Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

Socialize

GABF: Wednesday Night Brewer’s Reception

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Each year, the night before GABF, the Brewers Association holds a reception at Wynkoop for the brewers. It’s the first chance during the week for every one newly arrived in town to get together and say hello, drink a few beers and enjoy calm before the storm.

From left: Bob Pease (BA), Vinnie Cilurzo (Russian River), John Bryant and his wife Cindy (Odell’s), Banjo (Real Beer) and Tom McCormick (California Small Brewers Association).

Ralph Woodall (HopUnion) and the delightful Chris Crabb (OBF)

John Bryant (Odell’s) and Ray Daniels (BA)

Lucy Saunders (The Beer Cook) and Vinnie Cilurzo.

Burgundian Babble Belt Tasting

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The passionate folks from the Burgundian Babble Belt, a vocal group of Belgian beer enthusiasts, usually has a tasting of Belgian-style beers around GABF but I’ve never before had an opportunity to attend one of their events. This year, the Celebrator was a partial sponsor, and it was before the Brewers Reception, so I had a chance to go. It was held in a delightfully funky building, a three-story former synagogue in a sketchy neighborhood just outside downtown Denver. If there hadn’t been a sign on the door, I would have thought we were in the wrong place. But after a long climb, we arrived at the cavernous third floor, filled with funky decorations and terrific food and beers. It was only too bad we couldn’t have stayed all night.

Stephen Beaumont chats with our host for the evening, Logan.

Jeff and his friend Josh, who he made sure did not miss a GABF event despite being miles away from Denver for the first time this year.

We were almost out the door when Dr. Bill arrived, and enticed us back upstairs with a wheel of Chimay cheese, along with his usual assortment of fantastic beers. To be fair, he really didn’t have to twist our arms very much.

After the Beer Dinner

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After the beer dinner, we stopped by the Toronado for a nitecap and to play some washoes.

Vinnie Cilurzo pouring us each a glass of his Supplication.

Natalie Cilurzo finishing off a bottle of Chimay.

Chiles and Beer: Millennium Beer Dinner

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The night before leaving for GABF, there was one more beer dinner to attend. The Millennium Restaurant, a vegetarian eatery located in the Hotel California (f.k.a. the Savoy), put on their 3rd annual Chile and Beer Dinner with beers from Russian River Brewing and Nodding Head Brewery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

One of the desserts, a pineapple-Serrano cake with chocolate frosting, coconut-lime anglaise and chile ice cream.

A glass of Monk’s Flemish Sour contrasted by Nodding Head’s Ich Bin Ein Berliner Weisse with Woodruff syrup.

Tom Peters, Nodding Head co-owner and brewer Curt Decker, Vinnie and Natalie Cilurzo, from Russian River Brewing.

Tom Peters and Dave Keene, owners of the best two Belgian beer bars on both coasts.

Here’s to American Brew

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I knew Florentine Films, which is the Ken Burns’ documentary film production company, was working on a film on the history of craft beer but I didn’t know exactly who was doing it or what it was precisely. There are four directors at Florentine Film. In addition to Burns, there’s also Larry Hott, Roger Sherman and Buddy Squires. A PA had contacted me looking for old pictures of Bert Grant and some other very early craft brewers. My photos didn’t go back as far as they needed so I put them on to the Celebrator’s photo archive, which does. The depth and breadth of who they were looking for was very impressive and certainly inferred they had done their homework. I was eagerly anticipating a high-profile film about the history of our peculiar industry. Between that and Beer Wars, which was shot last year and is apparently being edited now, it seems like we may be on the brink of some wonderful opportunities for people to find out what craft beer is — perhaps for the first time — and maybe seek it out and drink it in, literally.

Surprisingly, I discovered when a press release via e-mail appeared in my inbox that in fact the film American Brew is being sponsored by “Here’s to Beer,” the A-B sponsored effort to educate people about beer. I have, of course, not been won over by that effort and have said some very harsh words about it. Just look at the post before this one for a flavor of my discontent. But every thing about this film that they’re sponsoring looks great. The people involved seem beyond reproach. Roger Sherman, who is directing the film, is no stranger to film-making and has several awards under his belt to prove it. And many of the people listed on the film’s teaser poster I count as my friends. So unlike, say Beerfest, everything I know about this movie is positive and I’m looking very forward to actually seeing this one.

The one niggling thing about it is that essentially Anheuser-Busch paid for what at least appears to be a film that at first blush doesn’t seem like it will do them any favors. Maybe I’m missing something here, but a film that finally shows the history of innovative, small authentic craft beer would by contast not show the big breweries in a particularly flattering light. I certainly want to believe that A-B’s influence on the project will not extend to the substance and content of the movie, but it’s hard not to speculate. The trailer will be debuting at GABF and it will be interesting to see it. Let’s hope we’ll all be able to say, without reservation, “Here’s to American Brew.”

