York Times by Stuart Elliot all about the unusual partnership between Miller and the magazine FHM (For Him Magazine), a British men’ magazine with an American version. FHM is a men’s magazine in the mold of Maxim or Stuff, not Playboy.

Apparently in one of the new models to get advertising for major accounts, magazines are pitted against one another to come up with the concepts themselves, essentially taking on the role of advertising agency for the privilege of winning a company’s advertising. I guess that’s cutting edge and obviously winning the accounts is lucrative for the magazines, but it sure feels a little sleazy to me. I’m sure that’s my own naivete and sense of fair play, but how about these companies come up with their own ways to advertise their products?

From the Times’ article:

The FHM print campaign was selected after a competition that pitted ideas from the magazine’s ad sales department against those submitted by their counterparts at several other monthly men’s magazines. As is becoming increasingly common as magazines battle the new media for ad dollars, the FHM campaign involves elements that extend beyond prosaic ad pages.

Readers can take part in a contest on a special Web site (fhmus.com/manlaws), to which they can upload photographs to report “violations” of the laws. The contest is also accepting entries through cellphone text messages and e-mail messages.

Here is a list of all of the current Man Laws:
 

Man Laws

  1. Now matter how long the trip, a man’s suitcase shall not exceed 1.8 cu. ft.
  2. No man shall own a dog smaller than a football.
  3. Under no circumstances should a man be seen wearing sunglasses indoors.
  4. Armbands, headbands and such accessories are not to leave the gym.
  5. The Wearing of socks with sandals is henceforth forbidden.
  6. At no time shall any man believe a comb-over looks good.
  7. Men pull pranks.
  8. A man shall never dance for fun unless to improve his chances of getting a girl.
  9. When swatting an insect, never do it yelling “get it off, get it off!”
  10. Regardless of how scary the ride, it is never permissible for a man to squeal.
  11. A man shall never get in his vehicle by sitting sideways and swinging both legs in.
  12. Technology that makes you look like a mumbling crazy person is not cool.
  13. You can take the last beer or the last chicken wing — not both.
  14. Acquire tans by accident, never by credit card.
  15. Regardless of the name, a man doesn’t visit a manicurist.
  16. A man may wear pink provided that he refer to it as “light red.”
  17. No man shall ever make excuses for the haircut he has been left with.
  18. Highlights are sports clips, not something you do to your hair.
  19. “Too cold” shall not cross any man’s lips on game day.
  20. All football injuries are treatable by walking it off or rubbing dirt on it.
  21. Interpretive dancing shall be reserved for weddings and touchdowns.
  22. When attending a football game, you can not wear the jersey of a former player, unless that player is retired.
  23. No man shall ever tuck a team jersey into his pants.
  24. Shirtless players shall not repeatedly post up on their defenders.
  25. A man shall not wear a full team uniform to play pickup basketball.
  26. A man shall never have two-hundred dollar basketball shoes and a three-cent game.
  27. Three or more air-balls in a game and a man shall be relegated to passing.
  28. A man shall not nag another man, but a firm stare is OK.
  29. A man must abide by the locally accepted shotgun rules; failure to do so results in automatic shotgun forfeiture.
  30. A man must attempt to stop a friend from calling his ex-girlfriend a minimum of three times, after that he’s on his own.
  31. When your friend’s girlfriend breaks up with him, she’s off limits; unless she is drop dead gorgeous, in which case you must wait six months before dating her.
  32. A man shall never use a lame pick up line.
  33. All men must possess the ability to operate a knife, either electrical or traditional.
  34. Fireworks are always in season.
  35. A man shall never pay any attention to the evenness of his tan line.
  36. In a pinch, it is perfectly acceptable for a man to commandeer female clothing for Halloween costuming purposes.
  37. Holiday decorations must absolutely, positively be taken down before spring.
  38. Crushing a beer can on your forehead is lame.
  39. A man shall never put a lime or other fruit in a beer for any reason at any time.

The best photographs depicting violations of the Man Laws are then entered into a contest, which … let’s let the Times continue explaining how it works:

In an example of the trend known as consumer-generated content, the best entries from the contest will be compiled in a 16-page booklet to accompany the May issue of FHM. For readers who cannot wait that long to learn the finer points of “man laws,” Miller Lite will be the sole sponsor of a 2007 calendar that will be included free with the January/February issue of FHM.

It’s an interesting concept and certainly better than most of Miller’s recent ad campaigns. Now if only they’d put some more effort into making some better tasting beers.