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Champagne vs. Beer

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When many people think of champagne and beer, they might conjure up the image of Miller High Life, which used to call itself “the champagne of bottled beer.” But many American craft and Belgian brewers are increasingly putting their high end beers in champagne bottles, with cork, cage and foil, just like the sparkling wine. It was an easy shorthand to convey that what’s inside the bottle is as fine in its own way as any wine and the size and seal and make them ideal for bottle conditioned beers which continue to ferment in the bottle. The small Belgian brewery, Malheur, has taken this idea one step farther and released three beers that evoke champagne in their very names: Malheur Bière Brut, Dark Brut, and Cuvée Royale. All three use what owner Emanuel De Landtsheer calls “à la méthode originale.”

De Landtsheer’s family had been in brewing for generations and he recently took up the family calling when he opened the Malheur brewery in 1997. Michael Jackson has a delightful story about the brewery’s origins at his online Beer Hunter. When he first debuted the Brut line, he also used the phrase, the “Veuve-Clicquot of the beer world” in his marketing of the beers. Veuve-Clicquot sued to stop Malheur from using their name in the advertising, along with the more general terms, “method traditional”, “brut” and “reserve.” The lower court ruled for the champagne maker but on appeal to the European Court of Justice, it appears that they will rule for Malheur. Malheur voluntarily stopped using specific reference to Veuve-Clicquot for their beer, and the high court will likely rule that the other three terms do not imply a specific product or competitor and as such are legal to use for beer. The official ruling has not yet been handed down, but Reuters is reporting that this is now the expected outcome because their rulings generally follow the advocate general’s opinion.
 

Latrobe Tribute

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One of the folks at After These Messages, a new blog created to examine and critique advertising, sent me a link to the following tribute video on YouTube for the town of Latrobe, Pennsylvania. It’s both irreverent and moving, and a nice glimpse inside the brewery itself, too.

UPDATE: For reasons I can’t explain, this video is no longer available at YouTube. If anybody knows if it’s available elsewhere, please let me know.

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.