 

NBWA Gives Bob Lachky Beer’s “Medal of Freedom”

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The National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) gave its Industry Service Award to Anheuser-Busch executive VP Bob Lachky. In their press release, the NBWA stated that the reason they gave the award to Lachky was for “his efforts to promote beer and the important role distributors play in the marketplace”

From the press release:

“August Busch IV created the Global Industry Development group because we firmly believe that everyone in the industry must work to sell and grow the entire category,” Lachky said. “It has been a privilege to work with NBWA and its members and I am thrilled to accept this award on behalf of Here’s To Beer and Anheuser-Busch. Seeing the signs of beer industry improvement this year, we think we are making progress.”

Since late last year, Lachky has spearheaded the “Here’s To Beer” industry initiative. The grassroots campaign to elevate the image of beer focuses on three key areas:

  1. Reminding consumers of the social value of beer — it brings people together in an unpretentious way.
  2. Romancing the product and the art of brewing — reinforcing beer’s refreshment, all natural ingredients and the beauty of its liquid.
  3. Encouraging consumers to view beer differently — giving them new ways to enjoy beer including ideas and recipes for pairing with food.

Well, good for Bob. I’m sure he’s a terrific guy. And as I’ve said before the “idea” of an industry-wide promotion of the positive aspects of beer à la “Got Milk?” is something the industry sorely needs. I hate beating a dead horse, but the wine industry’s efficacy in educating their consumers and raising the standards for wine put us as an industry to shame. Sure they’ve had more money and more built-in appeal (or high-end prejudice), but that’s not all they’ve been fortunate about. Perhaps most importantly, Gallo (and the other large-scale wine producers) haven’t been undermining those efforts for decades the way the big brewery’s advertising has damaged the image of beer. Craft beer’s challenge has been far more Sisyphean in nature. For every positive step craft beer has moved forward, talking frogs, man law, flatulent horses, twins and all manner of other juvenilia has dragged us back down again. As a result, many people remain deliriously ignorant of what good beer even is, never mind how best to enjoy it.

So for the segment of the industry most responsible for the negative associations that beer has today to take up the fight to improve beer’s image seems downright Orwellian to me. Kafka would have a hard time understanding this one. Yet many of my colleagues remain optimistic about this program or have remained silent about it. We all think the industry needs what the stated goals of “Here’s to Beer” are, but given A-B’s transparent agenda, how can anyone take it seriously. Obviously the other brewers saw through A-B’s motives, which is why they all chose not to participate.

And that was my initial — and continuing — problem with Anheuser-Busch’s “Here’s to Beer” campaign. Despite the fact that they continue to spin it as an industry-wide campaign, not a single brewer apart from A-B is involved with the project. Even the trade organization, the Beer Institute, who had initially co-sponsored the effort, withdrew their support right after the first commercial aired during the Super Bowl in Early February of this year. Bob apparently flew all over the country for months trying to convince other brewers to join their bandwagon, but not a single one took the bait. So I have a hard time seeing how this has been a success. Yet the media, even the trade media for the most part, has gone along with it in lockstep calling it a “grassroots campaign,” to take an example from the NBWA’s own press release. Here’s the definition of “grassroots:”

“of, pertaining to, or involving the common people, esp. as contrasted with or separable from an elite.”

So how is this campaign, run solely by the biggest brewer in the country by a wide margin, in any way “grassroots?” Simple. It’s not. You can’t get more elite in terms of resources and influence than A-B. Only a few come close, and not very close at that.

Also in the press release, Lachky makes the following claim. “Seeing the signs of beer industry improvement this year, we think we are making progress.” Wow, he’s taking credit for industry growth this year, how magnanimous of him. But I really can’t see how that’s even remotely true. First of all, the big breweries have made only very modest gains this year. Despite the self-serving rhetoric to the contrary, the big guys aren’t experiencing a period of turnaround and rapid growth. They’re still on the ropes — so to speak — with their core brands. Craft beer, on the other hand, was up 9% last year and looks to be tracking at 11% this year. What growth there is in the industry, that’s where the majority of it resides.

Having not met Bob Lachky personally, it’s hard for me to say he isn’t an enthusiastic supporter of beer. He certainly appears to have worked very hard on this project. And he may be a great guy, who knows? (I will have an opportunity to meet him in Denver next week.) So despite the fact that we’d all like to see the image of beer elevated to its proper place, has the “Here’s to Beer” campaign actually accomplished anything award-worthy? Are there droves of people who’ve been turned around and educated by the information on the website or the marketing materials made available to beer distributors? It sure doesn’t seem that way from where I’m sitting. It takes more than putting up a website and running a few PSAs for a mere eight months to undo the damage to beer’s image that A-B and the other industrial brewers have perpetrated over the last several decades.

So why did the NBWA choose to “honor” Bob Lachky and his “Here’s to Beer” campaign after only eight months and very little obvious or verifiable results? To me that’s the question in all of this. It reminds me a little bit of our President’s recent tendency to give the “Medal of Freedom” to beleaguered underlings as he shows them the door. Screw up, get a medal. Which is not say that Bob Lachky made any mistakes — as far as I know he didn’t — but awards and medals should be for achieving something tangible and measurable. Otherwise they’re meaningless, aren’t they? And while I mean no disrespect, I can’t see that the “Here’s to Beer” campaign has achieved any of its goals or united the industry. We don’t live in a world that, unlike eight months ago, now reveres beer’s social value, romantic allusions and diversity. And while there does seem to be anecdotal signs that the media may be taking beer slightly more seriously lately, I can’t draw a line of causality between that and A-B’s PR efforts, however well-intentioned. And frankly, that could be simply wishful thinking on my part since I’m watching the industry more closely (and a little differently) this year than I have the previous couple of years.

The only way beer will be brought to more people is the only way it’s ever worked, at least in my experience. And that’s one-on-one. The people best positioned to create any sort of “grassroots” movement are the people already doing just that. The servers in brewpubs, the brewers giving tours and pouring beer at festivals, passionate retail clerks and “common people” — like you and me — who simply like good beer and want to share it with their friends. That’s the only grassroots I can see succeeding.

Again, the idea of providing more information to consumers who want to learn more about beer is quite laudable. But it has to come from people who really believe the message they’re preaching, not from the largest beer manufacturer in the country trying to raise it’s share price by any means necessary. And until the “Here’s to Beer” campaign is truly an industry-wide effort with its true goals free from ulterior motives, it’s hard to applaud the effort as shamelessly and unquestioningly as the NBWA did in honoring it. I’ll join the NBWA in praising Bob Lachky for making the effort he has — if for no other reason than to give him the benefit of the doubt — but the results of that effort in the form of the “Here’s to Beer” do not yet deserve such accolades.

A Delicious Evening at the “Tion” Dinner

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Last night was Beer Chef Bruce Paton’s latest beer dinner, dubbed the Tion Dinner, because it featured Damnation, Temptation, Supplication, Salvation and Redemption from Russian River Brewing. Everything was spectacular and because the MBAA conference is in town this week, there were a lot more familiar faces than usual, which made for an even more enjoyable evening. The food was delicious, as were the beers, of course. Friends, food and beer: what more could you ask for of an ideal evening? Bruce asked me to take photos of the event so I have a lot of pictures to share. Here is a photo gallery of the event.
 

Chef Bruce Paton and Brewer Vinnie Cilurzo.

All of the brewers who attended the beer dinner.

This was just too good a photo to wait, this is Bruce with Russian River co-owner Natalle Cilurzo.
 

UPDATE: Photo Gallery from the event now online.

Costco Decision Stayed

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U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman placed another stay on her earlier ruling in the closely-watched Coscto decision she handed down in April. Her earlier ruling essentially dismantled Washington State’s three-tier system without regard to the consequences, including many of the protections that ensure a level playing field for businesses of varying sizes. Costco originally brought the suit because, if successful, they would reap enormous benefit, as would other big box retailers. The losers would include small retailers, small brewers and ultimately consumers once the landscape of the state’s alcohol business has been greatly altered after the changes are implemented. Costco and the business press have continued to spin the story by claiming it will lower prices of beer to the consumer, but that’s simply propaganda as I’ve pointed out before and again in response to a thoughtful comment.

The recent stay gives state lawmakers until May 1, 2007 to change Washington’s beer and wine laws through new legislation. Since her initial ruling effectively makes the current laws invalid, an entirely new system to control the relationships between manufacuters, distributors (if any) and retailers must be created. Whether that can be accomplished in under eight months in a way that’s fair to all concerned, including consumers, remains to be seen. But it seems a Herculean task and fated to fail, at least in my opinion. There are just too many competeing interests for almost any legislature to come up with a workable solution. It seems more likely that if any legislation is passed, it will favor the big box stores and big breweries but will at least appear to balance critics’ concerns, while not actually doing so. That’s been the general pattern of legislation in our business-dominated times. Big business contributes to political campaigns and politicians enact legeslation favorable to their benefactors. And as usual, you and I wll be left holding the empty non-returnable bottle.

Jesus Was a Homebrewer

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jesus-drinks-beer
Many people think that Jesus may have been a homebrewer. I have heard that when the Greeks first translated the bible from ancient Hebrew, that they lacked a word for beer and thus substituted the Greek word for wine in its place, perhaps thinking what difference would it make, an alcoholic drink is an alcoholic drink. I’m not sure this is directly on point, but the article Beer, Barley and [Hebrew symbols] in the Hebrew Bible certainly shows that this would have been quite possible and that there is some confusion about translations of this type for centuries.

So when Jesus turned the water into wine (in the Gospel of John 2:1-11), perhaps he was simply a homebrewer and making beer for the wedding party. It certainly seems more plausible to take vats of water and make beer out them than magically turn one liquid into a completely different one. It’s my understanding that the priests of the day would have been the ones who possessed the knowledge of how to make ancient beer so it follows that Jesus would have known this ancient art, as well. That’s probably why Jamie Floyd’s new Ninkasi Brewing in Eugene, Oregon has “Jesus Was a Homebrewer” printed on the back of his brewery t-shirts. And no less a beer luminary than Michael Jackson has also ruminated on this subject.

But while I’m very open to this possibility and believe it makes far more sense than the conventional story, I gather that many people of a more religious bearing than myself do not look upon this debate with anything but contempt. My understanding of fundamentalism is that many adherents refuse to entertain the idea that mistranslations may have occurred because they believe the translators themselves were divinely inspired and somehow led by the hand of god in their work. Whatever your own take on this theory, it follows that religion and beer are generally not fast friends, notwithstanding many christians do enjoy a pint from time to time. So I was mildly amused when I saw the new ad campaign for this year’s holiday season by the Churches Advertising Network (or CAN), an English group whose mission, in their own words, is to be “an independent, ecumenical group of Christian communicators which exists to provide high quality national Christian advertising campaigns, especially around major festivals, and to provide the means for local churches to share in and receive the benefit of such national campaigns.”

Apparently each year, CAN creates an ad campaign around Christmas to try to bring people back into the fold. “Previous CAN campaigns include a poster depicting Jesus as the revolutionary leader Che Guevara and one suggesting Mary was having a “bad hair day” when she discovered she was pregnant.”

This year’s campaign features a pint glass with the image of Jesus in the Brussels lace stuck to the side of the empty glass and a MySpace.com website for Jesus. CAN chairman Francis Goodwin said he hoped the poster and accompanying radio adverts would spark a debate about religion.

“The message is subtle but simple – where is God in all the boozing at Christmas?” said Goodwin.

“For many, Christmas is just drinking and partying and God is excluded, yet many young people are interested in finding deeper meaning and exploring faith.”

The poster is a nod to the occasional discoveries of holy images in everyday objects, from the face of Jesus in a frying pan, toast or fish finger, his mother Mary on a toasted cheese sandwich and even Mother Teresa in a sticky bun.

jesus-beer-poster

According to the group’s literature, here is their take on this image:

This year’s poster picks up on the current media preoccupation with finding images of Jesus in everything from egg yolks to currant buns. Next to an empty beer glass in which a face can be seen are the words “Where will you find him?” and pointing to the web address myspace.com/isthisjesus.

The poster aims to provoke thought and debate about where and how people find God. The myspace.com webspace will include a link to the rejesus website, which has creative features and reliable information on the Christian faith. Rejesus is supported by all the mainstream UK churches.

So why the image of an empty beer glass? Francis Goodwin, Chair of the Churches Advertising Network (CAN) says: “The message is subtle, but simple: where is God in all the boozing at Christmas? For many, Christmas is about drinking and partying, and God is excluded. Yet many young people are interested in finding deeper meaning and exploring faith. We hope the link to myspace.com will offer a fresh venue for them to discuss their feelings and debate the issues.”

Richard Johnston and Mark Gilmore, who produced the poster at Radioville, the ad agency for the campaign, say…

“We took the traditional silly-season news story in which people find images of Jesus in the side of trees, in a slice of toast or even within the bubbles of cheese on a pizza, and developed a number of new images showing Jesus’ face in unexpected places. Because of the season, CAN chose the beerglass route, where Jesus’ face is captured in the froth running down the side of an empty pint glass. The responses expected on myspace.com when the campaign launches should be quite illuminating.”

Yes, they should be quite “illuminating.” It will quite interesting to see what people say about this. I can’t imagine many American fanatics being very happy about this since so many neo-prohibitionists are also highly religious. One bit of unintentional humor is that when you visit the MySpace page, Jesus has “0” friends. Jesus has no friends? I’m sure that will change shortly, but for now I feel kinda bad for him. Perhaps I should buy him a beer.